Sylvia Wynter's Dream

The article “GLITCH RACISM: NETWORKS AS ACTORS WITHIN VERNACULAR INTERNET THEORY,” written by adelinekoh critiques the reasons behind the increase of online racist and sexist activity among the video game community. In the article, Gabriella Coleman, states in her 2013 Association of Internet Researchers keynote address that “Anonymous is depicted by the popular press as a “Hate Machine.” And Steven Marche claims that the internet is “an irreversibly central part of daily life.” But it is John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or GIFT, that provides a seemingly weak, yet an answer nonetheless as to why many individuals would express various forms of racial, sexist and other violent and offensive slurs online and in the video gaming community, while defending that it is not the people, but the network to be blamed. 

GIFT presents an argument that many individuals are usually able to suppress any behaviour that might challenge society’s morals and values, however, it seems that they enter a state similar to being intoxicated and lose their inhibitions, thus leading to their violent and offensive forms of expressions of “suppressed” thoughts of racism and sexism. 

A psychological reason behind this lies in the feeling of security of an individual being anonymous, hiding behind a pseudonym, which gives them a feeling of empowerment to say and do whatever they want to do online when they would not have done the same if they were to do so with their actual identity or to express themselves in a public setting.

Similar to the video gaming community, social media platforms also have an unhealthy amount of expression ranging from racism and sexism to forms of ignorance, entitlement, white supremacy and superiority in trends such as cancel culture, cultural appropriation and inappropriate R.I.P hashtags (#rip).

This behaviour is excused by using the network as a scapegoat. The people are not to be blamed for making remarks that will negatively affect other individuals, it is the network, the media, and the acceptance of it that enables this type of online behaviour. The blame is also placed on the games themselves as it is insinuated that the content in the games, such as the presentation of characters – female characters in revealing outfits as compared to males – and the liberal environment of characters of different racial ethnicities are treated in a variety of abusive ways without facing any repercussions, feed into the building arrogance and confidence of people becoming more verbally abusive towards each other online. The online world is their virtual reality, their escape from having to conform to societal norms and having to act in a civilized and sophisticated manner.

The article also states, “if you boycotted every place on the internet where you’ve seen a racist comment, you wouldn’t go anywhere.” However, this does not mean that this type of behaviour should be accepted or become a norm. Verbally abusive speech targeted toward another person or community is not something that should be brushed under the rug with an excuse of it just being trolling and having no meaning. As the article says, this online expression “turns racism from black to white, bleaching it clean of its overt meanings.”