Things What I Think # 9 – Death Threats
I can’t seem to be able to read a single days worth of news without seeing at least one person from the public eye talking about receiving death threats. Now, it’s not nice to receive any ill will in the recorded manner of writing, be it a handwritten note, and email, a tweet, a Facebook post or one of those Edward Nigma-esque collages made from letters clipped from the newspaper to preserve the authors anonymity1. My problem is that the rhetorical potency of the term “death threat” is far too great to make it an appropriate description of 90% of the correspondences that end up being labeled as such. This leaves the term free to be used to generate undue sympathy and attention for those who receive them – often for the legitimately contentious and abhorrent things they say – while simultaneously devaluing the size the legitimate 10% that remain. More often than not, those who receive them and express an earnest concern for their safety are either simply lying for the easy, strategic generation of support it affords them for whatever reason, or are fusty old idiots who don’t understand the nature of internet anonymity.
1. Admittedly if I received one of the latter, I would feel an edge of genuine concern because that shit is extra loopy and requires a measure of commitment to make.
In the pre-internet days, the most analogous act to a piece of online abuse that I can think of is “road-rage”. It’s fairly shocking the things people will spit from the comfort of their wheeled, windowed, metal boxes, in reaction to the slightest piece of poor automotive etiquette. Their fellow man is often reduced to nothing more than a sentient obstacle in the path of their hum-drum daily goals, goals that are only negligently impeded by the presence of incompetent motorists, and represent perhaps only a 3-5 minute deficit in their travel time. My father for instance, a by and large genial man with those who are strangers to him, becomes a fuming, rabid animal who uses “cunt” as a piece of punctuation when confronted with a driver whose only real sin is not facilitating his frankly aggressive driving habits. Even more bizarre, when sitting in my brothers passenger seat I’ve witnessed him have a full-on bout of vitriol directed at the actual sun which was in his eyes at the time, bashing a raised middle finger against the part of the wind-shield through which it was shining. However, neither would never dream of flagging the subject of his animosity down to the hard shoulder that they might both exit their cars to externalise their rage into a violent altercation of some kind2. Barely anyone does, because barely anyone actually wants to. In fact, in the UK, the crowned “world leader” in road rage incidents, there were only 601 incidents of road-rage significant enough to be recorded – so presumably ones severe enough that one or other of those involved called the police – in 2014. Only 19% of these lead somewhere physical and barely any resulted in actual murder. A seven year study in the US – the land of freedom and firearms – attributed road rage to only 200 actual killings. It’s too many, no doubt – any violence and killing it too much if you ask me! – but considering how many cars are actually on the roads, and the anecdotal fact to which we can all attest, that most motorists get incredibly antsy behind the wheel at one time or another, this is barely any statistically speaking.
2. Not that my brother could have; aside from the impossibility of him doing so, I can see but one winner in the bout of him vs. a massive, celestial ball of flaming gas.
It seems to me that the feeling of wild hatred that tends to present when someone is behind the wheel, rather than being a proportional response to the poor road-bound behaviour of others, is an outlet for the general angsts that plague almost all contemporary humans. The stresses of unfulfilling jobs that yield too little money, the inability to meet the absurdly high standards of living presented to us to keep us buying crap we don’t really need, the powerlessness felt in the wake of ineffective governance and broken democracy in general, and the broader inkling of existential insignificance.
Why does this come out in the car? The same reason it comes out on Twitter. The so-called shield of anonymity. Sure people come up with justifications to convince both themselves and those around them that their enragement is an apt response (e.g. the risks that dangerous driving poses their personal safety and that of their family), but there’s a faulty logic a play here, particularly when you consider that the more rageful drivers have also been found to be more lax about wearing a seatbelt and are more likely to drive under the influence. Add that to the obvious fact that allowing yourself to become enraged at one unsafe driver while behind the wheel is going to do nothing more than add yet another one to the mix and one can conclude that safety isn’t practically all that much of a concern. It’s far more about a build up of steam that needs the release valve opening every now and then.
Internet culture often represents another, basically anonymous release valve being opened. A Twitter death threat is, almost unanimously, hot – if undeniably filthy – air. Taking them seriously imbues them with a status and an influence they neither actually have nor deserve. It is simply a weak, powerless, disaffected individual lashing out for want of a productive outlet or any measure of general contentedness. They may feel like whatever issue, or whatever public figure has aroused their ire is fully deserving of it, but the fact is that if they were happy or enlightened people it wouldn’t even occur to them behave in such a way. Alternatively, it is just your garden-variety troll who gets his or her power-kicks from heinously anti-social conduct online, but the behaviour is usually engaged in for much the same reason. The truly dangerous, truly threatening individuals, those likely to attempt a real act of violence, do not announce their intent for all to see, they simply turn up at their targets doorstep with an illegally purchased gun or a kitchen knife and do the deed. I think if anything can be said for certain about those who dish out public, online threats of harm to another person, it’s that they are almost entirely unlikely to actually do it.
Death threat then, becomes something of a redundant term. If it’s all air, then there’s no real threat, and if there’s no real threat, it’s just “death-trolling”. And as all competent, conscientious users of the net know, you do not feed the trolls! Yet day after day there are news stories in which politicians and celebrities claim to feel a very salient threat to their personal safety due to what the internet says at them. Whether they are being truthful or simply melodramatic is basically irrelevant, by boohooing about these “death-trolls” to the BBC, they are providing them with a veritable 12 course Roman banquet of validation, the desired fruit of their perverse labours. That their empty words, written from the safety of their laptop3, words that they would never in a million years have the wherewithal to act upon, can actually inspire real fear? That is their bread and butter; it’s what they live for! I’ll reiterate: to not see this you would have to either accidentally ignorant due to naivety, or purposefully ignorant to serve some anterior motive such as the generation of sympathy or support. Meanwhile, the actual solution completely passes them by. A confident, inward “who gives two shits!?” manifesting in complete neutrality – or even pity – towards online death-threateners, is the only obvious solution.
3. Or, in the case of the really unhinged, a computer at the public library.
When there’s such a huge number people in the world, there’s bound to be a group who hates your guts, and there’s bound to be a proportion of them that want to let you know, in no uncertain terms. It’s always been this way, the only difference now is that people have a direct conduit to what they see as the subject of their antipathy sitting in their pocket. What used to be simple bile-spitting contests over a pub table are now delivered direct to the perceived trigger of said bile. But the real danger is just as absent as it always has been, in fact I’d argue more so. If a feeling of antipathy bounces around a small group of mutually encouraging, universally incensed people, a feedback loop will occur causing the antipathy to grow and eventually fester. And an intensely gangrenous feeling of antipathy, one in dire need of a kind of amputation, will always be more likely to lead a person to act out; it’s that very idea that revolutions are built upon! At least now, the moment the urge to harm someone for whatever vaguely justified reason arises, it comes out as a piece of online abuse metaphorically equivalent to the petulant arm flailings of a freshly grounded adolescent and is equally unthreatening. If it does threaten you, first get some perspective, then use that perspective to get over yourself, then, if you must respond at all, do so with either humorous condescension or pity at their, honestly, cute outbursts. Ideally, go for complete lack of engagement with it and focus your energy on whatever it is that you were doing already, or on any of the other numerous, far more upsetting issues that surround all of us and in fact create the social environment where people feel both the desire and the inclination to take to the internet with such feelings. Anything else would be counter productive.