This might just be cope about seeing crazy stuff on reels or whatever, but I think its kinda interesting so ill share.
I don’t think its worth taking people on the internet too seriously because that’s not them. This isn’t a novel idea but I found a way of putting it that I really like.
Like a Greek shade, an online account/ persona is a shade of the person behind the screen. I think shade works well even without the Greek connotation. Like how a shade of a color sounds like a lighter, translucent, pale version of a color. Like painting a red stroke in water color makes a shade of red. Or even a darker, more shadowish, concentrate of a color. Its not the actual color, but it has something of it.
But the Greek shade works since its so analgous to the actual case. An online persona is just a derivative, a summary, a shorthand of the actual person. They don’t have what makes the person, the memory, tendencies, emotions, or experience. They are just a pale reflection or memory at most.
Because real life has a physicality to it. Theres a dimension of time as well. Both of these things matter when interacting with a person, and can leave a person totally unrecognizable if theyre changed. And without these things, youre dealing with a synthetic copy of a person. A cliff notes version.
A big problem though is that enough time spent chronically online can leave persons main personality as the online shade of themselves. Meaning, the things important and integral to them are virtual things. Fake things that are not tangible and actively affecting the persons life. Their personality gets based off of a fantasy land.
Im not trying to say to dehumanize every person that disagrees with you online because it’s the screen talking and not a person, but just remember that person probably has a persona that theyre using. And it might not be totally thought out and thoroughly developing ideas like a real person would.
My main argument is exemplified best in a Mike Tyson quote. “Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it”.
Most people don’t have the personality to disrespect someone to their face, even in an argument. Theres a real physical consequence of being punched in the face looming in the air. But the internet allows some depersonalization for people to do so anyways, since theyre not in front of anyone to get punched (the online shade). But when people keep up the tough guy routine on the internet long enough they buy into the lie themselves, and they end up thinking theyre actually tough. They start acting like that in real life but they are NOT about that life and they get rekt(main personality becomes the online shade personality).
So if you see some crazy ragebait or propaganda meant to convince you of a far wing ideology, this might just be someones shade having their fun. Or even worse it might be someone who bought their own lie. Just take a breath and think if its actually a real thing that affects your life, and so worth spending energy on.