I Hate the Internet
Thankfully I can’t post the link to one of the most horrific things I’ve seen in a very long time because it was reported and blocked on Facebook. This Friday, on his way to a sweet sixteen a young man was involved in an accident that cost him his life. His friends and family resorted to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking cites to express their grief and sorrow, support and hope to overcome this tragedy. Reading through all these posts I could almost feel the pain that all these people were experiencing. However, in the midst of all this positivity I stumbled upon maybe one of the meanest pages I’ve ever seen.
There on Facebook, for the whole world to see, grieving family, friends, strangers, appeared a hate page. A page dedicated to mocking this young man, expressing their distaste for his attitude, the way he treated certain people and almost implying that he deserved what he got. I am very well aware that most not everyone is going to like you out there. You might be a really nice person but sometimes, for some reason, you might rub someone the wrong way and they won’t be your biggest fans. I think its normal, it happens, and in most cases, there’s nothing gravely wrong with it. However, there is no way that these things should be expressed after someone has passed away. If they couldn’t say these things when he was alive, there is no reason that they should say it after he died. If they didn’t like him, fine. Be civil. Be respectful. Follow the age old “If you have nothing nice to say don’t say it at all.”
I have no idea why anyone would ever even think of creating such a page. Let alone write the things that they did. Do people no longer have respect for the dead? Bullying kids over the Internet to the point of suicide in some cases isn’t enough for the adolescence of today so they resort to poking fun at someone who isn’t here with us anymore? They couldn’t say these things to him while he was still amongst us but for some reason it’s suddenly okay to say them when he’s dead? Before I got angry, I felt so sorry for his friends and family. Here they are in the midst of horrible loss and now they have to face hundreds of negative comments regarding their loved one. I was speechless to say the least. To this moment I can’t fathom how or why this page was created to begin with. I can’t believe how many people actually went on it to comment and add fuel to the fire. (This is when I started getting angry) It was heartless, rude, disgusting, mean and many other things.
Dozens of people, strangers in many cases responded to this page and expressed my same opinions regarding the situation through Tweets and status updates acquiring 40, 50, 60 likes, favorites, retweets. That was probably the only positive thing that came from this page. Seeing the existence of the page made me just about lose hope for our youth completely but seeing the backlash of strangers raised my spirits a little. I was glad to see that not all of us are heartless, disrespectful idiots hiding behind computer screens magnifying the grief of already distraught i
3 responses so far
This is the lowest of the low. Smearing the name of someone who can’t even fight back against the accusations. All I can say is that every one of the individuals involved in the hate page is both unfathomably cruel and a coward. Even if the deceased did “deserve it,” he’s not the one being hurt by the hateful comments. It’s those who love him who must now deal with his blemished reputation in addition to his death.
Wow. After reading your blog, I completely understand your title and I empathize with you; the Internet can be a really, really bad thing. Obviously, the Internet can be used for either good or bad, but when someone uses the Internet for something as atrocious as this, it can be hard to see the good the Internet can also create. I think you brought up a really good point though – that many times people are cowards and will say something nasty about a person behind his or her back, and here to the point where one has passed away. I would like to push further though – as you wrote, if the people couldn’t say these things when the person was alive, they shouldn’t say them after that person has died. But I think that these people, whatever obnoxious comments they were thinking in their head, shouldn’t say any of them aloud, whether that person is alive, dead, listening, or oblivious to the comments. That, I think, is the crucial point I got from your blog.
I agree wholeheartedly with what everyone here has said. Those heartless bullies have no right to insult a recently deceased man while his family is grieving. They have a lot of nerve doing such a thing, especially behind computer screens where these cowards can hide. Some people no longer have any sense of decency. I bet that those fools couldn’t muster the courage to say it to the man’s relatives in person!