The current media environment seeks and rewards conflict. Naturally that leads to hate. Hate leads to action, and action inspired by hate can never lead to anything good.
The foolish mind believes eliminating one’s enemies will result in victory and peace. But he cannot truly envision nor describe that future state brought about by these destructive means. It is out of his hands. He cannot even assure himself that he will be among those who survive to experience such a place. Still he is determined to fight for the concept.
Most of what is seen in heated and escalating online exchanges are rhetorical plots and traps established to bait the enemy into exposing academic shortcomings and vulnerabilities, while establishing plausible cover should the enemy be stronger in these areas than anticipated. Misquotes or statements taken out of context, edited clips to distort the enemy’s presentation and motives, simplified slogans and unfalsifiable mantras used as shields against reasonable dissent - this is the armor and weaponry of the keyboard warrior. The resulting exasperation, whether it come from the inability to penetrate this facade of critical thought or the continuance of ideas one seeks to eliminate, deepens the mental crisis and brings the ghostly avatar one step closer to immutable earthly action.
The impossible expectation of knowing all that has been read and learned, throughout time and history as new content billows over the wires creating an eternal cloud from every epithetic bomb lobbed back and forth, weighs on each naive and overmatched soldier who dares wade into the conflict.
This is literary war. There are no rules, no boundaries, no nations. There is only my side and your side. Self-righteousness pitted against the adjacency to perceived moral reprehensibility. Silence marks the casualties. Pile-ons and ratios the only spoils of a captured territory.
It is a dark and solemn wasteland where the distinction between physical death and digital quiet gets erased. One may find himself wondering, "Has the enemy retreated? Have we finally made our point?"
Still there is the sense of spirits lurking on the other end of the screen, consuming contents, mining for hypocrisies, storing data and piecing together profiles until paranoia is the only sensibility that remains. Somebody say something. Make it kind and reassuring.
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