Article I wrote. Had to scrap it. What I had written is below. EDIT: Formatting pretty much restored. Lemme know if anything needs to be reformatted…
There’s a fallibility in the way we argue. Informed discussion can lead us to brilliant epiphanies and at the same time painful truths that if not for debate, we wouldn’t see fit to confront. But it can bring us to a place that we regret irrevocably, and unearth our basest, most vicious tendencies to those around us. When you open discussion, you also open the realm of subjectivity, and not a lot of people understand that opinions are always a very relative concept. On the internet it is “Good vs. Evil” and my opinion is Superman while yours is Brainiac. You blew up Krypton. You’re like Robot Hitler. And on the other side of the coin I’m sure the people you accuse see you the same way.
You can’t get anywhere when everybody is Robot Hitler.
I write this, realizing that I have been guilty of it as well. There are things I don’t regret saying, and opinions I don’t regret having— but my ability to discuss them feels challenging. There’s a very different set of tones you have to take when writing into whatever form of media you choose to filter your words in. Here, I feel the need to explore, inform and conclude. I’m trying to be verbose and very deductive in the way I form my ideas. In real life I’m sarcastic and light. Most of my speech is colloquialism mixed with occasional slang. On a forum where my debate is worldwide, I’m angry. I’m smart, I know it, and my opinions come from my “wealth” of experience and years—as well as my cracker jack intuition, and if you can’t see that well then you’re some kind of idiot aren’t you?
You can see where this is going.
The latter, I can’t possibly understand. There is that heat of the moment, where I look at what I’ve written and crack a smirk—thinking “Damn! I got him good! Let’s see him crawl out of being compared to an Alligator with down syndrome!” and two hours later I wonder “Really? Down syndrome? Just because he thinks ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ wasn’t as good as ‘The Avengers’?” It’s very easy and convenient for me to say that it’s all just human nature and that I am indeed, fallible. But I know this. I know I’m not perfect. By any means I know I’ll make a load of mistakes I’ll end up telling people about when I’m an old, dusty, and offering them thin mints. That still doesn’t excuse me from losing myself entirely for a moment of sheer violent insanity in text form.
I know what you’re thinking—“Wow, how timely. An article about sheer unrepressed insanity within forum threads.” But it’s so frequent, why not address it now? Granted, there are moments when anger is a strong ally and is necessary for what transpires. But to let it slip and grow into something that controls you is a drastic circumstance you almost always regret—unless your mentality is that of a 15 year old. Then, you’re back on the forums next day—and now people who like Cross Tekken are Robot Hitler.
Why in the FGC are we so quick to embody this trend like clockwork? The forums we frequent and the events we attend seem like night and day. Even after hearing that “On the internet you hide behind a screen” and that “People are immature” I can’t put two and two together because something feels decidedly incongruent. I mentioned that tone takes a sudden change with different environments—yet it’s not only the tone, it’s the personality. The opinions, the acceptance—everything. If I walked into Wednesday Night Fights and said “I’m a Muslim theater major who raps and is trying to learn Ryu”—I’m thrown into the mix to test my luck. If I enter a thread and mention any of those things it’s “Muzzy shithead Eminem wannabe rapper.” How is this conducive to discussion? The age range I find most people to be in who spout this stuff averages in-between 23-32 years old. That’s insane. What adult in 2012 says those kinds of things in a progressive environment and then turns around claims to have an open mind?
But then we get to “opinion.” This is “my opinion” so whatever I say is valid, right? I have the right to say whatever I want, the first amendment—so deal. But it’s situational. You see, discussion devolves quickly into absolutes whenever these people present themselves. Suddenly every Republican hates women, and every Blazblue fan is an otaku who doesn’t believe in showers. When problems arise, people are grouped ostentatiously into this hive mentality. Sure, you have an opinion—but if it’s not in the majority you better shut up or die before anyone begins to give a damn. If you do happen to be part of that randomly-selected majority however, congratulations! You can say whatever you want as long as we agree. Even if a few intelligent people realize you’ve gone overboard, the hive will accept you and continue to grow off of your extreme hyperbole, and accept it as casual fact.
“Hey I found out this information.”
“WOW AT THIS INFORMATION, I can’t believe it’s true.”
“Really? Holy crap, I can’t believe that happened.”
“What does this mean?”
“I’ll tell you what this means, It means that we’ve been lied to.”
“You know, the people from where this information comes from always lie to us. I’ve had a feeling in my gut ever since I became a private forum detective three years ago.”
