Social media and relationships

As we have allowed more and more of our previously "private" lives become public, we are  more and more vulnerable.  Not only are our "secrets" becoming known, we are more open to attacks by others which can be highly personal.

It's much easier to be cruel when we don't have to face directly the object of our cruelty.  "Trolling" has become much more common, and people  say things  on websites that they would never say face to face.  It's easier to believe whatever we want to believe about someone when we don't have all the information.

Typed information is more abstract than face to face contact.  We don't have facial expressions  and voice tones;  we don't have the immediate feedback that comes from a direct reaction to something we have said or done.  It's easier to harm others when we don't actually see them being harmed.  A number of psychological experiments have confirmed this idea.

The cruelty of war becomes easier when we don't actually see those we hurt.  Over the years our weapons have allowed us to be at a greater and greater distance, physically and psychologically, from our victims.  They become "targets" or "casualties".  We dehumanize our victims.  Could we have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima if we had seen all the faces of those we killed, knew their histories, how much their mothers loved them, how their partner's hearts were broken?

Now we see the same behaviors on small scale on  the internet.  We attack, we try to hurt, we urge people  to kill themselves, we encourage damaging behaviors... it's all "out there", it's not real, they are just targets in a video game.

Positive relationships conducted via computer are equally biased and distorted.  Fantasies about others, positive and negative, flourish best in the absence of specific information.  Anybody can be flawless and wonderful if they choose to be so, and if the person to whom they are providing information chooses to believe them.  Fantasies don't like reality.  Nobody belches or passes gas in a fantasy.

People  even decide to  get married based on a series of internet conversations.  People  choosing to believe what they are told via computer are easy marks, both financially and emotionally.  Not only is a sucker born every minute, as  Barnum  allegedly said, someone is out there to take advantage of the sucker.

I myself am going to be a multimillionaire soon.  I have to make my bank account open to this Prince from Nigeria and he's going to give me millions of dollars.  I can hardly wait.