He’s big–really big–on YouTube right now: 13-year-old Andrew Johnston, on Britain’s Got Talent. Here’s one of the clips:
Simon liked his singing–a lot. (So do I.) He said in the introduction that he had been bullied for his singing. Well, the comments on YouTube are right in line with that. They’re piling on with profanity, all because he sings high and he sings well, and maybe because he doesn’t carry himself with obvious confidence.
Maybe by the time you read this YouTube will have done something to stop it from coming the way it has been today. I hope so. There’s serious profanity in at least 20% of the comments now, and other forms of ridicule in many others.
Our kids have been bullied at about that age. I won’t go into the details; suffice it to say that we’ve had opportunity to get to know their schools’ administrations very, very well. In some cases they’ve handled it well, and it has improved. I won’t speak of the contrasting situation we also faced. I will say that seeing Andrew succeed this way has given us real joy.
But what about the way he’s been treated, at school and on YouTube? Why do people do this? Why do people find it attractive to cuss out a teenager? What’s the motivation? What’s the payoff?
Why do people do this? Because cowards love three things: easy targets, safety in numbers, and anonymity. They’d never have the guts to say it to his face, and the internet makes them feel like they’re part of a nameless-faceless peer group.
That’s why people on the net seem so much more vulgar, shallow, and unreasonable than people in the “real world.” The ability to snipe at someone with immunity brings out the idiot in normal people, and the raging imbecile in the idiots.
The payoff comes in the escape from reality. They can fool themselves, for a few seconds, into thinking that they’re something more than a pathetic troll hiding behind the server.
Well said MedicineMan. Well said.