205 thoughts on “i’d love to change the world but i don’t know what to do”

1. It’s like my father used to say (and you’ll have to pardon my french), “Fucking Earth people… Fucking Earth people! Do you know what the worst thing is about fucking Earth people? It just makes more Earth people…”

2. I don’t know, tumblr was KILLING it today. Man!

   The only real advice: DFTBA. The more awesome we are, it’s bound to catch on.

   1. I don’t know about tumblr, but most of my online interactions of late have been pretty cool conversations and people helping each other out. Maybe stay away from “meme of the day” subs and sites?

3. I like to think that I am constantly learning to be a better person in that way. I hope the same will be true of the “dickwagons”, but there are times… shakes head

   But, honestly, I’ve left most of those public forums long ago because I can’t deal with the stress that drama brings with it. I curate my social media pretty carefully too. I want to be exposed to a wider world with viewpoints different from my own, but only by people who know how to behave like adults. Sadly, they seem few and are, without exception, under constant attack. It’s awful.

4. I think your key observation is that you worked hard to raise your kids with empathy and kindness. That’s a level of effort that very few parents are putting in these days. The “old-fashioned values” guy in me thinks that both parents working 10+hours a day plays a big part in that. But that’s what you have to do in today’s economy. But that lack of parental time is leading to teenagers who have been effectively raised by their schools, peers, and siblings.
   When I see the vitriol online, and a lot comes from adults too, it just makes me sad for them. Even if it’s just an anonymous release they would never do in public, it shows what kind of sludge lives in their hearts. I can’t imagine living like that.

5. Man, I blogged about this exact same thing, except in the context of feminism and how I just don’t think I could be considered a feminist these days, not when a majority of themon the Internet are using their voices to name call, threaten, and rip peoples’ lives apart just for saying or doing something they don’t agree with. There are more mature ways have sharing our thoughts. Which is why I participated in the #WeWantWidow hash tag campaign by cosplaying Natasha. We can have our voices heard without the hate-filled screaming. Thanks for showing me I’m not the only adult here wondering what the hell is going on, and hoping I raise two boys with better Internet etiquette than what I’m seeing on the web these days.

   1. I consider myself a pretty inclusive person (can a person be inclusive? Sounds painful) but recently got chewed and basically yelled at for daring to suggest that maybe a fictional work may have a person that’s a -ist or a -phobe say a nasty word. Pretty much got compared to Hitler and charged with defending centuries of oppression in the world. This from a single “respected” person I thought was reasonable.
      I don’t know if this is the opposite of what everyone here is arguing for, but that made me think that I don’t want to follow people like this anymore (or buy their products).

6. test to see if i am banned

   1. weird my first reply said i was banned, ill try to delete these

      1. long story short, use of n-word up 100x in a week. was baffled until ppl explained school was out

7. I do think it is an absolute shame that people use the internet as a way to blow off steam from their real lives. They build up these horrible feelings all day long from having to deal with shitty situations, unkindness, etc… and then find things on the internet to dump their negativity on. Like a tap on a keg of crap. Then whomever it lands on has to deal with the miasma of shit that got dropped on their head. You swim around and try to keep your mouth shut so none of the shit gets in. If we could all just stop being shitty to each other, then the internet wouldn’t be so full of crap and maybe real life wouldn’t be so bad either.

8. Children were always like that. “Back then” being polite was a mixture of being afraid to say offensive things of the possible consequences (does not apply on the Internet) and nostalgic idealization of the past.
   Children were, are and will always be cruel to another. Look at a baby.. we love them but they are the most self absorbed, unemphatic little persons imaginable. They just cannot think past themselves and empathy takes decades to develop. I am not saying these things out of hearsay. Psychology, Neurobiology and every other field of science which is concerned with the behavior of children more or less agrees.

   Even the old greeks said that the next generation did not know how to behave. If that were true every generation would be worse than the one before. Simply not true.

   Or to say it with the words of someone who put it way better than I ever could:

   “One ought not to judge her: all children are Heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb high trees and say shocking things and leap so very high grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless At All. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown.”
   ― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

   1. I’m not disagreeing with the idea that children are by their very nature self-involved creatures. However in the quote you listed it mentions that nothing grows a heart more than reading. If that is true then it’s quite possibly an explanation for why it’s taking longer and longer for kids to grow up these days because literacy or more importantly the act of reading for fun is at an all time low in most of the developed world. To the point that when asked their favorite book most people respond, I don’t really read books.

      1. Reading is (in my opinion) meant as immersing yourself in stories.
         I myself am an avid reader but I think a good movie (no I am not talking about a blockbuster like Avengers but a Drama like e.g. Fault in our Stars) or Tv Series or even a story driven video game are possible alternatives. I prefer books but I won’t say that it is the only way.
         Immersing yourself in a story means becoming someone else for a short time. It gives you another perspective and being able to take on others perspective is the most important part of Empathy.

