Secret: Where do hate flows on the Internet come from
Elina Chebbocha
"You look like a fagot with such a top," I wrote to an unknown person on November 9, 2007. I was twenty years old, and this comment did not refer to the wrong choice of clothes. We were in the LiveJournal community, where one group of people mocked another according to the principle of musical inequality - the unfortunates sent us their lists of the best albums in the world and received in return a handful of uncomplicated racism, chauvinism and even sexism. Half of the people who were in this community now recall this nostalgically and kindly, while the other has become the chief editors (for example, Posters and Look At Me). Some readers chose their partners according to the principle "he wrote the kindest comments to the tops and immediately liked me." Now these people are married.
Seven years have passed since then, and reading his youthful bile causes at least a perplexity bordering on understanding - it seems like "I was wrong, but you know, he really doesn’t chop in music." Hating another person for musical taste seems archaic, like LJ itself, the word "fagot" has acquired a new criminal meaning, and the concept of good and bad has passed from the category of taste to shameful "but not Hitler." However, the sracks didn’t disappear from life - they were transferred to Facebook, screenshots of hellish replays on Twitter and even real fights based on social networks: everyone remembers the story of how the former GQ editor gave the bream to another editor for ugly comments about Jews or half of Facebook seriously intends to spit in the face of Dmitry Olshansky for the latter's assumption that their place, I quote, "at the bucket". The only difference between these srachs and srachs seven years ago only in that we no longer participate in them. But we follow them exactly with the same joy.
If you speak the language of statistics, the most popular query in Google, associated with hatred, is "why literally the whole world hates Jews?". Unofficially, however, hayterism, although it was spread over all spheres of life, is more like reports of the secular press, and participants in hate matches are like comic book heroes with archivists and contradictions in their views that are incompatible with life. However, there was so much controversy that even a quarrel between Rihanna and Thea Taylor on Twitter and instagram was not much different from the sracha of two real friends. You should not be surprised at the widespread haiterism - the concept, as it turns out, is young and not really felt by anyone.
From the point of view of etymology, everything is simple: the first mention of hate goes back to Beowulf, and as a verb it appears in the records of King Alfred (897 AD). However, as the definition of another noun (attributive phrase) the word "hate" came to the press relatively recently. Hate crime? 1984, The Washington Post: "Flynn succeeded in preventing the so-called hate crimes - violence against racial or religious minorities." Hate speech? 1988, Newsweek: "According to Professor of Law Monroe Friedman, continuing controversy can only contribute to the growing desire to ban hate propaganda." But the letters of happiness, and, as it should be, always anonymous, people began to write to each other at the beginning of the twentieth century - the official "Cologne Bulletin" published the following excellent example of "hate literature": "Among those responsible for drawing Europe into the bloodbath, Lord Notcliffe is probably the most guilty. "(Daily Colonist, 1916) After a hundred years, such letters can be considered mosquito bites, and the bloody dictator and the culprit of all the ills of humanity can be anyone, even your cat.
The last case of a massive increase in entropy is the Secret application published on the Russian market.
However, to receive anonymous letters sent not to the newspaper, but directly, and those who blame not for engaging the country in the war, and for things far from reprehensible, people began in the 60s. The first example of such an anonymous letter was published in the Ebony magazine in September 1963. Sarah Patton Boyle, a prominent human rights activist and journalist from Virginia, opposed racial hatred and wanted to engage "negroes" in public life. She popped up to a greeting card sent directly to her birthday party with the following text: "YOUR ARTICLE IN THE POST IS IS ROTTEN !! TRY WASHING YOUR OWN DISHES AND CLEANING YOUR OWN HOME AND FOR SUCH TRASH YOU ARE A BITCH ". The letter was written on the back of a postcard with the text "Hear you're leaving town ...", and the postal clerk, according to Patton, was pretty grinning. At the time, such letters were something out of the ordinary, a direct insult, the author of which is always unknown, and his only publicity was a “screenshot” in the article, and even then it was not about him. With the advent of the Internet, messages with hate, of course, began to multiply, and very few people would reach the post office with their steps and send a message of love. The less significant they are, the more meaningless their content, because anyone can write about how exactly they hate you for anything. As noted by James St. James in a letter to Michael Eligu, the most terrible people come in the comments on Reddit and on YouTube. In fact, they come anywhere - and sometimes it turns out that this is not a separate category of horrible people, but people are not good in general (good morning). The last case of a massive increase in entropy is the Secret application for the spread of gossip and plums, which has come onto the Russian market. An hourly multiplying army of its users anonymously shares information, usually of little relevance to reality, demonstrates the heights of a black word for red and, without exception, wants sex. The most sobering nuance of this epidemic lies in the fact that all these people are your friends, friends of friends or owners of smartphones that are within a few kilometers of you, who have the opportunity with impunity, to pour water and shit on you and all your friends not only in a narrow circle (the status “AB is fat and unhappy” caught you off guard? Good morning - 2). Who would have thought that in 2014, I suddenly realize that to face each other for the “wrong” musical taste is not the biggest sin in the world, and in “The Secret” they will wash the bones of the former LJ-community stars.