You know the one I’m talking about. He’s (and to be fair, I’ve known girl ones, too) the one who goes into Jewish chatrooms saying “Heil Hitler!” and into Christian ones professing his love for Satan, then follows that up by going to a gay newsgroup and talking about how much God hates fags.
They’re Internet Assholes. They’re usually about thirteen years old and they just do it for attention, probably attention they can’t receive at home. They’re media whores who don’t have enough prestige to do it properly for ideas that are reasonable, so they take extreme and outrageous stances, hoping that will merit them the same sort of spotlight. They want to rebel and so instead of doing it for a cause they believe in, they just do it for something so incredibly unpopular that they know people will be reviled. It also happens with kids who feel that no matter what, they’ll be hated by their peers – so why try to be liked? May as well try to be hated, at least they’ll succeed, they think.
A lot of times they succeed in making people angry. In the chatrooms, newsgroups, and bulletin boards they frequent, people will often get pissed off enough to start calling the Asshole names. This is where the Internet Asshole seizes on an opportunity to make even more people angry, and starts to make even more outrageous statements.
In other places, though, there are Mature Ones when this happens. Mature Ones say to the people arguing with the Asshole, “look, it’s just The Bulletin Board Asshole. If you don’t argue with him, he’ll eventually stop.” But the Mature Ones really aren’t so smart. Instead of backing off, the Asshole will usually take a series of even more offensive positions. Usually, the only way to get rid of them is just to wait them out, letting them know consistently and firmly that their ideas aren’t wanted there, though this should be done without degenerating into name-calling.
The key thing about the Internet Assholes is, though, that they’re utterly harmless. They spout things but they don’t really take action. They won’t even say the things they say online in front of real-world people, because they don’t want real arguments. But they really piss me off, because they have sapped the joy from several of my favorite places online.
So I’ve wondered, ever since the John Walker case came up, why I loathe the man so much. It’s surely not just because he hates America or did what he did to fight it, because I am not angry with the Taliban foot-soldiers other than him. Nor is it even because he had had a taste of freedom before going to fight in Afghanistan. So I thought and thought. And finally I figured it out.
John Walker is an Internet Asshole.
He actually started out on the internet, pretending to be black and espousing Black Power, claiming that he and his brothers were being kept down (while simultaneously championing the use of the word “nigger”). And people in Marin County, where he lived, just shrugged. Kids will be kids, they said. They ignored it and let him take increasingly bizarre stances. At the point when he went to Yemen to “study Arabic,” he may as well have been waving around a flag that said “please pretty please I want attention!” but no one paid him any heed.
And finally, he ended up in the Taliban. And he got caught, and he’s getting the media spotlight he’s always wanted without the pesky problem of people who would dare to argue with him. CNN interviewed him, and he said some very typical Internet Asshole things. “Jihad is everything I expected it to be,” with a big smile.
You see, I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with it even if I truly thought he believed what he said. But I’m sure he, like all the Internet Assholes I’ve ever known, doesn’t believe a word of it. He’s playing a role. He’s gotten so into a persona that the persona has taken over. It probably could have been stopped early on, when he was first beginning to develop his persona online, when he hadn’t yet convinced himself that he believed his own stupidity. But no one wanted to interfere, and so they didn’t. Eventually, he couldn’t think of anything more outrageous to say – and his words crossed the barrier into actions.
And it bothers me, because I like to think that the Internet Assholes will never become the person they act like online. I like to think that in truth, they’re white suburban rich kids with too much time on their hands and not enough in their skulls – I have to think that in order to not be genuinely worried about far too many things. John Walker has proven me wrong, and he has given us a lesson we really should all take to heart. Playing militant, soldier, and traitorous killer made John Walker just that. Eventually, we all become what we pretend to be.