Rape as a meme? Then Internet as a cesspool?

Warning, this post discusses adult matter that should shock most audiences, hopefully I may add!

Again today, during my regular use of Internet on fora, I found a clear call for factual rape. A member specifically referring to an international news figure wrote that him and those that think like him should “rape her and her daughter to death”. I say again because this is not a rare occurrence. Even as a direct menace as found above, it is present in 12% of the daily Tweets and much more often than that as a “joke”, as a meme * meaning to get the better on someone or something.
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2014/01/20/this-is-your-brain-online-how-twitter-changed-the-word-rape

If you don’t believe me or Carl Miller who penned the above piece, just refer to the link below :
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=internet+use+of+the+word+rape&gbv=2&oq=internet+use+of+the+word+rape&gs_l=heirloom-hp.12…11428.11428.0.13646.1.1.0.0.0.0.120.120.0j1.1.0….0…1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..1.0.0.51-TgL3-f7Q
That the very precise query of Internet use of the word rape should garner 15, 300, 000 hits is worrisome in and of itself in my opinion. That the troll that uttered the above threat could jokingly answer my calling him a disgusting human by finding me to be a weirdo may be worse.

Let me be quite clear here : If you were standing in front of me in a public setting and said you‘d rape anyone without joking, I am sorry to say that in all likelihood, I would physically assault you. A threat to murder or rape are extremely serious things. Having been in the military and worked at security in harsh environments, I have never found the need to do so. I have partaken in violence and sadly know what I am talking about. Although common in some cultures, a death threat is in my opinion a personal casus belli : it immediately allows the receiver to attack the sender in self-defense. This likely shows me to be a violent person which I won’t deny although I have never stopped working at curbing that. This rough appraisal was necessary, I believe, to strengthen the rest of this call to reason. I am not a bleeding heart nor a pacifist. Still, a death threat is unacceptable in my honest opinion and a rape threat is just as bad. Rape is an act of hatred.
To immediately clarify this, let me say that as a man, I have never heard a normal male admit that he enjoyed difficult or hurtful sexual penetrations of a scared and crying partner. I know of people that have a preference for role play that relates to this and know sadomachism to be a relatively standard perversion. To really want this however is the mark of a psychopath.
Rape is a hate crime. At worst, its intent is to deprive the victim of its self and at “best” to take possession. It either aims to hurt or to own the other; in the least, it ignores them as humans.

On Internet, as we all know there are different levels of discussion. Some of the earliest communities were build entirely on anonymity. This warranted for the kind of uncought liberties that one would usually only indulge in with a small circle of verifiably similar-minded people, away from the crowds. Then again, an Internet community of thousands or more members does not qualify as a small circle and is more like the aforementioned crowd in which if one is to stand out they have to outdo the rest? So that excess was the way to shine and in social settings that usually comes through humor, shock, sex or violence. Using rape as a substitute for “win” or in a larger sense and very fittingly a metaphor for to overcome an opponent fitted all these categories and logically flourished. Having been using the Internet since before its inception ( all the way back to ARPANET ), I have witnessed most of the steps to today’s digital society. I can vouch that the process of its growth went through layers. What I mean by this is that the first network of professional spawned the University communities and these the first commercial mail and forums and the whole set-up gave birth to the general use of networked computerized exchanges now known as Internet without the culture of the former stratas going away. The exchange of scientific information morphed into the exchange of personal information, yes but goes on. In the same way, the habits of the first fora into the first game communities ten to 15 years later. And since in massive on-line games one is activating a persona that also has to stand out in order to garner attention and further fame and power, the bad habit of using rap to mean dominating an adversary spread. I witnessed many female gamers partake without a second thought in the use of that “expression”. In some cases, having formed real life friendships with them, I ended up “scolding” them for it in personal messages, asking them why would a woman choose to relativize the immensely immoral real action that is rape by using it loosely. If that does not convince the reader of the transfer that occurred from one level to the next, I can’t do better.
Except that of course, when a new generation came to the Internet, it only acquired the habits of the place and did as the Romans? These however did not limit their networked activities to fora and gaming as the previous one had. They soon also talked like that in school, in text messages ( SMS ) and later on Twitter. And thus the use of the meme rape spread as did that of many other unsavory expressions.

Internet is not a normal social setting. It indeed is more like a global community, more like the biosphere. That is why there is no single authority. Each community has moderators and administrators to control the members, that have to deal with the anonymity driven ruckus usually on a voluntary basis. I’ve been one myself and know their plight, my heart goes out to them. Internet is a global pool. In that global pool of information exchange, some swim and some pee just as in a normal public pool. The excrements gather at the bottom yes but as we frolic in the pool, some of them rise to the upper layer and infect the unwary swimmers. And the more we frolic, the more of the pus rises and spreads diseases. But because of the culture of the instantaneous that it encourages, Internet produces little sediments that could retain and filter the feces : Not enough silt to sift the shit? It is a shallow lake over a deep cesspool.

That is how rape, a word describing one of the oldest & worst crimes of humanity, was bandied around enough to have become common place. Which in the name of my mom, sister, the young girls in whose growth I played a role, my ex-partners in love, all other great women in my life and heck all other women in yours and in general, I find unbearable to hear calls of rape on Internet especially as a threat left unanswered by authorities. To the exclusion of fiction, unless used to describe and denounce its occurrence, it is an unacceptable outrage. And to be clear, I can only say to the unfit excuse of a man that I encountered this morning what a good one once told me on Internet after I fictitiously wronged him in a game : I would beat you up but my arms are not long enough.

I’ll go ponder if in this case it was a good or a bad thing and calm down but it won’t change my mind : Rape is not a joke no matter what the setting!

Sad and angry out, Tay

* Meme : a spreading cultural component.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme