When the news hit me for the very first time, I was earnestly preparing for my Chinese voyage. I was supposed to be in Beijing by now – that is a far end of a different story. It was not a plague by that time, rather it was a distant news about an unknown virus strain which causes pneumonia and kills about a hundred human beings.
It took three months to reach me; when WHO announced it as a pandemic, one of my friends telephoned me that night and told – we are home, time for humans to come closer and these tiny viruses will make it happen. I said nothing, my mind was thinking about my death that is going to happen soon – life of a hypochondriac is equally miserable like most of us in middle of a plague.
Post March, life became despondent and even more digital. News about Covid-19 filled every other timeline in social media. As I previously mentioned in an article about fake news, Covid-19 mushroomed millions of medical scientists, health practitioners, high energy physicists, astrophysicists, geopolitical observers, economic experts overnight. Along with the stories of hatred. In the initial days laptop and mobile screens radiated the birth mark of Covid-19, nationality of Covid-19, religion of Covid-19, WHO’s geopolitics, Illuminati’s war on human race, greed of big pharma’s and a tiny number of feeble radiating photons displayed few empirical writings/videos on the pandemic and post pandemic – almost all the radical/people welfare ideas/structures invited Prof. Chomsky for a Zoom talk.
Hatred plays a vital role in determining the social fabric of a pandemic world. Failed populist right wing governments turned people’s agony and frustration towards a social enemy and the social enemy was built on the socio-political profits patronizing the state. The hoax stories of lab produced virus, Chinese virus, Muslim virus (in India), threat to dismantle WHO, were emerged from the fatal failures of the state machinery. These governments or leaders used ‘hatred’ to safeguard their power and ideas. Majority, instead of expressing the fury towards the governing structures, distracted towards the constructed social enemy – an easy and viable target to emote.
Freud defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness, stressing that it was linked to the question of self-preservation. Hate is obviously a human emotion, like most other emotions it is not only a chemical retort that induces the cells, but it has an additional factor called ‘Social’. Humans are not just a collection of flesh, bone, and veins rather an animal built also by the socio-cultural factors.
Hate instigated by an idea has serious consequences to the self and the society. It is not just hating a human or something which is an everyday affair but an idea of utopian unreality. Tales of utopian exist across human history – stories of heaven, stories of equal world, stories of egalitarian societies and a lot. The structure of every idea – theocratic or democratic or autocratic, has its nodes connected to the utopian unreality. Every human is tamed to dream that unreality, which becomes the social order in many ideas.
It posts another question aligned with the root of Birgitte Schepelern Johansen’s same paper – what the precise location of hate in a society or in social fabric the origin of hate is. Birgitte made it easier in understanding the roots of hate – we cannot find an absolute GPS point of hate in social web rather we can understand the various factors that collectively construct the hatred across a society, which is underlying in most of parts of a society particularly in the information channels. Information that plays a vital role in shaping the behaviour of any social group.
Zygmunt Bauman’s book on Modernity and the Holocaust highlighted a most underlying factor which became one of the bases for the holocaust. Bauman says that it is not just emotion of hate resulted in the genocide, but it was systematic and structural mechanism which resulted in Holocaust – added with lack of concern from public who indirectly contributed to it.
It took three months to reach me; when WHO announced it as a pandemic, one of my friends telephoned me that night and told – we are home, time for humans to come closer and these tiny viruses will make it happen. I said nothing, my mind was thinking about my death that is going to happen soon – life of a hypochondriac is equally miserable like most of us in middle of a plague.
Post March, life became despondent and even more digital. News about Covid-19 filled every other timeline in social media. As I previously mentioned in an article about fake news, Covid-19 mushroomed millions of medical scientists, health practitioners, high energy physicists, astrophysicists, geopolitical observers, economic experts overnight. Along with the stories of hatred. In the initial days laptop and mobile screens radiated the birth mark of Covid-19, nationality of Covid-19, religion of Covid-19, WHO’s geopolitics, Illuminati’s war on human race, greed of big pharma’s and a tiny number of feeble radiating photons displayed few empirical writings/videos on the pandemic and post pandemic – almost all the radical/people welfare ideas/structures invited Prof. Chomsky for a Zoom talk.
Hatred plays a vital role in determining the social fabric of a pandemic world. Failed populist right wing governments turned people’s agony and frustration towards a social enemy and the social enemy was built on the socio-political profits patronizing the state. The hoax stories of lab produced virus, Chinese virus, Muslim virus (in India), threat to dismantle WHO, were emerged from the fatal failures of the state machinery. These governments or leaders used ‘hatred’ to safeguard their power and ideas. Majority, instead of expressing the fury towards the governing structures, distracted towards the constructed social enemy – an easy and viable target to emote.
