Since the dawn of time, human beings have judged their own people and ostracized them for small differences. Things like race, gender and sexuality have dominated how humans view each other day to day and led to vast amounts of damage to humans as a collective. This leads some people to rely on animal instincts that cause them to fear and mistreat what they are not, rather than learning about how an alternative experience can expand their own outlook on life.
Although humans have never had a problem being cruel and indecent to one another, the invention of the Internet brought a new playing field to anonymous harassment and abuse at the hands of strangers. Unfiltered internet forums — from 4Chan to unsupervised comment sections found on YouTube — act as a petri dish for unsolicited hate and negative attention. Most people, from close friends to distant relatives, encounter some kind of negative attention online in one way or another.
One of the great assets of modern society is the ability to get a message across to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. Think of the internet as a big forest. In National Parks, people have forest rangers and plenty of posted safety precautions. But if a hiker strays off the beaten path too far, they are lost out in the wild.
The internet can be as safe or as dangerous as a user makes it. Most people know how to safely approach an online space and protect themselves from unwanted attention. But what happens to those that don’t. The internet term “Lol Cow” refers to online creators that aren’t aware that their viewers aren’t laughing with them, but rather at them. Often starting as an unknown content creator, popular Lol Cows rise to fame by a fanbase that only wants the worst for them, repeatedly being convinced to put themselves in a position to gain more negative attention and single themselves out. Popular Lol Cows like “ChrisChan” and “Daniel Larson” have even been arrested because of how the parasitic relationship between creator and audience can erode reality for many of these unfortunate people.
It would be wrong to not mention that these same people who troll others often make the worst choices in their own lives. Many can argue that they were pushed that way by their audience or that their mental illness didn’t allow them to know right from wrong. But every individual needs to be held accountable for their own actions.
Lol Cows are nothing new to life; just their scale. Most communities have cruelly chosen somebody to leave out, but with how connected our modern age is, this type of humiliation on such a grand scale would be devastating for most. Should users take part in Lol Cows just because the butt of the joke is morally corrupt themselves? Is it okay to aim so much humiliation and negativity at those we deem evil? Or should all users remember the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have done unto you?
