Leave it to the internet to destory, on a continual basis, any faith a person might have left in humanity. By now I'm sure most people have seen the video of the two year old twin boys climbing on the dresser in what appears to be their bedroom and pulling it over on top of themselves trapping one of them underneath. The video, which is almost three minutes long shows the dresser falling over on them within the first several seconds and at the end the boy that didn't get trapped underneath helps push it off of his brother freeing him. Neither one appeared to be seriously hurt, although I'm sure the one that got trapped underneath must've been scared half to death.
So a normal, sane person might think the reaction to this viral video would be "aww, he was worried about his brother and helped him out" or at least "hey, smart little dude for only two years old." But this is the internet, filled with mostly jerks, goons, trolls, and just straight up *insert explitive here*. Instead, because the boy took 2+ minutes to figure out how to help his brother people comment "F*CK this kid is STUPID!!" or "what a brainless idiot this kid is, YOUR BROTHER IS BEING CRUSHED!!" ....Yeah, cringeworthy at best. It got me wondering just as other things have in the past: are people really this clueless in modern times, or is the relative anonymity of the internet similar to the "liquid courage" most of us know as Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Captain Morgan etc.? Do people really habor this much hatred in their hearts that they're willing to criticize a little boy trying to help as best he's able, or is it just "fun" to be a douchebag?
I don't have any specific memories of being a two year old boy, but now at 32 years old I know for a fact that I was one at a certain point. Because my brain has matured and developed normally I'm able to know this fact by a simple logical deduction that if I'm now 32 years old then I must have been two years old at one point. But logic also tells me that if my brain wasn't developed enough at two years old for me to have any concrete memories of that time then it certainly wasn't developed enough to have the ability to reason or solve any major problems. Any rational person can realize this. So I have to wonder, when did hate become a global pasttime? I'm not talking about "hate" as the political buzzword that it has become nowadays, I'm talking about REAL hate, a general malice toward anyone and everyone (even a two year old boy) for no apparent reason.
We like to talk about how great the internet is and we stand in awe of how great technology is and how much it improve our lives. But it does have it's pitfalls. When I was growing up my granddad always used to tell me, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." That's very hard to live up to, and none of us have lived up to it entirely but that wasn't the point. The point was to try to be as decent to others as you possibly can. Unfortunately, and probably inadvertantly, technology has provided us with a platform to air own unsavory thoughts with very few consequences. Now I can't criticize technology too much because I'm using it to complain about this topic, but rampant hatred and senseless turmoil online is exactly why I try to refrain from it as much as I reasonably can. Not only does the frustration that results from it make it more tempting to participate in, but what happens in about 5-10 years when these boys are old enough to see this video (and it WILL still be around then) and are able to read these comments for themselves? What you post on the internet stays there forever in some capacity even after you "delete" it. I guess on the upside it will be a valuable lesson to them: Do the right thing and the internet will hate you for it because you struggled to get it done, but if you lose the wrestling meet because you didn't train hard enough don't worry, you showed up so you get a trophy anyway. Apathy and mediocrity are virtues. Great job!
Matthew
