I mean us. The Irish, born in what used to be the Land of Saints and Scholars.<\/p>\n
We need to start taking a serious look at ourselves.<\/p>\n
Because that traditional decency and good-natured slagging we\u2019re so proud of has morphed into something infinitely closer to sheer nasty.<\/p>\n
And when I say nasty, I mean real, deep-down rotten. Vicious. Personal. Cruel. Utterly lacking in compassion.<\/p>\n
Or else, of course, we\u2019re just cowardly, ignorant and stupid.<\/p>\n
Cowardly because we seem to revel in cruel, mocking, vicious, and often devastating personal comments about people online that we\u2019d never dream of saying to anyone face-to-face.<\/p>\n
\n Ignorant because we may be ignorant of (despite all the publicity) the potentially deeply damaging effects of those toxic comments we so casually hurl at other people from our keyboards.\n <\/p>\n
Or plain stupid (a) because somehow we can\u2019t either seem able to visualise how we\u2019d feel ourselves if someone did the same thing to us or take on board the warnings about the real-life personal effects of online bullying – the destruction of another person\u2019s self-esteem, the depression, self-harming, and, yes, the suicides that have resulted from the nastiness and derision meted out at people online.<\/p>\n
Also stupid because (b) by triumphantly engaging in this online viciousness, we are witlessly normalising a lack of empathy, a casual cruelty, and the absence of accountability for the next generation \u2013 who are seeing our lack of compassion in practice every day on social media.<\/p>\n
Anyone who raises their head above the parapet in this country gets it in the neck on social media from members of the Great Irish Public these days; politicians, sexual assault victims, schoolchildren, garda\u00ed, reality show contestants, the families of homicide victims, teenagers, writers, actors, teachers, TV presenters, commentators of any kind; you name it. Everyone is fair game.<\/p>\n
The ugly commentary about some of the contestants on The Traitors Ireland became so deeply personal and unpleasant that Kevin McGahern, host of the companion series Traitor Uncloaked was inspired to remind the public that these were real people.<\/p>\n
Acknowledging that we all love a bit of friendly slagging, he asked those making the cruel comments to please refrain from the spiteful name-calling and the mean-spirited remarks.<\/p>\n
All of this – and Andrew Tate\u2019s input notwithstanding, but we can\u2019t blame him for everything \u2013 has created an environment devoid of compassion but full of judgement and harmful negative commentary.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s turned into a form of repression.<\/p>\n
We used to blame the church, communism or lack of education for repression and judgmentalism.<\/p>\n
Now we\u2019re doing it ourselves. With no help from church, communism or lack of education.<\/p>\n
The effects are visible, even in the smallest, most unobtrusive and saddest of ways \u2013 in the past few weeks, a beautician observed to me that she has noticed that many young clients now avoid bright nail polish.<\/p>\n
Many don\u2019t want to wear vibrant shades of red, because \u2013 and believe this or not – they tell her, wearing it could draw shaming comments.<\/p>\n
They are looking for less noticeable nails and far subtler make-up, she said.<\/p>\n
Beige-er. Colours that blend in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t want to stand out,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you serious?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
She was absolutely serious, she said.<\/p>\n
\n They didn\u2019t want bright nails or vibrant make-up that might make them stand out because this could attract hurtful comments about their appearance online.\n <\/p>\n
When I checked, the statistics showed that 67% of girls and young women in this country have experienced abuse or harassment on social media.<\/p>\n
So here we have it.<\/p>\n
Schizoid Ireland.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, we\u2019re all about our rights. Our rights about this and our rights about that.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, we\u2019ve become so deeply judgmental and so nasty, so lacking in compassion, so viscerally cruel, and so casually derogatory in our public assessments of others that it\u2019s creating a culture of fear and shame.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time to take a breath. Those who take gratuitously spiteful potshots at other people online should pause at the keyboard and really consider the potential effects of their comments on somebody else.<\/p>\n
How would you feel if somebody criticised you or your appearance like that?<\/p>\n
If you feel like inflicting hurt, try going out and thumping a tree instead of a keyboard.<\/p>\n
Have a look at the way you have written about other people on social media.<\/p>\n
Do you see yourself as a person who deliberately shames or dismisses someone else for the sake of looking clever, or who goes out to hurt others or dismiss their experiences?<\/p>\n
Is this really the kind of person you always dreamed of becoming?<\/p>\n
Get a life.<\/p>\n
We must introduce legislation against this kind of awful stuff; it\u2019s time for the State to recognise and penalise this behaviour as a form of harassment.<\/p>\n
Why not slap a strong financial penalty on people who slither around in this state of keyboard disembodiment, sneering at, smearing, offending and intimidating other people with their spitefulness and their threats?<\/p>\n
Whatever you feel about Enoch Burke – and people feel plenty about this man and his opinions – at least he didn\u2019t hide behind a screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have we been innately nasty all along, and just done a bloody good job of hiding it –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38718,61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-54335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ailin-quinlan","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}