My home state is no stranger to hate. My college was in one of the last counties in the United States to be integrated. Robert F. Kennedy said of it:
We may observe with much sadness and irony that, outside of Africa, south of the Sahara, where education is still a difficult challenge, the only places on earth known not to provide free public education are Communist China, North Vietnam, Sarawak, Singapore, British Honduras—and Prince Edward County, Virginia.
The irony lingers. The American South, prominently known for its hospitality and homespun wisdom, is still a hotbed of disregard for anyone who steps out of line.
Well, in another twist of irony, religious conservatives in Virginia proved that they're still a few steps behind. Understandably, those in Richmond's gay community (or any rational Virginian) were outraged over a billboard that proclaims, "nobody is born gay."
With photos of what appear to be a pair of twins, the billboard implies that twin studies have proven that sexual orientation is a choice, and not a matter of genetic makeup. But the organization behind the billboard, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (could they not thing of anything original?) didn't do their research before - who I assume was an ex-gay scouring the internet for "hot men" - selected a stock photo of Kyle Roux, who's not a twin and, in fact, gay.
I'm starting to think that some people are born stupid too. But that stupidity only proves why our Freedom of Speech is important for everyone, even the haters. Motorists passing this absurd proclamation aren't being recruited by PFOX, they're shaking their heads and sympathizing with a growing acceptance of the LGBT community, likely asking themselves, "Even if it is a choice, who the **** cares?"
Around the world for the past twenty years, the internet has proven itself humanity's biggest frenemy, a word probably invented by the internet. It allows us to connect with forgotten friends, distant relatives, and spend our days looking at pictures of kittens.
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| My Internet |
Unfortunately, it also enables the trolls that lurk beneath seemingly normal people to crawl out from under the bridges of our subconscious. And worse than those who attempt to incite World War III beneath YouTube videos are the convert trolls who once new better.
Capitalizing on viral videos, purported "studies," and BuzzFeed listicles, the mainstream press fans the flames of our baser ire until the most mundane of grievances become campaigns, or worse: the prejudice this nation has been desperately trying to tackle is exploited, maneuvered, and strategically directed to the point of discourse that sells advertisements.
Journalism has always been vaguely jaundice. But on the worldwide web, tabloid ethics have been buried beneath subjective data and ten cent words. The media doesn't want to report on our justified outrage, they want our outrage to be unjustified. News is boring. Riots are juicy. And readers keep falling for it.
Rob Bliss Creative's viral video, "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman" alleges that an actress received more than a hundred "offensive" comments that were secretly recorded. Some comments were what one would unfortunately expect: catcalls, and some truly creepy encounters. But if you objectively look at the video, you'll realize that the most offensive comments are buried under comments like "How are the this morning?" and "Have a nice day." The short video doesn't include all one hundred comments, so what was left on the cutting room floor?
Objectivity.
Rob Bliss Creative even bills itself as a "Viral Video Marketing Agency." Their business model is hype, and they succeeded in getting the video featured in the mainstream media around the world, none of which addressed the subjectivity of the so-called experiment.
Further down the rabbit hole into absurdity, social media including Tumblr and user content listicles prompted New York to address the behavior of "manspreading." Manspreading, if our frenemy the internet is to be believed, is an epidemic of men taking up too much room on subway trains. Granted, some of the photographs are absurd, some even comical.
But again, what's lost is any objectivity in a global ocean of photographs hand selected from hundreds of subways and millions of passengers.
What both instances inadvertently point to - if reason or logic is to be considered - is New York's, and even the greater world's, increasing resistance to interact on any real level.
Thank you, internet.
When did "good morning" become a threat? When did people become afraid to ask, "Hey, dick hole, can you move your legs?" And when did New Yorkers expect New Yorkers to be courteous?
But what's worse than the internet's complete lack of objectivity, or the fact that it duped us into believing that the Men of New York are unilateral pigs, is that both campaigns have painted women as passive nags too timid to speak without the comfort of a blog. In an attempt to expose double standards, these campaigns accidentally created new ones that shouldn't exist.
The trend in the media's exploitation of peoples' anxieties treads into even more dangerous territories. In the United States, right now, that would be in Ferguson, MO and the protests taking place around the country. Like the George Zimmerman trial in Florida, Ferguson was supposed to be the media's next golden ticket. A case that would define racism in America. But when it largely flopped and proved not to be so legally cut and dry, the media made it black and white.
In the end, the media got what it wanted. A complete train wreck.
A nation of racial harmony doesn't get clicks and sell subscriptions. For all the bitching and moaning we do about partisan bias in the press, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox want the exact same thing: to pit us against each other until we give them a story with no roof.
The trifecta of yellow journalism - CNN, MSNBC, and Fox - and the bilge wanter they stew in - BuzzFeed and HuffingtonPost.com - don't profit on news, they profit on the chaos that they orchestrate. When "manspreading" finds headlines above murder, rape, Gaza, and homeless veterans, we need to step back and take things into perspective, and maybe ask ourselves if it's time for the mainstream media to go the way of the printing press.
It might be tough to accept, but people are not as bad as our frenemy the internet says we are. Why else would there be so many pictures of cats?