Freud defined hate as an ego state that wishes to destroy the source of its unhappiness, stressing that it was linked to the question of self-preservation. Hate is obviously a human emotion, like most other emotions it is not only a chemical retort that induces the cells, but it has an additional factor called ‘Social’. Humans are not just a collection of flesh, bone, and veins rather an animal built also by the socio-cultural factors.
In an interesting paper ‘Locating hatred: On the materiality of emotions’ by Birgitte Schepelern Johansen mentioned that “emotions are, one of the recurring assertions is that emotions are that which make the world not only known but significant to us”. Emotions makes life distinct between collection of intertwined events vs memories of personal experiences. Although human emotions are innate behaviors, build by the excretion of chemicals – which philosophers like Foucault might differ, they are not just only personal. In line with Foucault, they are majorly designed by the social fabric. Stimulators for every emotion are injected into human flesh by the very society we exist. The social mind beings inculcate in the process of socialization makes shabby innate chemical reactions the determining factor of human existence.
Like every other human emotion, hatred too plays a significant role in human life – as happiness, as sorrow, as agony, hatred too is an everyday affair. However, on contrast to other emotions; socially we can categorize hatred as two: day-to-day hatred – hate over life, over work etc. – and the hatred constructed by an idea against another idea or a collective group of individuals – which is long lasting.Hate instigated by an idea has serious consequences to the self and the society. It is not just hating a human or something which is an everyday affair but an idea of utopian unreality. Tales of utopian exist across human history – stories of heaven, stories of equal world, stories of egalitarian societies and a lot. The structure of every idea – theocratic or democratic or autocratic, has its nodes connected to the utopian unreality. Every human is tamed to dream that unreality, which becomes the social order in many ideas.
It posts another question aligned with the root of Birgitte Schepelern Johansen’s same paper – what the precise location of hate in a society or in social fabric the origin of hate is. Birgitte made it easier in understanding the roots of hate – we cannot find an absolute GPS point of hate in social web rather we can understand the various factors that collectively construct the hatred across a society, which is underlying in most of parts of a society particularly in the information channels. Information that plays a vital role in shaping the behaviour of any social group.
Zygmunt Bauman’s book on Modernity and the Holocaust highlighted a most underlying factor which became one of the bases for the holocaust. Bauman says that it is not just emotion of hate resulted in the genocide, but it was systematic and structural mechanism which resulted in Holocaust – added with lack of concern from public who indirectly contributed to it.
I think this is what happening in our current world, systematic or structural mechanism of spreading hate – which is performed by governments itself in most of the 21st century states. I think, across history state machineries are the ones that runs or build over ideas of hate – even though capitalism has a greater role in uprooting the collective human existence to more of individualistic and profit driven, it hates humans only when there is no profit or social acts that acts as a hinderance towards profit.
In 21st century, breweries of hatred need hate for two major benefits – power or money. Hate also has a role in constructing and nourishing ‘pride’ but that pride must benefit someone’s political and economic honor. It is not that most of these hate brewers, produce hate consciously but it could be a 50-50 factor. In most cases right wingers strongly believe in the ideas of hate as a way of life (for example caste system in India) and to establish it as a social or political or economic system they use fake stories in spreading hate.
Social media plays a vital role in catalyzing organized hate stories with ease. Lack of concern (which is inculcated within our beliefs by capitalistic social fabric that strongly believe in profit) from most of the virtual population which is eager to be the ‘first’ to post a news or get more viewers or subscribers or likes or comments, makes functions of hate-monger machines easier. In turn, when likes or comments or subscribers or viewers started to fetch money, we tend to overlook the ethical aspects of a post – for which social media population has least minor concern as long as their posts or likes or shares are getting converted as money. ‘Self’ constructed by capitalism, evolves even more conceited along with upgradation of capitalism as neo-liberalism and crony capitalism. Internet and social media, instead of making life more collective and democratic, made humans to perform a twin self virtually along with impulsive behavior to get more likes and shares or attention and in few cases more money. Instead of democratizing human knowledge, social media performs a role in annihilating scientific knowledge and re-placing it with hoax. These features ease the route for hate – which is build over religion, race, caste, color, gender, sexuality, knowledge etc.
We can list all the forms of social media postings under hate category – it can be a tweet or a photo or a video or a troll or a comment or a share or a meme. Horrifying aesthetics of hatred in virtual world is, it stops human thinking and stop humans from asking questions rather responding either as hoax or hate. Although I do not have a striking data, I guess that six out of every ten comments in social media either carries hate or hoax – in general both are tangled, without fake news hate cannot survive.
