Heads up: I will be talking about things that others may find triggering below the cut.  If you are sensitive to antisemitism, give this blog a skip.

Online communities are a dangerous force.  (They are also both a part of the media AND media consumers and absolutely count as a week 2 initiative post)

Don’t get me wrong, I love the internet.  I am literally on the internet right now!  A majority of my time, as sad as it sounds, is spent on the internet (I’m in a media course this is now called ‘research’).  I have been provided the opportunity to learn from and about people on the other side of the planet.  It is an incredibly helpful learning tool, and an incredibly powerful tool for connection.
Teenagers who get made fun of for being nerds in high school are able to log on to Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and countless other sites and see that millions of others are going through the same thing.  People who are big fans of obscure movies/books/tv shows/music/sporting events are able to find each other and discuss, theorize, and argue until their hearts are content.

However these communities can have an incredibly damaging effect, especially on younger or more vulnerable people.
Take, for example, the Pewdiepie incident.  Pewdiepie used an online connection tool to find two young men to be in an online video.  He had these men say pro-nazi/antisemitic things, and posted the video to his over 50 million YouTube followers.
The backlash was massive.  Disney dropped their contract with him as a result of an investigation done by the Wall Street Journal into this video.

The bigger backlash in this story, however, was the reaction of Pewdiepie’s fans.  His audience, made up of mostly 10-29 year old men, were enraged over his loss of contract.  They cried out in drones ‘it was just a joke’.  Even people who didn’t know of Pewdiepie agreed with this statement.  And, in all honesty, it was ‘just a joke’.  But, in the internet age, where people can find like-minded individuals in an instant, these acts won’t always be taken as a joke.  In recent years, there has been a massive rise in the number of nazi’s, neo-nazi’s, and ‘alt right’ people in the open.  A big part of this is the internet, where you can find multiple pro-nazi groups on every social media site.  When a nazi see’s Pewdiepie’s content (especially a person who is younger and easier to influence), they see recognition; that what they are doing and what they believe in is right.  And when you consider that assaults directly linked to antisemitism have risen dramatically, you can see that this is not ‘just a joke’ for these people.

I’m using nazism as my example because it is literally the most horrible thing I can think of, but there are other negative online communities that may be more common.  I am a Tumblr user and for a long time, one of the major communities was ‘lifters’, people who would blog about shoplifting and give each other tips about how to get the most stuff/most expensive stuff and how to not get caught.  Stealing is a crime, and this is an online community outwardly bragging about committing it.

The people in these communities are the exact same as the people who are in the Harry Potter community for example.  They were people with a ‘out there’ belief or hobby, and found like minded individuals that won’t judge them like the real world.  The only difference is that these people took this idea the extreme.
See, online communities not only help people find others that think like them, but also help to cement these ideas.  If you are a nazi who logs online to find 50 million people who support nazism, you are far less likely to change your mind, and you stop seeking out other opinions, even if the other ~7 billion people on the planet disagree.  If you post ‘I just shoplifted $500 worth of underwear’ and the first comment you get is ‘Wow that’s incredible how’d you do it???’ then you’re going to feel validated.  You’re going to feel smart.  You’re going to feel right.  

So how do we fix this?
The main reason that these people, and many others, feel comfortable posting about such things is anonymity.  The police and the law itself is very far behind on these types of issues.  If you go to the police because you have been receiving anonymous death threats, they often don’t know what to do and you’ll be told to ignore the problem until it goes away.
This clearly doesn’t help the people who get hurt by these anonymous people.  The only way to fix this problem is serious reform.

But this has already happened, multiple times, and still nothing changes.  With technology developing as quickly as it has been, I don’t hold much hope for online communities to get much better.
My advice: stick to online communities like Harry Potter, football, and beauty.  And if you see something disturbing, report it.  Eventually, we will have a safer online space for the young and the vulnerable.  (Or we’ll go down the full on, world wide dystopia route we’re heading down now.)

An interesting article: http://jezebel.com/the-cops-dont-care-about-violent-online-threats-what-d-1682577343