Just watched a movie called Guns Akimbo starring Daniel Radcliffe. Without too much spoilers, Daniel’s character, Miles is an internet troll who ends up trolling a real life death-match stream called Skizm. When he gets a message from Skizm to stop his trolling, he doesn’t take their threats seriously. As a result he finds himself as the unwilling next contestant on the show – having guns painfully bolted onto his hands.
With gratuitous amounts of violence and gore coupled with outrageous hilarity, there’s some commentary to be made about the widespread lack of empathy on the internet.
Miles got himself into his predicament in the first place due to his online trolling. In the opening scenes, he’s shown as a pathetic dude who is bullied by his jerk boss. He does nothing to defend himself in person. When he gets home, Miles uses the anonymity of the internet to spread his own misery. He hides behind his screen to gain satisfaction by hate-mongering online.
But when Miles is first confronted by Skizm’s thugs in person, he immediately and profusely apologies for his behavior. And as he hobbles through the rest of the film, he pleads for help from the cameras. We see the viewer’s reactions and comments to be extremely cruel, even showing antipathy to his situation.
The viewers of Skizm, as well as a large member of today’s society, are conditioned to treat what they see on the internet as not real. It is easy to not empathize with some stranger who’s story is only seen through a heavy filter. And then add on anonymity and no accountability it’s just much easier to tell others online to piss off. Who cares about these internet “people’s” misery? After all, if we have to care about some stranger, we’d feel bad.
Now that we know why bullying and trolling happens, tomorrow, I’ll talk about WHY it happens.