      2. Aaron, I wish you were right about reading being at an all-time low, but I don’t think that’s the case. We might have had a bit of a surge in reading populations in the 20th century, maybe, but reading for fun–particularly reading fiction for fun–has always been a somewhat marginal activity in earlier eras (I think; it correlates with my general knowledge of literacy, but if anyone’s got stats to the contrary, I’ll back down). Likewise, people have always been complete jerks in certain contexts. Maybe online is just the main context in which people are complete jerks now.

   2. What a fantastic quote 🙂

      1. Ok, that was me trying to directly reply to Stefan.
         Evidently that is not a thing. Those flesh eating little cobalt sized people grow up though, and as they do it’s the people making everything better that attract them, sometimes because.. I mean the monsters eat flesh, but then sometimes as people shining a light in the right spot to help them find their way into being… non flesh eating cobalt sized monsters? Ok. Awkward analogy

   3. At the risk of applying anecdotal evidence too broadly, I look back at my childhood and I think to myself: “I was a little fucking sociopath.” That is, in part as you say, that compassion is a learned skill but also that my conception of empathy changed as I aged. As a child and teen my ability to empathize, and in fact my capacity for restraint in all things was very much based in consequences. That’s not necessarily to say that “If I do a bad thing, then a bad thing will happen to me” was the extent of my ethical reality, I was able to recognize negative outcomes for others as equally unwanted and was able to count emotional outcomes among those unwanted conclusions.

      1. (Comment broken-up because for some reason long comments are making the “Post Comment button inaccessible to me)

         As I’ve aged though I’ve found my ability to internalize the emotional states of others, to feel as they do in a situation that doesn’t affect me, has grown in a way I couldn’t have anticipated and to the point that looking back my ethical reality today is vastly changed from that of my youth.

         1. I think in essence that youth today, whose ethical abilities are similarly based in an appreciation of consequences are presented with a forum (the internet) which was not largely accessible to us in our youth, where action is largely divorced from consequence, where they are largely unpunishable and the presence of others is only felt in a highly abstracted form, their emotional realities largely inaccessible. The internet, as I see it, short-circuits their ethical toolkit.

   4. I’ve found that many people who think they’ve raised good children still have things they do that are bullying in their own right; such as commenting about other people’s clothing, body parts they feel aren’t up to snuff, whether someone is of value to this world. After a diet of these lists of expectations children usually fail at (most of it coming from our own families), why wouldn’t they resort to taking it out on everyone on the internet. Think about political cycles, ads purchased en masse who’s only aim is to bully the opponent. Children do what they see, not what they’re told. As long as we keep providing reality TV, political ads and our own inability to accept others just how they are (when just who they are isn’t a direct detriment to others), it’s only going to get worse. As long as that’s where Hollywood believes their profit is, they’ll continue to pump out bully food and the children of our world will make a steady diet of it and then puke it all back at us. 🙂

9. It is not your imagination. If we, as adults and with some good sense and values, do not lead by example, then the internet will be left to….. the people you talked about.

10. I think there are two effects reinforcing themselves here.

    First, immediate and anonymous communication encourages people to be thoughtless assholes. Hopefully as the internet ages social norms will adapt to make this less true, but it is certainly true now.

    Second, it is way easier for kids to interact online now than it was when I was growing up. When I was a kid, I had to use my family’s voice line to connect to the internet with a 14.4kbps modem. Now I’m pretty sure infants are born with a hardwired connection to Facebook. It’s not that kids were any smarter or politer 15 years ago, it’s just that adults didn’t have to listen to them or interact with them as peers.

11. Two quotes that are a little worn around the edges, but are ever pertinent:

    “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

    “Don’t stop believin’.” – Journey

12. Hey Wil,

    I can’t really speak for most of those websites you mentionned, but I know I’m getting older and less interested in what other people think because my opinions are so different from the general public.

    The only reasons I go on the internet now is to rent movies, watch netflix and read up on wikipedia. Reddit is sometimes entertaining and facebook is to chat with my friends.

    I feel like the golden age of internet is over. Why would you create a website unless you’re a company.

    Anyway, I never comment on your site but I’ve been lurking for probably 10 years now and this post really spoke to me.

    Thanks.

13. And people give me horrified looks when I tell them my kids won’t be allowed on social media…

14. You do change things 1 person at a time, 1 incident at a time, 1 prayer at a time. You led gently and we follow and try to be like you. Thank you. And yeah – the kids need to be supervised more.

