Online fights that go beyond insults, rude comments and threats – Good manners and the Internet are probably incompatible concepts
Wherever she saw a post by “the other”, she would come in to comment. That is, to disagree and express in a (brusque) way her dislike for the face of the much-hated “rival”. The other (the rival) would respond with even greater impudence. And the fight would flare up. Otherwise, they were friends. Online. On Facebook, this – and this, among thousands of others – sisterly friendship blossomed. With a few “likes” to tease each other out – when, for example, one uploaded a painless photo from her grandmother’s birthday and the other her gardenia that, after months of effort, opened a withered flower – and with tons of disparagement and “dislikes” between two people where it was obvious: off the Internet they wouldn’t be able to stand each other for even five minutes. However, it was the protective cloak (they thought) of the Internet that allowed them to maintain their dramatic relationship. A relationship that simply did not exist. And which ended (the expired) forever when "the other" "reported" Anna, accusing her of uploading "obscene material", resulting in my friend's account being blocked for a few days and her, addicted to social media, risking a nervous breakdown.
The controversial post concerned a photo of her in a swimsuit from Stira, Evia. “Is this conservative swimsuit indecent?” the… reported woman asked herself in a rage and immediately set out a plan of revenge: she had one of her own friends become the anonymous person’s online friend and then, when the anonymous person uploaded a photo of herself in a swimsuit (one-piece), to report her in turn for “indecent material.” “This is just the beginning! I will do such tricks to her that she will be forced to disappear from Facebook,” my friend announced with a shining eye.
I remembered, when I was a child and the neighborhoods of Athens had single-family homes and were still neighborhoods, in the sense that we find in old movies (e.g. “A Woman Should Not Fear a Man”), some indescribable hair-pulling between otherwise beloved neighbors because one threw the laundry in front of the other’s door. I see this laundry spilling out on Facebook. In the form of caustic comments and supposedly civilized discussions that end in war. The new “society” that we all enter to communicate, citizens of a world without borders, is largely a society of incomprehension, disparagement, and even verbal violence.
Natassa Bofiliou, who for half of us cried during her concert, while for the other half she has no right not only to cry, but not even to sing, the excavation of the tomb in Amphipolis that may hide everything from the lineage of Alexander the Great to the Flintstones, Alexis Tsipras and his speech in Thessaloniki are just some of the topics of the last few days that gave us the opportunity to relieve the tensions of our frayed nerves.
From the side, photos of kittens, dogs and horses accompanied by comments like "whoever uploads a puppy on my wall again will get a slap on the wrist. Not the puppy, the person"; protests from those who "like" everyone at a time when others don't even "like" their own posts (now how can you "like" a photo of a child who lost his legs when a tunnel collapsed in the mine where he was working without insurance...); warnings to "those who came in here to jump. Just because I uploaded two photos of myself doesn't mean I'm as easy as some greedy people think. I'll give it to you!".
Somehow, online chatter turns into the exposure of a society that has not learned the elementary ways of communication, that cannot control its nerves, that is incapable of polite conversation. Otherwise, social media brings us closer. So close that we risk gouging out each other's eyes. There is, of course, also the theory that technology is actually alienating us. Maybe that is so. However, I find that, as much as it alienates us, we do not lose our appetite for hair removal, even from a distance. How else can I say it? Dislike in our faces!
Source: secnews.gr
