One of my friends revolted on his Facebook comment as to why people write nasty things to each other in the virtual space, do they think that therewith they can compel the opponent to “give up” and publicly admit that he was wrong. Indeed, parallel with the development of the Internet, people have become more “infused” and do not hesitate to become self-established by slamming each other in the most severe form. There is also a new profession: a Facebook and website commentator, for which people receive wages.
Usually, the representatives of various government agencies “tell on each other” by running the Internet fakes and even real people, whose main (and sometimes the only) task is to implement a “black PR” under these orders. But there are also a convinced, “spontaneous” status-writers, who express their personal or political views with the help of the Internet “poison and purulence”.
Earlier, in the first half of the 90s, everything was more simple, “Yerkir”, “Azatamart” (until the current major Democrats closed up this press at the end of 1994), “Iravunk”, “Golos Armenii”, and “Ayzhm” were “slamming” the government authorities, perhaps more strongly than it is now done on the Facebook. But these newspapers had editors and journalists: real and non-virtual people who were responsive for their words, and the information unit was the article and the news rather than the “status”, comment, like, share or the “smiles”. The readers were reading the articles, also cutting and saving them in folders to reread them. Now, the Facebook bickering on one subject does not last more than 2-3 hours, but very rapidly a new bickering pops up in another place.
The important difference is that in the paper space, the language proficiency and the literacy level is higher than on the Internet. Talking about the parallels, I cannot but to recall that at that time it was used to say that the Constitution (1995) is a means to perpetuate Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s dictatorship. But, unlike today, the 6 opposition parties have drafted an alternative option of the Basic Law to show how the democratic Constitution should be. The despotic (“pro-Levon”) Constitution… yes, was the parliamentary governance, which turns out to be also tyrannical and the chief dictator will be the Speaker of the National Assembly.
Now, these debates have been moved to the Internet and have become more personal and, let me say, more minor. The only “antidote” to it is not to counter to purulent with purulent, blasphemy with blasphemy, insult with insult, but on the contrary, to understand and look at the things through the eyes of those people who do not agree with you. In this case, the desire to “smash” the opposite person will become less.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