15. I took Internet Age I and II in college, this was back in ’04, where most the coursework focused solely on Internet Persona. It was a marketing degree but the general idea was just this. The monsters. I’ve taken that with me, long after the art degree, long after the marketing side and certainly see it now as a parent. It’s there in the meat and potatoes of the documentary ‘Hot Girls Wanted.’ They cite how aggression is growing more and more with browser searches. Forced. Manipulated. These are the taste of the new internet persona and ultimately, the new internet user. It does make sense as wit has long abandoned the Chevy Chase variety on the ‘net and has begun a nose-dive into the attack method. In a post 4chan internet, it’s strange to recall the early days but I did see it recently. You see, I allowed my daughter to view my Facebook. I keep a very small friend count. No chance of exposure of anything adult. My daughter was complimenting everything she saw. That’s what a new user did. That’s what an internet fresh user sought to do.

16. Hey Wil;
    On the internet, as in life, we all have choices! We can choose to hang out in noisy, rowdy, disgusting filthy places, or we can choose to hang out at wilwheatondotnet. For me it’s an obvious choice: I don’t ‘face’, I don’t ‘Twit’, and have no desire to do that stuff.

    I have a website where my friends are always welcome, and for all those other folks, well, I really don’t give a s**t! You can chose where you wanna hang out, man! Right now, I like it here! Thanx, Wil!

17. I think language has much to do with the lack of civility on the web. I never heard my parents curse while growing up. That’s not quite true. On rare occasions my father might let out with a damn or a hell. While growing up in the 50s and 60s the “F” word was rarely to never used by anyone which included all my friends. I am not saying we were a bunch of church going goody two shoes. We weren’t. We were normal middle and working class kids growing up in the Wonder Bread suburbs. Then something happened. The F-bomb started to creep into the language. In the beginning the F-bomb was rarely used but when it was dropped it was dropped to shock or titillate. Once at a high school party a new girl showed up and began using the F word constantly. Everyone was shocked and everyone thought very poorly of the girl. By the mid seventies the F word was being used more and more. Today it has become a normal part of speech. Words can bring you up or tear you down. Words can inspire or humiliate. And when words that were originally intended to shock but become common, those words cease to shock and instead they become a form of degradation, degrading the user and the listener and ultimately the entire culture. I don’t think these words are the cause of cultural degradation. I think the opposite is true. Our culture is being degraded and the words are reflecting that. What is therefore needed is a cultural revolution to uplift dignity and humility and generosity and caring for one another.

18. Completely subjective but I’ve seen much more of the nasty the last two years or so. Yes, there’s always been dickery on the Internet but it’s hard for me to not feel like it’s hitting critical mass.

    Several of the websites and online communities I have enjoyed over the years are now to be avoided (if I want to maintain my current status of not having my head stuck in a hole in the wall of my office).

    It’s not kids, it’s jackasses of all ages. There have never been more places to publicly shit in the punch bowl.

    Thanks for your post. If it gets one person to think before typing, that would be fantastic.

19. I am so with you, and you know where they learn it from? Their parents. Something I notice more and more from people is a downward spiral in any common courtesy or manners, and this is what their kids see so naturally presume it’s ok too.
    Now I’m not saying all people are like that, but I have seen a trend and more people seem to be this way.

20. My biggest problem is a very close cousin to the jerks we are seeing. That is, people aren’t happy with anything anymore. The negative is often creations of their imagination too. And the hate for EVERY video game released is wearing on me. I don’t get it, if people don’t like the game or games they are complaining a about or hating on, why don’t they just move on? Critical discussion is healthy. And using our minds to help ourselves be different is healthy. But I don’t think: “This game is whack, these money grabbing sorry excuse for developers need to kill themselves.” (I kept this one mild, we have all seen worse than this.) Is a form of healthy discussion. They can have the EXACT same opinion the game without being so rude and threatening. I’m growing tired of every game forum being filled with immature mudslinging at the developers rather than the all too rare critical thinking and professional recommendations and requests for/to the developers.

21. As with any socialization I have started my kids young and we are slowly adding more features and functions of online social gatherings as they grow in both maturity and age. Hopefully by the time I can turn them loose onto the internet they will have a firm understanding of the medium.

    A parents dream I’m sure.

