Taking a Step Back

Some days I feel like I need to take a break from the internet.

The troubling thing is, I never know which side I'm more disappointed at. In a perfect world the internet and social media would be a place for the spread of ideas, a medium to allow people to express themselves and to connect with people they would otherwise have never had the chance of interacting with. Instead, when I look on Facebook, or Twitter, or read the comment section of any article or page, all I see are people in pissing contests with one another in a pointless contest to validate their personal beliefs and prove everyone else wrong. These aren't pleasant discourses either. Some of them make me sick.

A page on Facebook calls itself Heterosexual Awareness Month and mocks the struggle for gay rights and equality in our nation, the people who disagree post hateful and disturbing comments to their page. Their is an article calling for better and safer practices in the adult film industry, the comments section is full of people who cry "that's what you get" and "serves you right". You can't get on Yahoo.com to look at the news without being bombarded by hate and ignorance in every comment, more often than not having nothing to do with the aforementioned news. People are attacked for merely holding opinions, and not only from one side.

There is a preacher who very often comes to my University and stands on a corner outside the library and preaches. Many people simply smile, shrug, stop and listen, or walk on by. However, every now and again there comes along someone who doesn't identify religiously, be they atheist, agnostic, or what please you, and they shout at him. Some shout "praise Satan" and some yell at him, telling him to prove his claims and calling him false. I don't identify as religious, but to see these people decry his "ignorance" with their own makes me stop and reconsider the way we communicate our ideas to one another. Less and less do I find that we do so in a manner than affords respect to the opposite position. We no longer have discussion, we simply try to make ourselves the biggest person in the room, asserting that we must be the right side and disregarding and disrespecting all other views in the process.

I may not agree with every thing everyone around me says, but as I get older I find that I cannot simply dismiss them. To do so would do nothing to expand my understanding and would only leave me ignorant to that point of view. I wish I could look into the world around me and see a similar attitude. This isn't to say that things people say don't still make me angry, or upset, or sick to my stomach, but I have come to the realization that I gain nothing by beginning a fight over the social media used. It only serves to make me look as if I'm insecure in my own beliefs, that I need to assert them in order to validate them, and I don't feel the need to do that. I'm comfortable in the way I live my life and the beliefs that I hold, and nothing I read or see on the internet is going to make me change that. Fighting brings us no closer to understanding, and if I am to have a dialogue with someone, I would much rather have it with them face to face.