Virtual Reality But Real Consequences

More than usual, these past few weeks in the United States have been a time of sheer idiocy. A woman tried to throw a shoe at former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Some moron placed a fake bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Bubba Watson ate at a Waffle House. But the pièce-de-résistance of this festival of stupidity must have been Twitter user @QueenDemetriax_’s contribution. On Sunday morning she tweeted the following to the American Airlines corporate account:

By Courtesy of Twitter

Within minutes, the company responded:

By Courtesy of Twitter

Despite her frantic claims that she was “kidding,” Dutch officials showed up at the Rotterdam native’s house and arrested her on the spot, drawing to a close a news story that would have been completely fruitless had it not provided me a topic to write about. For that, you and I both have @QueenDemetriax_’s unreliable frontal lobe to thank.

What this narrative seems to highlight however is not merely one girl’s lapse in judgment (especially considering dozens of teenagers followed her lead), but a larger phenomenon in which Internet users fail to associate their online actions with real-world consequences. Senseless and shortsighted uses of the Internet have led to unemployment, pedophilia, robberies, political scandals, and arrests.

By Declan P. Garvey

Back when my family didn’t take trips without me, I always used to tease my dad for telling my siblings and I not to post pictures on vacation because “you don’t know who’s going to see that we aren’t at home.” You were right, and I’m sorry (this realization has become a trend now that I’m in college). But how else was I going to score my remarkable nine Instagram likes?

Older generations have always entertained a slight distrust of new technologies, fearing the limits of their privacy. And their kids have always gotten entertainment from that distrust. “No Grandpa, Gmail isn’t asking for your birthday so they can steal your pension.” “Yes, Mom, that’s a webcam. No, Mom, the government can’t watch you through it.” Although...

But all kidding aside, maybe more Internet users need figures like my dad reminding them that there is in fact a world that exists beyond the perimeters of their various screens. One of the defining characteristics of our generation is our increasing technological proficiency and ability to master new platforms so quickly. But we’ve grown so accustomed to computers and social media that the magnitude of our online actions is forgotten. Despite what some privacy settings may claim, anything posted online is available to anyone at any time.

The Internet allows some to believe they can cleanly divorce their online persona with their day-to-day life. In social media’s early days, such a split might have been feasible. But today everyone and his mother (including my own) is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Vine (yep, she’s on all of them), and your account is merely an extension of your identity. “What I do online is my own business” or “It was only Twitter” no longer constitute valid excuses—to the public, your employer, your significant other, or anyone else. The novelty of these websites and applications has worn off, and for all intents and purposes, online postings are just as legitimate a form of communication as human interaction.

Academics who study human behavior and the brain are just now beginning to understand the cognitive impact of social media on its 1.73 billion users worldwide. Significant levels of Internet usage can lead to loneliness, jealousy, suicidality, and memory deficiency. But the most fundamental change wrought by the Internet is our unprecedented need for constant and immediate affirmation. I’ll be the first to admit, the number of likes I receive on a post has a direct impact on my mood in the short-run. After accumulating 18 favorites on some stupid tweet over winter break, I spent the rest of the day parading around my house like a king.

For those of you who dismiss the significance of this effect, I’ll leave you with this. What else could have possibly motivated @QueenDemetriax_ to hit the send button? Was she testing American Airlines’s security procedures? Is she actually the worst terrorist of all time? No, and I don’t think so. She hoped she could muster out a few favorites and maybe a retweet or two. Well @QueenDemetriax_, you got 10,000 of them, but they won’t do much for you in jail.

Declan P. Garvey ’17 is a Crimson editorial writer in Canaday Hall. His column appears on alternate Fridays.