22. I figure what we need is a code of de-escalation and assume-the-best-intentions that we just haven’t figured out yet.
    Sure, you’re always going to have a few people that WANT to rage and create upset, but in most communities the majority wants a calm and productive environment. They should be able to compensate for the raging minority, it’s just that nobody knows how. We lack the vocabulary to even discuss the issues most of the time.
    So what I’d want to see is some guides of how we can moderate discussions as a participant, in an environment where you can’t have the bulky guy in a biker jacket simply stare down the angry drunk. I’ve found distraction often works, starving attention by putting another topic to the forefront. Once we’re all more used to it, maybe we’ll get better at recognising and calling out the omissions and fallacies that usually power the internet flames.
    That, and we need to find a way to solve the “room of a million people” problem most large internet communities run into – it’s hard to feel empathy if most of your interactions are with personas you’ll never see ever again.
    Of course, it’s going to take some smart people and time to figure this out, but I hope eventually we will…

23. Me too.

    I talk about this a lot with my friends and my husband. I’ve noticed this for a little while now. I feel like it comes down to accessibility. For me, the internet used to feel like it was mine. It was me and my friends and the things we liked. Now, it’s for everyone – which isn’t a bad thing. I want everyone to have access to the internet, to use it as a resource, to be able to find what they like, and make friends, find their place, but that’s not what happens. There are articles, or websites for products and services, all with comments sections, all with a little facebook box at the bottom, so you can comment with your facebook account. For marketing? For feedback? I don’t know.

    The running commentary. You can’t just tell your friends that you hate Cheerios, you have to go to their website and tell them, in very strong language, in the comments for everyone to see, how you think that everyone involved with Cheerios are bad people, because you personally don’t like the product.

    I have kept a livejournal since the year 2000. I had some public blogs, too, in the early 2000’s. Now, when I try to write publicly, I panic. I don’t have the feeling that like minded people will find what I write and a community will be formed. I feel terrified that I’m going to be misunderstood by people that don’t agree with my ideas, and can’t just let the differences between us exist in peace. I still write in livejournal – where my friends come and sign in, and strangers can’t leave comments or even find me. I can’t write in public, though. I don’t feel good about it. I get too stressed over it. I no longer want to make friends online.

    I feel like facebook changed our world. Everyone got on board with that one, and it kind of freaks me out.

    But I don’t really know what the deal is with the mean stuff. I know it’s always been there, but I don’t think to this degree. I feel that it’s a change in internet culture, definitely, but maybe not a change in culture as a whole. I think it’s the change in accessibility. Smart phones, facebook, the anonymity. At every moment of the day, any thought we have can be put out there, anonymously. It takes no effort, and it’s all still very new to most people. I mean, I come across 30 year old’s who still don’t really know how to use a computer or the internet, they don’t really understand what it has to offer, but they have a smartphone and a facebook account, and they understand how to use those. It’s all still very new.

    I have hope that it will kind of even itself out with time, and people like you, people like me, our friends, we will sort of take back the internet by developing new communities or evolving current communities online, where people aren’t encouraged to be hateful. We will teach our own children to be kind, and they will teach their children to be kind, and the world will go on and on.

    Kids will always be cruel. Most of them will grow up and grow out of it. Some of them wont. Nothing’s changed there – it’s just the platform on which they can be cruel has expanded, and the trouble they can get into for their cruelty has diminished.

    I guess, what I mean is, keep on keepin’ on!

24. I agree that empathy is sorely lacking on the internet from both adults and kids but in person…those kids are freakin’ amazing!
    I’ve been teaching for 13 years now in various situations (I was a sub for years so I could continue my education and care for my grandparents) and generation Z is phenomenal!! I have never seen more compassion nor more willingness to fight for the right thing! They think people’s hang ups about sexual orientation and gender are totally stupid. I see them passionately fighting for feminism and fighting against the evil -isms like racism and ableism. They care so deeply and really use the internet as a tool to inform themselves of what is truly going on in the world. I now run a tutoring center and I talk to kids from 2nd grade through 12th and every, single one of them wants to make the world better. They say they love me because I’m an adult who feels as sharply as they do and has the same goals that they do – a better world for EVERYONE. I have one girl (she’s actually one of my employees) who started a feminism group on her school campus. We live in the foothills outside of Sacramento and the tea party/rethugs reign up here, so going against that takes incredible courage! On a side note – they also have learned from all of us with extreme college debt and are choosing lower price schools or starting at community college so they don’t fall into the same trap. I cannot say enough how much I admire and love these kids! If they remain this way, I have great hope for the future once they are in charge. Now if the baby boomers and the idiots in our generation would just get out of the damn way, I think we’d be better off! I have a feeling the vitriol we see online from teens is the result of tech-savvy kids (hey, they’ve never known a world without DSL) creating multiple accounts and beings asses behind false identities (possibly multiple false identities).
    That’s my $0.02!

25. Hate to say it, Wil, but it’s not just the kiddos. Adults act inappropriately online too and even under their own names, not anonymously.

26. Yes, we are letting a whole generation grow up like you say. There
    are some exceptions, but by and large you are correct. Watch them
    in grocery stores and restaurants, for example, you’ll see horrid
    behavior. I quit teaching because the classroom was unbelievable,
    and parents enable their children, don’t back the teacher. They want
    to be liked and friends with their children instead of parents.
    There should be give and take, and we don’t want to return to the
    horrors of not listening to kids for their opinion. But that is all it is,
    just opinion. Parents are not friends, they are parents. Children
    have always disagreed with their elders, but elder kept things in
    tow. Todays adults are becoming children in big bodies.

