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8/7/2013 8:13:44 AM
4
What's your problem with empathy?
Let's scroll through that thread regarding the girl who recently committed suicide over ask.fm.
The thread essentially a bunch kids saying "I have no sympathy for her or for any victims of bullying/cyberbullying" or "she deserved it", "I feel nothing for her".. You get the point.
Put aside that the girl was cyber bullied, for the purposes of this thread that is irrelevant. She was driven to the point of suicide. Why do you [i]not[/i] feel some level of empathy for this kid? None of you have gone without having feelings hurt or your insecurities exposed, so what is it that prevents you from being able to empathize with her? Are you that out of touch with your emotions?
Now, let's look at the Flood and Internet on a bigger picture. ANY story posted about an emotionally damaged person is met with similar replies. I saw it on posts about Ariel Castro's victims, towards Trayvon Martin, basically anyone who's suffered.
My belief is that people try so hard to distance themselves from their emotion that they truly lose the ability to empathize. They believe emotions are signs of weakness and they're already insecure(everyone is), so the last thing they want to be seen as is "weak".
I don't think this is a conscious decision either, the people who do this are those described in the quote above. They are looking for people to release the pressure of their insecurities on. Unfortunately for them, this doesn't work, but they think it does, and thus the cycle repeats. Their real problems are never solved, so they continue to be a hardass online.
Of course this doesn't apply to all of you. Some of you are generally openhearted people, which I commend you for, because the internet can be a tough place.
What are your thoughts towards the Internet's general lack of empathy? Why do you believe this persists?
[spoiler]No, I'm not trying to change anything. I know what to expect out of the internet. That doesn't mean I understand why anonymity gives us such a power complex when being an asshole solves absolutely nothing.
And yes, some people are generally assholes, but assholes aren't banned from empathizing either.[/spoiler]
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Fun fact: 1 out of every 25 people in the world is a sociopath.
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4 RepliesEdited by Chad Quibs : 8/7/2013 8:20:47 AMI don't understand that quote, the only thing I can logic is that the person who is treating the other badly is too much of a coward to reach out and get help and instead abuses other people to make them feel better, but then both parties would be cowards as neither of them are dealing with their problems and it just turns into a domino effect of sad D: Oh and my stance on empathy is that I'm just not a really emotional person :p I don't see it as weakness really, well I guess kind of as I find it better to just fix my problems instead of panic over them but I don't look down on people for it, so I do have empathy, but I just help people instead of telling them it's going to be okay, as that will only help them for a little bit :p
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I don't want to generalise but many people who say those kind of reactions haven't been bullied toouch. [spoiler]Im not saying that's everyone.[/spoiler] The sympathetic people (In my experience) are the ones who have been through that experience and know what it's like.
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Bla bla bla. For me, it's not a lack of empathy, it's a lack of interest, and an acknowledgement that there's a process called "natural selection" that, while cruel, does indeed occur, and I'm not going to pretend like it doesn't in an effort to seem caring or empathetic.
