My online life

I have a new policy in my online life. If you make my world a worse place in some way, you get deleted. I just don’t have the desire to see some of the crap that people spout. I’m turning my online spaces into places I would want to frequent.

I don’t mean that I will delete people who have different opinions to me in every case, every time. I can disagree about drugs, sex, and rock and roll, politics, health care, and all sorts, and that’s fine. But I’m not tolerating homophobia or transphobia. Those are non-negotiable. Racism too. Shaming people for things they can’t control – their appearance, their skin colour, their gender, the way they present, anything like that – is way out.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking ‘but what will people think of me?’ and I’ve realised, I don’t care. I want to be friends with people who respect others’ human rights. I don’t need the approval of bigots of any flavour.

I’m not strong in real life, and I tend to passively avoid difficult situations rather than actively speak up. I realise that I’m avoiding situations which bring up awkward conversations in my online life as well, and I’ve decided that’s the way I need it to be for now, especially online. I’m creating an environment that does not pose too many challenges to my mental health, so I have a place I can retreat to that is relatively safe.

I’m creating my safe space, and while I hope it doesn’t mean I lose too many people from my life, I accept that some people will go. I’m not sorry.

Pouring out hate

A couple of days ago, Justin Bieber was caught drag racing while drunk and high. Not his finest moment, by a long shot. Apparently he’d been drinking, smoking pot, and popping antidepressants (what is this madness? I don’t think anti-depressants get you high). He then thought it was a right brilliant idea to go for a drive, then to get his entourage to block off a street for him to race down against a friend. The local police thought that the idea was possibly not as brilliant as Bieber thought.

But that’s all just back story. What happened next was a very public pillorying. Yes, he’s a public figure, and the media is going to splash everything he does over the screens of the connected world. They don’t make money out of downplaying his sheer idiocy. Being treated like a fool is par for the course. It’s not news media that was the problem though. It was the ever-friendly denizens of the internet that made this more than just a stupid, albeit famous, kid doing stupid-kid things. He’s a  complete twit for doing it, he should be punished as the law dictates, and maybe he might learn something.

The sections of the internet I frequent hates Justin Bieber. I admit, I don’t particularly like him, but I know that it’s primarily because I hate the music of today’s young teens. I’m getting old and clinging on to the music I grew up on. That’s fine, I don’t have to like tween music. I also think he acts like a bit of a prat. The internet agrees with me. The internet and I part ways in the degree of dislike, it seems.

The degrees of dislike seem to range from “hah, you prat. I hope your money doesn’t get you out of the trouble you’re in” to “I hope you get viciously raped in prison“. Bit of a range we have there. There’s even a bit of satire that suggests that drag racing should be made a capital crime so he can be executed.

What the hell, internet? He’s a stupid kid. He doesn’t deserve a “private cavity search” from “Bubba” (quotes from my Facebook feed). The sheer outpouring of hate is sickening. The sort of things that have been said are shameful, and I’ve seen it from people that I would hope knew better. The splashes from the depths of the internet hate-pit are splattering far today.

When it makes your day to see someone brought low like that, it says a whole lot of ugly things about you.