27. When I was a kid (oh geez, now I truly feel 40), there were repercussions for bad behavior. It was levied in many forms: spanking, shunning, grounding, and the new age (at that time) punishment of time outs. I don’t condone physical punishment, but my point is that bad behavior wasn’t rewarded. Now, however, we televise and idolize those same douchebags that we would’ve turned away from on the playground. We give them fame and giant paychecks. Suddenly, douchebaggery is seen as a noble, desirous trait. These terrible reality TV shows prove that being an asshole results in reward. Trash talk shows do the same. I seriously do not like the expansion of these reality shows. Maybe it’s better to leave some realities in their own little shitty realm.

    The internet provides a barrier – a mild form of protection from those whom the dbags are berating. Not total immunity, of course, but it’s a lot easier to throw stones from behind a wall than to face your target head-on. I’ve watched my son – who is now 21 – work both sides of the equation. During online game play, he says things that are absolutely shitty to his teammates. In public, he is a decent person.

    As we become more and more protected by the interconnected disconnect that online interaction allows, I think we’re going to veer further down the path to assholery.

28. I think “Social Media” is a misnomer. I think it’s led us to “Antisocial Media”. Back when I was a wee lad (I’m 48) we had no internet. We had friends we hung out with, who shared our interests. There were also Dickwagons, whose only purpose in life was to sow misery because they fed on it. Thing is, they couldn’t just walk into my house and crap on my Legos or my G.I. Joes. They couldn’t attach a horrid comment to every essay I turned in at school. I could tune them out. Mostly. Sometimes, they would say the wrong thing to the wrong person and get a righteous ass-kicking. A couple of times it was from me. If you ever got to meet the parents, you often had an idea where it came from, but they only had a limited audience to torment.

    These days, kids see their own parents make snarky comments on Facebook, or talk trash about their friends. They see mom or dad go on a rage because their latte had too much foam. Complain and you get it for free. Threaten to leave a bad review. Complain on their Facebook page. Manipulate. WIN.

29. I have a theory that while yes, people have gotten worse, it’s only because more worse people are getting on the internet. So yes, teh nets have gotten ruder and meaner and in general nastier, but there are also a heck of a lot more people online and online constantly than there used to be. The more people are online and the more frequently all those people are online, the more likely we are to get seriously poor behavior–it’s just logical. Probably the only cure is an end to internet anonymity and real-life consequences for d-bag-like behavior online. Back when there were few enough of us in various online venues that we had to build relationships and reputations to really get involved, we had something to lose online. Now there are so many people and so many ways to create a new, perfectly valid identity that it really doesn’t matter to most folks.

    When my boys start really going online themselves (right now it’s just my oldest, who’s 5, going to a few sites like Magic Treehouse and PBS kids), there’s going to be a Mommy-held repository of IDs and passwords, and if they’re caught doing something in “public” that is rude/mean-spirited/otherwise obnoxious, there will be consequences, just like there is when they do something like that in non-digital life. I hope to cultivate the fear that somehow, Mom will find out, and She Will Be Very Disappointed In You.

30. Kids are smart – they see you even when you think they don’t. Why should you expect kids to be different from the adults you see every day being total dicks to each other?

    We live in a society where it is more important to coddle millionaires than it is to treat homeless vets for mental illnesses. Why should the kids be any different?

    They are what they see.

31. In olden days this was called “September”, when the Freshman first experienced the Arpanet, and the Sophomores demonstrated the origin of the word sophomoric.

32. Been having the same thoughts for a while now, Not just because it is summer. The internet used to a great place to be, share information and connect with others. But recently it just seems that people have an excuse to be rude and disrespectful. I barely use twitter anymore and seeing myself use social media anymore because most of the people I enjoyed socializing with are no longer on social media. I find myself on coming on for an hour to read my favorite blogs and to check email just to avoid the fools.

    1. I am old enough cough to have been a moderator and chat host on AOL, before the Web was even invented. You had plenty of crazy nasties then, too — why else would they have needed moderators? Maybe the difference is more acceptance of nasty combined with less moderation.

       1. I’m old enough to have had a Compuserve number and belong to usenet groups. I remember thinking how cool it was to have a 1200 baud dial-in modem so I could call individual BBS sites on my Commodore 128. I also remember the day when the AOL ‘partition’ was taken down, which released AOL users onto the nets and caused great fear and trepidation with other online users. ( I think there used to be a descriptive…’AOL kiddies’ or some other horrible and unnecessary term…because we worried about net etiquettes not being respected. The web survived.)