In most cases, even a casual tweet about love or anything just causal end up receiving abusing comment or a woman who post a vacation post is being advised or harassed for wearing vacation attire. In states like India, social media users are receiving even life threats just for sharing their favorite food – if it is beef. No wonder to say that social media is the mushrooming ground for 21st century caste pride in India where you are free to express your hatred over other human beings in the name of caste & claim it as way of life. This is even more relevant when it comes to gender/sexuality abuses. From my observations five out of every ten comments carry one or other transphobic or homophobic or misogynistic comments – both conscious & unconscious comments/posts.
As Zachary Laub writes in Council on Foreign Relations blog, “Users’ experiences online are mediated by algorithms designed to maximize their engagement, which often inadvertently promote extreme content. Some web watchdog groups say YouTube’s autoplay function, in which the player, at the end of one video, tees up a related one, can be especially pernicious. The algorithm drives people to videos that promote conspiracy theories or are otherwise “divisive, misleading or false,” according to a Wall Street Journal investigative report”
When algorithms determine our behaviors and those algorithms run to grab more profit and data then they are not bothered about what you watch or what you post, rather they are either a monetary profit for investors or data profit for the big data machines.
Even more obtrusive element on social media hate is that ‘how people in power uses social media’. I think Donald Trump should be on top ten users list, where Twitter deletes tweets for spreading hate or false information. This is not a problem only with Donald but most of the world leaders. In India WhatsApp hate messages helps winning elections.
As mentioned across this text, conspiracy theories and hoax help in inducing hatred. Hate that spreads across the virtual world is not a basic emotion, but the hate constructed by an idea. These virtual hates in turn resulted in real life lynching, genocides, making life more complicated for minorities, migrants, and marginalized communities.
Social media has become a place where a man can venomously post rape threat to the child of a cricket superstar for losing a game or to child of a movie actor for selecting a role that is against someone’s ideological/political belief – social media has become a machine that has democratized hate! We may wonder and counter these arguments with democratic examples driven by social media – Occupy Wall Street or Arab Spring. But we may also have to think why the movie Social Dilemma which was released in Netflix had strong liberal side of criticism over Google or Instagram or Facebook but not about Netflix. Netflix may not be a social media application, but it has the same big data algorithm that crave for user data and emotional behavior.
For example, this very article, that is posted in social media might not get traction or in general articles more than 2000 words attract less users than a two liner hate post or hate photo. I do not want to say that these algorithms are working in such a way, but they were designed in such way. It is more like an invisible nature of cronyism – I will not dictate you every day on what to watch or see in your timeline but I will design it such that you can watch only what you are supposed to watch or read. Illuminati or flat earth stories will reach billions whereas an article written by Bernardine Evaristo will reach thousands.
The most disheartening feature of hatred in virtual world is even the progressive spaces have become abusive and less interactive. Hate becomes a prevalent feature of most of the discussion, which induce the self-centered new liberal human ‘self’ – the result is abuse/harassment rather an organic discussion.
How are we going to fix it? With arrival of even more innovative artificial intelligence technologies like deep fake, virtual reality becomes even complex. We are living in a time to watch a video where Albert Einstein says that earth is flat or Rosalind Franklin delivering a speech which concludes DNA is nothing but an unwanted imaginary thread. Or every other environmental activist talking about climate crisis is a hoax. In turn everything will result in even more hate against human beings which either kills or annihilate or harass or abuse our neighbor.
Intention is not to conclude that internet and Covid-19 invented hate, but internet and social media democratized hate - which become more evident via Covid hoax stories. What are we left with? – I think I am a pessimistic individual, where we are left with nothing. But every living species has the instinct to survive and that very instinct makes us to fight the hate!
In 21st century, breweries of hatred need hate for two major benefits – power or money. Hate also has a role in constructing and nourishing ‘pride’ but that pride must benefit someone’s political and economic honor. It is not that most of these hate brewers, produce hate consciously but it could be a 50-50 factor. In most cases right wingers strongly believe in the ideas of hate as a way of life (for example caste system in India) and to establish it as a social or political or economic system they use fake stories in spreading hate.
