How We Have A Conversation on the Internet
Because name-calling and passive-aggressiveness aren’t effective communication tools.
Over the past week, the Internet has blown up over negative comments towards Disney’s latest nostalgia cash-grab, The Little Mermaid. This is nothing new. However, I’ve noticed that this toxicity has spread towards Medium as well, how people resorted to one-sided name-calling and gatekeeping in such a passive-aggressive way it leaves no room for the other side they’re attacking to have any proper conversation. I used to consider Medium as a more civilized platform than that, but clearly, I was mistaken.
A conversation goes both ways, folks. I welcome any civilized comments asking me in further details (beyond what I’ve already written in my last article) why I feel the way I do about The Little Mermaid’s race-swapping, assuming you don’t immediately cast personal attacks against me and you’re patient enough to really listen to what I have to say before responding. Unfortunately, the Internet has no room for patience, myself included. Yes, even myself have become influenced by this culture we have on the Internet where the only response is to shout as loud and as aggressively as you can with no room for response, all the while asserting your personal opinions as facts and calling everyone else a bigot or a troll.
Not all who questioned the race-swapping of The Little Mermaid are racists. If you bothered to listen like women keep telling men to, you might have noticed. While racists and sexists clearly exist — I mean, I was patronized by “the other side” not just as a Chinese, but as a man even though I did nothing wrong — not everyone is a bigot just waiting for the right opportunity to belittle someone from another race or gender.
But no, the only language people seem to understand on many social media platforms — including Medium, it seems — is personal attacks, especially the cesspool that is Twitter. You can’t make an opinion there without getting patronized or verbally humiliated 8 out of 10 times, even if your opinion has logical basis to it. It’s as if people’s solution to their idea of “racism” and “sexism” is to just block and mute all of them without understanding or even educating the other side. That’s not how a conversation works, my friends.
Honestly, this shouldn’t surprise me because the Internet has always been this way. But I feel like I needed to speak out because the narrative on Medium, a platform of which its community I used to respect, is being turned into a one-sided echo chamber where everyone just acts as yes men without understanding each other as people. The worst part is that we’re arguing over a stupid cartoon remake made by a soulless corporation that doesn’t care about us. What a joke that is.
I’m sure in the coming months up till the movie remake’s release, people will keep bickering among themselves and upholding their own stance without listening to the other side. Again, I welcome anyone who disagrees with my take as long as you’re willing to have a friendly chat where we don’t attack each other over our views. But that’s unlikely to happen, which is why I didn’t bother leaving comments in other people’s Medium articles in fear of being attacked — I just don’t need that kind of stress in my life full of anxiety. Writing this article is my way of minimizing the amount of stress that exists in my life while also freely expressing myself and speaking my mind.
Anyway, do whatever you want with your life, just don’t attack other people for it.
