Can the internet’s toxicity problem ever be fixed?
Growing up catholic, the idea of Original Sin and guilt is something that has long been built into my psyche. Adding to that, spending the first 18 (or so) years of my life in the north east built in a sense of realism (or pessimism) and an expectation that eventually everything goes wrong.
Your football team will throw away a lead with just a few minutes to go, the steelworks will close down and the weather will be miserable in December.
These are things that are baked in early – added to the recipe in the mixing stage if you will – and become an essential part of who I am as a person.
I mention this not for the sake of sounding profound, but because I have been wondering recently when toxicity became an eternal bedfellow of the internet.
In the Catholic Church it is believed that because Adam and Eve give in to temptation and ate the forbidden fruit all subsequent humans are born as sinful with a tainted nature.
So I want to know – what was the internet’s equivalent of Original Sin?
What caused the internet to become a place so completely tainted by anger and toxicity that it has become its defining feature?
Obviously this is a question without an answer, there is no single point that you can pinpoint and go ‘a-ha!’
But if I was to hazard a guess it probably started in the early forums and message boards in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
Social media has obviously accelerated that toxicity to unprecedented levels and made it ubiquitous every time you open up your chosen apps.
Just look at the reaction to the tragic death of 27 asylum seekers in the Channel – people responding to stories with laughing face emoji.
It is a cold and utterly heartless reaction.
Or spend five minutes looking through the comment section in our Breaking News Facebook group – and you will find anger and arguments galore.
It is starting to feel that every part of the internet is so tainted by toxicity that it can never truly be exorcised.