“I agree, first it’s last weeks information NOW THIS WEEKS information.”
“I’m just done. I can’t listen to any more information. I’m out.”
“lol i expected this information. how could u not? i never trusted anybody lolz”
“Pfft, who cares”
“This information is insane. The fact of the matter is that whoever didn’t tell us this information,
and chose to reveal it now, has been almost complicit because he had this information in mind, and didn’t share it. I’m incredibly disheartened and ashamed at all of this. I can’t believe this is could happen. If this is the way it’s going to be, then these people should be punished viciously.”
“I believe the people who gave this information are secretly warlocks.”
“I do as well, we should burn them alive.”
“Are we allowed? Someone do a google search on burning people alive in order to prove they’re warlocks.”
“Don’t you guys think you’re being a little—“
“SHUT UP”
“YEAH SHUT UP YOU”
“HE’S A WARLOCK”
“HE IS?”
“OH MY GOD! I SEE HIS HORNS! HE’S DEFINITELY A WARLOCK!”
“FIND HIS HOUSE!”
“Guys I just—“
“TOO LATE WARLOCK! WE’VE FOUND YOU! NOW STAY PUT WHILE WE GATHER WOOD!”
“Why does this always happen…”
I remember arguing with three people about Ryu changes from Street Fighter IV to Super Street Fighter IV—and they kept referring to my reasoning as being part of the “Ryu Army.” I would learn things from Valle and other prominent members in SoCal—go online and talk, yet within minutes I was labeled as an idiot and a fraud of the “Ryu Army.” Like I was part of a big conspiracy towards changing the game so that only Ryu players would have their day in the sun. Would you like to know what their chief argument was? That because Ryu had a viable anti-air, he deserved to be nerfed to the ground. They wanted all invincibility off Shoryukens gone (which would make the move effectively useless) and EX Tatsu to be -9 on block, which would make it unnecessarily punishable.
Eventually opinion does become hyperbolic, and to call out hyperbole is once again a request for getting verbally stoned to death. Suddenly a bad decision by “Capcom” becomes “…a viciously angry attack on our rights as human beings! They’re trying to exploit us and use us for personal gain!” A strong day one character becomes “WESKER IS EASILY THE BEST IN ULTIMATE MARVEL WITHOUT QUESTION, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US?!” and a bad tournament experience becomes “Who supported this or attended?! They are clearly equivalent to the Tournament Organizers themselves!” There’s no scale. There’s no numbers between 1-10 that represent outrage other than the outliers. Context doesn’t exist.
And if you have the audacity to try and squeeze out some rationality? You’re an accomplice.
All we do with this collectivist hive mentality is fracture relationships and treat outrage like a virus with no cure. The mentality becomes “If we can’t think with reason, yell our reasoning at them and maybe they’ll listen”—and suddenly everyone starts shouting and nobody hears a damn thing. I don’t regret my statements on the forums about what transpired, but I do regret the way I used them. I should have been collected in what I said, and not let myself divulge into my own irrationality. It stands to reason that there has to be a way to have a discussion without people trying to stab each other on the internet a majority of the time, if it’s commonplace in real life.
There are plenty of instances where rational discussion has lead us to many important discoveries. You can’t build a bridge if you all don’t agree on the design. You can’t stay in a relationship unless you have a compromise. And you can’t accomplish anything if your moral compass just solely points in the direction of yourself, because in an environment where things change as rapidly as they do– you soon lose sight of the fact that *you’re not the only person with a vote. *Empathy is what we’ve lost, and we need to regain it. It’s difficult but not exactly hard labor taking the minute to see why someone feels how they do. And it’s not going to kill you to back off that rant where you burn a man with your bully pulpit, in order to deliberate civilly till you foster a sensible conclusion. If Google has taught me anything, every constituency has its base and has always had its partisanship groomed within it since the dawn of civilization– but its only when rationality is pooled that anything gets solved.
There’s that idea that people quote me about how everyone (at least on a subconscious level) is racist, and it’s only the best of us who can see past our own prejudices to accept people for who they are. You have to actively do it in order to be a tolerant, sound human being. But I feel like the internet, and the FGC to some extent, don’t feel that way. I think we feel as if every little whim and instinct that pops into our heads is correct, and they should all be followed to their logical conclusion regardless of who gets hurt. Forgive me, but that sounds a lot more Brainiac-like to me than anything else.
Friggen’ Robot Hitlers.
