Internet and Hate

Written by Frank Li

This post was triggered by this article: Time: How Trolls Are Running the Internet. I like Joel Stein and have been reading his weekly column (in Time) for years, always with caution though (Brainwashing in Communism and in Democracy). But I must admit that I agree with this recent article of his 100%!

In this post, I will add my extra two cents, from an angle totally different from Joel’s …

1. Background

With two books and 300 articles out, I consider myself a serious author. I could not have done it without the Internet. The Internet is great!

Today, everybody and anybody can publish a book, thanks to self-publishing (e.g. @Amazon.com). But as always, selling remains the biggest challenge.

How about selling via the Internet as well?

Here is what I have experimented:

1. About three years ago, I joined a discussion forum at IBD-Editorial.
2. Recently, I joined several Trump-support groups in Facebook.

Let me elaborate my experience on each …

2. IBD-Editorial’s discussion forum

IBD (www.investors.com/politics/) is a very reputable publication, with several of my favorite conservative authors (e.g. Thomas Sowell and George Will) publishing weekly.

Unfortunately, the IBD-Editorial’s discussion forum was too democratic to be any good, with a few mobs ruling all the time. Specifically,

1. About 20 folks dominated it daily. Few of them had real ideas about anything – They were just loud, with mostly negative things to say, all the time!
2. I was one of the few voices of reason, but was not met with reason, at all.

After a few months of experimentation, I left. Today, that forum no longer exists – IBD shut it down for lack of value, I guess …

3. Trump-support groups in Facebook

I officially endorsed Trump on March 2, 2016 (Okay, It’s Donald Trump!). In late April, I started using Facebook as a marketing tool by joining 20 Trump-support groups (the bigger, the better) at a time.

Here is a summary of my experience with many Trump-support groups:

1. They are all alike, with the same news stories, same slogans (e.g. “Go Trump” and “Lock her up”), and even the same people appearing in multiple groups! All might have helped Trump win the GOP nomination, but none is helping Trump win in November, which will be determined by the 10% swing voters in the middle – These sites have zero appeal to the swing voters!
2. A site is dominated by several folks, with a big site by about 20. Few of them have real ideas about anything – They are just loud, with mostly negative things to say, all the time (just like the IBD-Editorial forum)!
3. I simply post my weekly publications, without much participation in any discussion. Each post (not the publication in the link) receives 2-3 “likes”, before it is pushed down in the stack and disappears. The publication in the link remains rarely read.
4. The caption image is everything! With a nice caption image, I might double the “likes” (i.e. from 2-3 to 4-6), with the publication in the link still remaining rarely read.
5. With one post of controversy (e.g. America: Stop Islam Bashing!), I might get booted. When that happens, I just pick up another site to make up the 20.

Here is one exception: I became a “moderator” in one of the biggest sites, which allowed me to “pin” my posts. A pinned post stays as the first post on the entry page of the site, thus attracting more eye balls.

Better yet, this site gave me one whole week (from July 31 to August 6) to pin my posts, thus differentiating itself from the crowd, supposedly. Here is the result:

1. Each post, with a nice caption image, received, on average, about 10 “likes”, with the publication in the link still remaining rarely read though.
2. With one comment of reason (see below), I was booted!

Do you folks really know what you are talking about (Pope Francis At White House: “Koran And Holy Bible Are The Same”)? How can you bash Pope like that? Do you really think you are more Christian than Pope? Do you really want to turn the Catholic world as well as the Islam world against us?

4. Summary

Joel Klein has put it really well: we are “losing the Internet to the culture of hate … Tyranny of the mob!”

It’s astonishing to see the amount of bashing on the Internet (e.g. candidates bashing, Islam bashing, and even Pope bashing), all in the name of free speech, with a twist of “only if I like†in censorship!

It’s time for us all to realize that and do something about it before it’s too late!

5. Closing

The Internet is a great thing! But it has also proven to be hugely destructive, not only in America, but also in the Mideast (see the video below).