Social media plays a vital role in catalyzing organized hate stories with ease. Lack of concern (which is inculcated within our beliefs by capitalistic social fabric that strongly believe in profit) from most of the virtual population which is eager to be the ‘first’ to post a news or get more viewers or subscribers or likes or comments, makes functions of hate-monger machines easier. In turn, when likes or comments or subscribers or viewers started to fetch money, we tend to overlook the ethical aspects of a post – for which social media population has least minor concern as long as their posts or likes or shares are getting converted as money. ‘Self’ constructed by capitalism, evolves even more conceited along with upgradation of capitalism as neo-liberalism and crony capitalism. Internet and social media, instead of making life more collective and democratic, made humans to perform a twin self virtually along with impulsive behavior to get more likes and shares or attention and in few cases more money. Instead of democratizing human knowledge, social media performs a role in annihilating scientific knowledge and re-placing it with hoax. These features ease the route for hate – which is build over religion, race, caste, color, gender, sexuality, knowledge etc.
We can list all the forms of social media postings under hate category – it can be a tweet or a photo or a video or a troll or a comment or a share or a meme. Horrifying aesthetics of hatred in virtual world is, it stops human thinking and stop humans from asking questions rather responding either as hoax or hate. Although I do not have a striking data, I guess that six out of every ten comments in social media either carries hate or hoax – in general both are tangled, without fake news hate cannot survive.
In most cases, even a casual tweet about love or anything just causal end up receiving abusing comment or a woman who post a vacation post is being advised or harassed for wearing vacation attire. In states like India, social media users are receiving even life threats just for sharing their favorite food – if it is beef. No wonder to say that social media is the mushrooming ground for 21st century caste pride in India where you are free to express your hatred over other human beings in the name of caste & claim it as way of life. This is even more relevant when it comes to gender/sexuality abuses. From my observations five out of every ten comments carry one or other transphobic or homophobic or misogynistic comments – both conscious & unconscious comments/posts.
As Zachary Laub writes in Council on Foreign Relations blog, “Users’ experiences online are mediated by algorithms designed to maximize their engagement, which often inadvertently promote extreme content. Some web watchdog groups say YouTube’s autoplay function, in which the player, at the end of one video, tees up a related one, can be especially pernicious. The algorithm drives people to videos that promote conspiracy theories or are otherwise “divisive, misleading or false,” according to a Wall Street Journal investigative report”
When algorithms determine our behaviors and those algorithms run to grab more profit and data then they are not bothered about what you watch or what you post, rather they are either a monetary profit for investors or data profit for the big data machines.
Even more obtrusive element on social media hate is that ‘how people in power uses social media’. I think Donald Trump should be on top ten users list, where Twitter deletes tweets for spreading hate or false information. This is not a problem only with Donald but most of the world leaders. In India WhatsApp hate messages helps winning elections.
As mentioned across this text, conspiracy theories and hoax help in inducing hatred. Hate that spreads across the virtual world is not a basic emotion, but the hate constructed by an idea. These virtual hates in turn resulted in real life lynching, genocides, making life more complicated for minorities, migrants, and marginalized communities.
Social media has become a place where a man can venomously post rape threat to the child of a cricket superstar for losing a game or to child of a movie actor for selecting a role that is against someone’s ideological/political belief – social media has become a machine that has democratized hate! We may wonder and counter these arguments with democratic examples driven by social media – Occupy Wall Street or Arab Spring. But we may also have to think why the movie Social Dilemma which was released in Netflix had strong liberal side of criticism over Google or Instagram or Facebook but not about Netflix. Netflix may not be a social media application, but it has the same big data algorithm that crave for user data and emotional behavior.
For example, this very article, that is posted in social media might not get traction or in general articles more than 2000 words attract less users than a two liner hate post or hate photo. I do not want to say that these algorithms are working in such a way, but they were designed in such way. It is more like an invisible nature of cronyism – I will not dictate you every day on what to watch or see in your timeline but I will design it such that you can watch only what you are supposed to watch or read. Illuminati or flat earth stories will reach billions whereas an article written by Bernardine Evaristo will reach thousands.
The most disheartening feature of hatred in virtual world is even the progressive spaces have become abusive and less interactive. Hate becomes a prevalent feature of most of the discussion, which induce the self-centered new liberal human ‘self’ – the result is abuse/harassment rather an organic discussion.
How are we going to fix it? With arrival of even more innovative artificial intelligence technologies like deep fake, virtual reality becomes even complex. We are living in a time to watch a video where Albert Einstein says that earth is flat or Rosalind Franklin delivering a speech which concludes DNA is nothing but an unwanted imaginary thread. Or every other environmental activist talking about climate crisis is a hoax. In turn everything will result in even more hate against human beings which either kills or annihilate or harass or abuse our neighbor.
Intention is not to conclude that internet and Covid-19 invented hate, but internet and social media democratized hate - which become more evident via Covid hoax stories. What are we left with? – I think I am a pessimistic individual, where we are left with nothing. But every living species has the instinct to survive and that very instinct makes us to fight the hate!
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