          I remember discovering a little, hand-made page created by Wil before WWDN was ever a thing. It was fun to interact with the other people there and to see what Wil was doing/thinking/feeling in the post ST:TNG days. I remember being a member then a mod on the WWDN Soapbox, and enjoying the community which Wil created there with a benchmark TOS. The TOS clearly identified what Wil and his admins and mods would and would not tolerate in behavior and posts. It could be tough ‘keeping the peace’.

          At each of these places I remember kind, sincere, real human beings having a good time. I also remember angry, vindictive human beings spewing vitriol. The nets and the wider world have always had both kinds of people and still do. The sheer number of human beings in both places has increased exponentially. That means more, angry, impulsive kids and adults. But it also means more mature, kind, levelheaded people. It also means a huge volume of information that requires self-curation to remain sane.

          I agree with Phaedra: we don’t have to accept the nastiness. There can be moderation without censorship. We can create safe spaces on the web and in the world. Free speech doesn’t have to be Free Hatred or Free Prejudice. Hold the line and hold on to each other.

          There is also good in this world/Samwise Gamgee.

33. Scary thought, but I don’t think there’s anything new about human nature; that means all this has always been inside us, hidden under the behavioral demands of society. We now have a place in which there are no consequences for anything said. I hope that many of those in question are chilluns; god knows what I would have posted as a 15-year old. But I fear that many of them are grown-ups, and should know better…

34. It is, in fact, possible to teach empathy in the schools. Not as some silly mandatory “empathy ed” course that everyone is required to take, but as a continuing practice across the school day. I teach at a school that has been working to implement this, and there are reasons to think it works. Furthermore, it’s not like there isn’t an immediate payoff for the kids. Think about the feelings of community, support, and safety you want to experience in the context of the internet, and then think about how much the average 7th grader wishes their school experience had those same virtues. Toxic behavior is fueled by feelings of isolation, insecurity, and resentment. Those aren’t enjoyable feelings for the person dealing out the trolling and abuse either — it’s really a question of helping people get to experience feeling appreciated and connected.

35. Now that I’m a certified greybeard in my mid-40s, I find myself NOT visiting places on the internet where I used to spend a lot of time visiting – and contributing. And aggressively curating the parts I do still visit to limit asshat exposure. This, of course, has its own consequences in that I have to do more work to learn the info I came to the ‘net to learn in the first place, and I may be very late to the party on something awesome that got announced in a place I no longer go without a specific reason.

    But it’s done wonders for my blood pressure.

    The only thing I can do is be me, and what’s more, try to be the best me I can. That means being respectful of other humans, even if I disagree with what they’re saying or doing. It also means calling out bad behavior (read: NOT being respectful of other humans, in whatever form it takes) for what it is, even if it draws fire upon myself. But (and this is something I regularly fail at doing) even that needs to be done respectfully. I regularly fail at that part because I also think respect needs to be earned, and when I haven’t seen any earning-type-behavior in someone, it’s hard to extrapolate that to consider they might do something worthy of respect that I just don’t know about.

    But I try to be respectful anyway, because I want to be better than my default settings.

    Maybe “the kids” will see that example and learn from it. Maybe they won’t. But I can’t let asshats of any age bracket drag me down to their level. I owe it to myself — and to them — to rise above the muck zone.

36. I was just talking to a friend about how I am starting to feel like it’s increasingly difficult to filter out the negative. No matter how well you manage your reddit subs and ignore the front page, etc, I’ve seen horrible things land in threads about camping, brewing, and such… It’s getting to be where I feel dirty at the end of the day.

37. I’m a ‘let it begin with me’ kind of guy. So I let my kid ride his bike to school. I let my kid play outside, after dark. I let my kid go to friends’ homes, on the other side of town, alone. I’m changing the world by not being afraid of it, and teaching my kid that the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.

38. I think one thing to consider is that the nice kids may be doing other things than arguing the the dark corners of the Internet. Most kids around me are getting summer jobs. But, then again, I live in the country, and there’s always a ton of ways to keep busy and make money in the summer. Maybe it’s different in other parts of the country, and the Internet lets you be a dickbag to people all over the world…

39. Sorry to say that “to interact with people online” is where you have set yourself up. It is “persona” and it’s never the genuine article, tho I wish it was.

40. I’m sure there’s a great infograph out there which shows the basics of a small group, and everyone’s friendly to each other, but then the more it grows the more trolls become part of a group.

    I wish to think it’s just kids, but frankly the social media group I watch most as my “this is a constant derailed freight train” guilty pleasure is a craft beer enthusiast group. It’s also on facebook, so it’s not like anyones anon…. But that being said, kids are generally worse, and whenever I want to hear the worst of the world, I log onto a free2play game like smite…

    I think this day in age, it’s best to have understanding that the people who make comments online, for the most part, are just armchair activists. They don’t actually believe what they say, the insults they hurl nor do they realize the things they say can be taken seriously, just like the sort of misunderstandings you get when you text someone vs call someone or talk in person.

