Clarified and Enlightened Column on Internet Mobs: Scared of a Crap Storm? For free!

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Everyone is afraid of shitty storms.

By “everyone” I mean all those whose life involves minimal exposure: politicians, journalists, writers, teachers, managers, entrepreneurs. And those who are afraid act fearfully. The speeches of those potentially affected by this shitty storm are getting more polished, the press releases are getting more confusing, the message content is getting more and more empty. In the age of social media, there is more communication than ever before, but at the same time, communication has become more meaningless than ever.

Crap Storm is always one post away. Every gesture, every facial movement, every utterance of a word, every recording made by a person can be photographed, filmed or otherwise recorded. What can be written down can be published. What can be published can be criticized, commented on, monitored. And what you can follow attracts the academically educated Internet crowd.

A shit storm has a cruelly threatening effect on a person: an endless stream of insulting criticism pours on him. It is aimed not at some content, but at a person, more precisely: at his reputation. A person becomes a non-human at the click of a mouse. She is scolded, denigrated, isolated. Their social existence is at stake, and with it their very existence. In her imagination, she suffers from social death. Who else will like it? Who else will take them? Who else will talk to her?

Shitstorm is bullying happening in front of everyone. Anyone who rushes to the aid of the person being bullied also becomes the second target of the shit storm. The crowd gets drunk on itself and becomes more and more angry, the offended become quieter and at some point fall silent. If a shit storm breaks out somewhere on social media, the classic media is guaranteed to pick it up – they promise valuable attention for free. The very fact of its existence already guarantees its relevance from the point of view of the attention economy. So desperately thought, but so it is.

What are we learning? A person, even supposedly enlightened and digital, is a Horde creature. The crowd is alive, as is the voyeurism.

The good news is that it’s those who get caught in the shitstorm for the first time that suffer. But the one who survives the second suffers only half, and by the third he understands that the grandmother was right: they don’t eat anything as hot as they cook it. Shitty storms come and go. This must be honestly earned. They prove that you live and breathe!

René Scheuil is a philosopher and director of the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy (IWP) in Lucerne. He writes to Blick every second Monday.

Source: Blick