Losing Control: What Technology Is Doing To Our Social Skills

You know, people never cease to amaze me -- even after 30 years of doing this job. But there seems to be a growing anger and animosity among TV viewers these days.
Case in point, last Friday night: it had been a long and hot week. Everyone was kicking back Friday evening to watch a little television. Our meteorologist Nance’ Burgin was keeping an eye on a couple of storms moving southeast just outside the eastern counties in our viewing area. Just before six o’clock, those storms took a turn to the South-Southwest and things began to rapidly develop from there.
At about 6:50 or so, the first severe weather bulletins went out and as we always do when severe weather threatens, we cut into our regularly-scheduled program to update viewers in the path of the storm. But this was no ordinary storm. It was rapidly growing in intensity. We got a call from a viewer in Rising Star reporting golf ball-to-baseball-size hail. Within moments it had increased in size to softball to grapefruit. Torrential rains and high straight line winds were also being reported. Weather people will tell you that the size of the hail is a good indicator of just how severe a storm is: the larger the hail, the more dangerous the storm (and it doesn’t have to be that big!).
This storm was erupting so quickly that Nance’ was having to do cut-ins every three or four minutes, interrupting TV shows as she did so. That got a lot of people angry and they called the station to express their displeasure. Did I say “displeasure”? Let’s call it what it was: “outrage”.
Now, for the record, please understand that we don’t like cutting into people’s television shows. When we do, they usually get very angry and say some pretty mean things to us. It’s okay -- we understand. And you know what: if it was a show I was interested in, I’d be angry, too. But this was more than just anger. As I said, it was “outrage”. Let me tell you something, when people are that mad, they don’t want to get into a discussion with you about it. They are ready to physically assault you!
What astounded me was the level of anger and how it was expressed. I think an unusual phenomenon is taking place in the world: we have been blogging and texting so long that our “dark side” is beginning to take over whenever we get mad. We get on the telephone and talk to people with the same “hateful” tone and language we express when we blog total strangers. When did we as a race of human beings stop being a “kinder, gentler” people? Maybe we never were and just tricked ourselves into believing that we were somehow better than people who only know how to hate. Maybe it's a bi-product of having to deal with machines all day, unable to interact with another human being. Friday night, it was like watching Jesus being condemned by the crowds shouting “Crucify him!” It was like watching a pack of snarling, attack dogs.
Of course, when these calls come in, the faceless people who make them never tell you who they are. When you’re anonymous you don’t have to worry about accountability for your actions. It’s an interesting behavior and one that social scientists should take a closer look at.

Downing Bolls