YOU should have known by now that the web is proliferated by angry men and women. If you are fueled by Dopamine all the time and you love the Internet, the negative vibration from tweets and posts on every issue you can think of is palpable. Most of them are coming from millenials like me whose tweets would be about seeking answers and hope that the sky would not fall on us one of these days.
I lost count on the issues this country has faced this month. From Alex Tizon’s troubling yet compelling article “My Family’s Slave” to the Maute group’s surprise siege of Marawi City and the subsequent Martial Law declaration for Mindanao and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus (that can be tackled in another column).
After all these, you may want to go on hiatus from social media. People are waging war against each other through different opinions, protesting the many loopholes of the government, and making noise about the culture of inequality despite us now being in the 21st century.
The older men and women stay away from “keyboard fighting” and rock on their chair instead. They prefer to keep quiet and succumb to the information on TV. Their children are the angry ones; the ones who write their pieces and ask questions all the time. You cannot give them a mere “yes” or a “no,” your answer should always come with a reasonable explanation. They are the anti-social ones that gnash their teeth on pressing issues. They prefer to the read the paper, digest information from there, and give their two cents.
The ability to be indignant is a blessing in disguise. There have been bills passed because of persistent [concerned] citizens who exercise their rights to democracy. Awareness has increased—a bomb that exploded in Manchester during Ariana Grande’s concert immediately came to our feeds a few seconds after the mishap. Victims caught in this absurd war with Maute – the Isis wannabes – got help and donations a day after the tragedy, thanks to the angry mob whose virtual identities are concealed with their smiling profile pictures.
Unfortunately, there is also a price to pay for being angry. An angry one can become a troll that threatens the genuine kindness of the angry mob. The troll has a different agenda and a different level of “empathy.” He is driven with madness, and got caught up with the lopsided world by throwing invalid arguments in one of your online discourses, sharing fake news by believing that online blogs with bad designs is the best source for the morning news to pair his cup of coffee. The angry mob does not have the ability to scrutinize the troll, or would have the time to vilify his interests in the online world. As far as I know, they dismiss him in the comment box since he has no capacity to think and empathize. He should stay uninvited all the time.
With how things are going, we are not sure if we will all come out of this alive. The least we can do is be angry.
Stay angry.