Stopping the "hate"
- Serah
- May 23, 2016
- 3 min read
I really don’t want this to be another post about “hating.” After all, I don’t even like the colloquial. However, I must ask the question... Why? Why do people hate? What is it about engaging in complete and utter slander that we get such a thrill or sense of satisfaction out of?
It just baffles me when I see any person, whether I love them or don’t care for them being torn down verbally or through distortion to pieces. All it takes is one photo and it can be used as the very tool that will:
Change the way that a person is viewed to the rest of the viewers. But of course, the proverbial paparazzi! The givers of disposition, the eye behind how the susceptible public will overall feel about anyone in Hollywood. All it really takes is one mistake (and how many of those do we make daily) and a camera attached to an individual willing to distort their subjects’ action at any cost. It rather easy too. Catch a person in the wrong moment, vulnerable and expose and BOOM--you got a front page disaster. The idea is really twistedly ingenious. I may not know Lindsey Lohan nor would ever get the opportunity to know her. I am neither a fan nor am I against her. However, the paparazzi has done a splendid job of painting the picture that they would like for everyone to see. Surely, paparazzi’s cover some positive things, but how often is the profession used as a platform to create, well—hate.
Complete and utter verbal abuse (let’s not sugarcoat what it really is). Readers generally start by commenting on the life of the photographed (having never met them and generally as a result of “1”). I mean how many rumors are true anyways? And even if they are, who really cares! Are we, myself included, really one to cast stones in a glass house… In the web of truly believing we know who the photographed is, insults are brewed. Some of the comments that I have read underneath heavily liked/viewed photo are the most offensive comments I think I will ever read. Then, the next day someone one tops it with something even more hateful. I wonder… did the commenter ever take into account that the photographed could possibly read it and how it would make them feel. I find myself sometime doubting whether I should even place certain photos up in fear or the verbal bashing police that has become the World Wide Web.
Total humiliate. Case one: You are mad, fuming even and the person in the photograph was the perpetrator. Solution: You have consciously decided that the only way you can truly show just how mad you are is by public humiliation or at least as public as society has created. You realize that it is your turn to either return the ugly comment with a response or initiate verbal ugliness. It has dawned on you that in order for the perpetrator to see what they did, they must be humiliated in front of friends and family. That ought to show em’! The uglier, the more off-handed, the more personal—the better. And why do all this? To save face in front of the people around who witnessed the argument in the first place. After all, the internet (as amazing as it is) provides the opportunity to hide behind a picture or default saver and not be held accountable for saying it in flesh to the alleged perpetrator.
The biggest question I have is: to what end? Why?
Even if you think it’s just an innocent assessment of a picture with a slightly unpleasant undertone, why say it at al? In fact, why think it? It seems...de minimis given the broader effort we should have in uplifting each other (stranger, foe or friend) unconditionally. What a far better place it would be to exist in a modern world surround around Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Most especially if we would just realize… that words are powerful.
It breaks my heart deeply and I don’t even know half of the people it happens to.
But I was thinking... maybe you could come with me and today we could stop the “hate.”
Commenti