How to deal with shallowness on the Internet
MANILA, Philippines - With net neutrality recently upheld in the US, the Internet is now a theoretically level playing field. The Federal Communications Commission will now regulate all broadband services to ensure that all players — start-ups and giant companies alike — will have equal and same-speed access to online resources. Hooray for all net neutrality supporters, the reddit users, the countless online activists that swarmed the FCC’s comments page, and news satirist John Oliver, the viral Paul Revere of the cause. Hooray for the free market.
While it may have seemed as if some online Berlin Wall was torn down to restore democracy in the long-oppressed territories of the Internet, nothing has really changed. New FCC rules only ensure (at least in theory) fair business practices: that all service and content providers operate at the same Internet speed and are afforded the same level of access. The online world is as democratic now as it was two weeks ago. Net neutrality is really about who gets to profit over the freedom that the Internet offers.
With relatively slow, scarce, and expensive Internet access controlled by its very few service and content providers, the Philippines is hardly a breeding ground for net neutrality. Yet it continues to be among the world leaders in active users, especially in social media, where freedom reigns. But freedom, as anyone who’s ever read Albert Camus or Jonathan Franzen would tell you, can be very tricky and sometimes even paradoxical.
If freedom is the ability to say anything regardless of gender, race, social stature, and upbringing, then it naturally entails things that are not necessarily pleasant to everyone. There will be exposure to ideas belonging to people some may consider “stupid.” There will be comment threads that escalate quickly to grammatically-challenged vitriol and, occasionally, racism. There will be widespread memes concerning the color pattern of some random dress. And there will be utter disgust with widespread memes concerning the color pattern of some random dress.
TRUE FREEDOM
True freedom, when practiced correctly, often leads to the tyranny of everything one hates. Once you’re online, you cannot escape it. The big story behind #TheDress, apart from duelling #WhiteAndGold and #BlackAndBlue contingents setting social media ablaze, was the equally large contingent screaming “Who gives a sh**?” I have to admit that I was one of those people, except my screaming was done internally, fearing that the slightest comment would be participatory, a self-defeating act that allowed the “terrorists” to win. Still, I couldn’t get behind those meme-shamers who evoke the more important issues, looking down from their high horses, wondering out loud how anyone can talk about some stupid dress while peace talks in Mindanao are on life support. They’re equally deserving of some contemptuous eye-rolling.
This phenomenon has gotten so bad that The Atlantic recently coined a term for it: “attention policing.” That’s when someone waxes sanctimonious over other people’s alleged frivolity, like when the Internet mourns for a YouTube star’s death when there are countless others murdered by terrorists, or when a censored gay-friendly billboard trends when there are more pressing issues out there hounding the LGBT community. These things annoy the living hell out of the “attention police” who somehow believe that human consciousness ought to function like one continuous public service announcement, as if real life is constantly about The Most Important Thing and never about the details, the tiny fringes that are also part of the Internet’s perpetual “now.” If the Internet were to be a genuinely organic community, then it should lend itself to organic “in the moment” conversations. If the Internet were to be genuinely neutral, then all ideas have an equal right to exist within it. Sometimes a confusing dress can really be mind-blowing the instant you see it. Sometimes fans will mourn about their idols’ death. These things do not preclude one from paying attention to the more important things. Those who think otherwise are the ones truly out of touch with reality.
Freedom and “neutrality” in the Internet isn’t only up to companies making money off it. Those of us who spend hours of our lives crafting witty comebacks on Facebook, typing protracted screeds on comments sections, and subtweeting each other on Twitter — we are still the most influential producers of online content. Sure, it’s one big mess, but it is also a stunning archipelago around which we have developed an advanced skill to navigate. Those “stupid” things we complain about will litter the Internet forever. We don’t have to stare at all of them. We can always walk away, pick our own stupid thing, and move on to the next island.
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Tweet the author @ColonialMental.
