Don’t Be Mad Online

Jan 28, 2023 - 10:46 PM

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Breathe in.

Twitter is a mind-blowingly powerful tool. It allows us to immediately access information from across the world; it’s been used to plan, execute, and broadcast protests amidst governmental oppression. It’s a million different points of information about any and all subjects in the pocket of your jeans, a place for folks to shout their opinions into the like-minded crowd or to debate (read: dunk on) someone with a different point of view from their own. Twitter, as a microcosm of social media at large, is an innovation unlike anything that has been seen in human history; a place where one can post a bad opinion about french fries or a link to a sports blog post about being Mad Online (given the choice, do the second one).

Breathe out.

I try to eschew social media on general principle. It’s so easy to tweet something in the heat of the moment; the ability to broadcast our every waking thought to the internet with no barrier makes it so easy to be reactionary, or inflammatory, or, in other words, Mad Online. I have been Mad Online before; it’s a lonely place, a place that leads to arguing with unknown and unknowable folks through a computer screen, sending and receiving wild sh*t that would never come up in a face-to-face discussion. It’s a bad look, and the sense that complete strangers somewhere in the world are laughing at you isn’t a good one. Folks that are Mad Online are a magnetic kind of spectacle, and that tends to be especially focused in the realm of college sports.

Breathe in.

People being Mad Online is a dependable traffic driver for message boards and Twitter accounts across Al Gore’s internet. That delicious bit of schadenfreude associated with stepping into a rival’s message board after a blistering defeat at the hands of the Heels might be worth it, but it bears noting that the same meltdown is driving clicks on that message board or racking up interactions on that bad opinion that someone tweeted. The hair-trigger urge to respond to an obviously fake and bad tweet about Carolina is nothing but a trap; there is nothing across the entire world of collegiate sport that is worth being Mad Online. I’ve seen a lot of our neighbors from Raleigh getting rowdy on the internet, claiming some grand conspiracy and presenting Free Throws Attempted figures as proof positive. Of what, I’m not completely sure, but the accusations of an eternally Mad Online fanbase have come across my timeline on more than one occasion as a result of Tar Heel fans responding to them.

Breathe out.

There are better uses of our time than being Mad Online. I’ve never seen an internet argument end with one person admitting that they learned something new and changed their mind; I’m not sure I’ve seen an internet argument end. Sure, folks may stop replying, but it’s an end in the same sense as the Korean War. I don’t tend to give myself access to social media during Carolina games, simply because I don’t need live reactions from strangers to something I am also watching live. If I need to vent after the game for whatever reason, I fire all my hottest takes into the safe online silo that is our Tar Heel Blog slack channel, or text my father about exactly which Duke players can step on a Lego.

Breathe in.

Meditation works for some folks, or others have found healthy ways to process anger or frustration in therapy. Some people have group chats with like-minded fans; smaller, contained echo chambers where everyone agrees that their team would have won if not for (insert conspiracy here). Some rationalize, or try to see the other side of the issue. Me, I stay offline. Kendrick Lamar once said “I grieve different,” and it’s an important reminder. Everyone processes things differently, but there is really never a good reason to be Mad Online, even when one group of college-aged kids gets to take more shots from the free throw line.

Breathe out.