41. Fark.com has two saving graces: ignore and ignore replies to ignored.
    By setting those options, and ignoring the most egregious trolls, you can get rid of a huge percent of vitriol.

    For postings that I am not certain of, I flag the user as favorite, and color code them as dark grey. With a comment “troll”, “ignore next time”, etc. The next time I read something absurd from them, welcome to the ignore list.

    This really cuts down on most of the nuts.

    ps
    welcome to middle age. Get off my lawn.

42. Children were always like that.
    Truth. I can remember getting into flame wars on Plato 35 years ago.

    My guess is that the percentage hasnt changed, just the exposure.
    In the dark ages, you would have to go outside to find children and their vitriol, now they come into your house via your computer.

43. Although many of us can’t change the whole world, we can make the part we interact with much better which I think you have already done. For example, go watch the commentary on the VERY last Eureka episode, the Series Finale. The Writers and Producers talk about how great it was to work with you and Felicia Day. Not just once but like 3/4 times they brought up how great it was to work with you and your friend Felicia. I didn’t ever recognize you with a beard the first time I was watching Eureka (and in fact stopped watching sometime around Season 4 before Felicia showed up).

    Not saying you need any reassurance of how you conduct yourself, but the commentary shows the positive energy you are able to project to others. That should be an example to all others.

44. You indeed have a way with words Wil and now I do understand why you don’t join circles . Someone was making fun of me because I write you and they told me you are too ego to talk to the likes of me. Laughter. My words not theirs. Am trying not to cuss. In the first place I didn’t expect you to write back. In the second place I am an old woman and I know a few things about the planet Earth and mankind. Every once in a while I get a message from someone trying to piss in my pond, but so far there have only been a couple and they ran for cover. If you ever do leave the neighborhood I shall miss your wit, and knowledge, and your stories, and your family. You have given this old woman something to laugh about more than once. Quite a few things to think about, and some new interests to add to my old. Bless you and your family Mr. Wil Wheaton. I love you all. Karen E.H. Naylor

45. Don’t leave the Webderverse, Wil!!!! I like your blog…been a reader of your writing most of my adult life (kind of scary, actually). I look forward to checking in each week to see what’s new (and to watch TableTop, of course!). I’d be sad if you left because of trolls. I dunno, maybe you should only read your commenters on here, because as far as I can tell, gosh darnit, you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and people like you.

46. Hi long time reader and lurker, first time commenter.

    I have been using the internet for 20 years now, one of the lucky few to have access back in 1995, because of my parents profession. My mum signed me up to a Star Trek email newsletter, and from there I found fan sites, forums and chat rooms. However they were all related to the one topic – Star Trek. (Which had an impact on my own upbringing I always saw everyone as human first and foremost, and celebrated the differences – the key lesson I took from that show, and something that I think a lot of younger people are missing.)

    When the ‘social’ internet came about I joined things like My Space, Facebook etc quite late and only after pressure from my real world friends as that’s where they would arrange meet ups etc. I still dipped in and out of message boards that were dedicated to particular subjects, like Trek, Stargate, Dreamstone. Obviously these shows tend to attract a certain type of fan and therefore there were never any issues with people, and there were passionate moderators for when people’s messages became unreasonable.

    Today there are collections of topics and communities on sites like Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter where everyone has a voice, but they are not all there for the love of one topic or another. I think that has not created a social space, but fractured it. Having a walled garden is not the answer of course, but I do think that without a sense of direction or purpose you can encounter the worst of human nature.

    People now have an ability to create screen names that don’t trace back to their offline life. (That they did before of course, but now multiple e-mail accounts and therefore internet persona’s are easier to get than they used to be.) Having a throw away identity does seem to give some people the excuse to act abhorrently towards others.

    More importantly anyone can now get online. I used to go online to find like minded others and encountered many very nice people, always a shy one as a child so my interactions were limited I admit, and I did come across some unpleasant areas of the chatrooms etc. However I was escaping the horrible people that surrounded me at school and other areas of my life. They didn’t go online, that was for geeks and nerds, now they are all online, the neighbourhoods you used to avoid for fear of persecution or safety are now with us online in the same spaces, and I think that is sometimes too easy to forget.

    The internet has become a giant melting pot of opinion and voices, a lot of which are ones that used to just shout into the wind as people physically don’t pay them attention and they have actual consequence to their vile speech in the real world, but those consequences do not exist online.

    I don’t know what the answer is though, as you can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) police the internet, there would possible place many people on the losing side of that with corrupt governments abusing it.

    I guess in my quick lunch time ramble here I am just trying to add another voice to the mix that understands where you are coming from Wil, and want to say thank you for all your contributions to the internet for which I enjoy. That and if it helps remember that for each vile person you encounter on social media there are several kind, decent and nice people out there thinking the best of you. The latter of which just need to be more vocal with the kind words to even out the balance. 🙂

47. I couldn’t agree with you more Wil. I’ve recently found myself tooling together a script to remove everything I’ve ever put on Facebook because I keep finding people who feel everything I’ve ever posted to be the source of all evil in their worlds.

    My desire to be a part of the online community has begun to fade, but it occurs to me that should we all leave then they will take over.

    I don’t think I want an internet where YouTube comments are considered insightful and hive-mind mentality attacks are the norm.

    Maybe we have to stay, if for no other reason than to be the example.

    Or maybe we go dickwagon stomping.

48. As a high school teacher, I see teenagers every day. I see them interacting in the hallways, I listen to them talking about their friends during study hall, and I hear a lot of different things just walking around the school building.

    The kids are going to be alright.

    First of all, a lot of their interpersonal dialogue is taking place in Snapchat and text messaging. The kids posting in online communities are usually seeking attention and recognition from strangers, and that usually provokes more extreme statements.

    Secondly, keep in mind that their starting point for basic humanity is better than those of our generations. It wasn’t until the mid-nineties that a majority of Americans were okay with interracial marriage, and now something like eighty percent of people under thirty-five are for gay marriage. My students were dumbfounded by that first factoid, by the way.

    Thirdly, I don’t think we’re seeing an influx of new trolls with the beginning of summer break; I think that the existing trolls have more time on their hands and are posting more often. You’re not seeing the kid who does volunteer work all year, the kid who holds down a summer job, the kid who’s coaching at a youth soccer camp – you’re probably seeing the same kid who was trolling in May, but now he’s devoting the time he used to spend on homework to screaming for attention.

    Fourthly, teenagers have been insensitive assholes for pretty much all of recorded history.

    As an age group, they have trouble with empathy because the necessary brain circuits have not yet emerged. Asking a sixteen year-old kid to be consistently thoughtful and empathic is like asking a normal-sized human to dunk a basketball on an NBA rim – some of them might be able to do it unassisted, sure, but most are going to struggle and need help to not make a complete mess of things.

    But here’s the thing – most of them will grow out of it.

    I had a really good conversation with my juniors last week about Caitlyn Jenner, transgender issues, and why it matters that she is out. And they listened. (I was throwing them a party for having logged the most classes where they had spoken only in French, so it was not a regular class.) And they also listened respectfully to one of their gender-fluid classmates. I didn’t even know what gender-fluid meant when I was their age. Admittedly, they don’t fully know either, but they were willing to listen and learn, and they were accepting of their classmate.

    Don’t give up, Wil.

    The kids are going to be alright.

49. I’ve really been thinking a lot about this ever since you posted this, and I can’t decide how I feel. I’m only 26, only ten years or so removed from the age a lot of people are at on the internet who are acting shitty, and…I feel like I never acted quite that shitty as a kid. I admit, I thrived on drama, so while I didn’t deliberately troll people by saying things I knew were awful just to get a rise out of them, I did try to be a little more provocative than necessary when stating what I did believe. I grew out of it, and hopefully these other kids will too.

    Still, I often look at the state of the world–online and otherwise–and wonder if it’s worth putting compassion out into the world when THIS is how the world responds. When I think that way, I try to remind myself of all the people pushing back AGAINST the dickbaggery. When people are being shitty, at least when I see it, there are a fair number of people going, “Hey, how you’re treating people isn’t okay and you need to stop.” Those are the people I try to put my focus on and my faith in.

50. Being a high school teacher, I concur that this is an epidemic, possibly pandemic problem. Students, in my time, would make snide remarks when no one was around, but since we had no veil to hide behind, we were keep in social check by peers. Now that we have the “Wizard of Oz” veil, we wear this cloak of immunity with no one really able to “check” our moral compasses.

    Although teachers can have a modicum of influence in the classroom, parents, in most cases, are responsible to monitor and teach their children social Internet values. But, many parents have no idea what their children do on-line–nor do they care. Parents that do not care, rely a very dark message to their children–if no one cares about me and my feelings, then why should I care about anyone else’s.

    I am by no means a touchy-feely, uber-sensitive male. In fact, I grew up in a time when you learned to have “thick-skin” to deal with it–I just realize humans became social to survive and if we begin to unravel our social networks, we will once again return from that which we came–primal animals.

    As in the book “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” the last part of the book entitled Fiat Votuntas Tua, we return to from that which we started–Sic transit mundus.

    So is there a panacea? But there is a domino effect if we continue to start at home and guide our children rather than let the Internet do it.

Comments are closed.