The Politics of Kindness online: “Bring Back Empathy!”
Source: Unsplash
Opinion Piece
With winter comes a lack of motivation. The chill in the air combined with the onset of work has meant that I have been spending more time than I should online. But not for my enjoyment.
Doomscrolling - previously a quick fix of dopamine and a cure for boredom, now leaves me feeling increasingly more miserable. What once was a favourite pastime, has now become a source of frustration.
It took some reflection to understand why. What I found is that it isn’t just me - everyone is miserable and spreading their miserableness all over the internet. And I know, people are mean - what a revelation! But what’s intriguing is the dissonance between this behaviour and our generation’s reputation for tolerance.
Historically, every generation has sought to radically change the world given to them. From the Panthers’ movements to the feminist waves of the 20th and 21st century, each era of young people has aimed to challenge and change societal norms.
Gen Z is no different, knighted as the progressive, woke, hyper-empathetic snowflakes that are here to cure racism. Our rise to prominence in the public sphere was marked by being exceptionally forward-thinking, due to our supposed commitment to social justice, inclusivity, and environmental consciousness.
Being kinder and less bigoted than those who came before us is not a terrible thing to be known for, but where did this reputation come from? And how accurate is it?
2020 arguably solidified this perception. Not only was the debate around COVID-19 separating the world, but various protests alongside the US election produced a societal uprising from the comfort of our own homes.
And the initial enthusiasm and passion for these causes was palpable. ‘Cancel culture’, a tool for holding individuals and institutions accountable, seemed omnipresent, and social justice issues took centre stage.
However, in the past couple of years, there has been a noticeable shift. The fervour of ‘woke warriors’ active in 2024 appears to have waned, despite how much everyone likes to pretend it hasn’t. The once-vibrant social justice movement has cooled and relocated away from the mainstream. This raises an interesting question: are we truly as progressive as we think we are, or has this veneer merely obscured underlying issues?
This shift is accompanied by an alarming increase of hatred present on social media. This isn’t a new phenomenon - cringe culture is an epidemic that has been permeating the internet for the past few years. However, it is now compounded by a disturbing trend of outright hostility from Gen Z.
Opening a comment section on TikTok feels like being thrown into a battleground. If people see a video of you having fun, enjoying yourself, or God forbid, being happy, they will try their best to make sure that doesn’t persist. And if the comment section doesn’t look like a bloodied massacre, people will question why the original poster is not being flooded with abuse.
The problem extends beyond mere criticism. Social media has just provided another way to be any and all of the ‘-ist’s and ‘-phobic’s one could think of without repercussions. People calling each other ‘acoustic’ or ‘restarted’, self-identifying as a ‘hater’, spelling out slurs by using different adjectives that start with the same letters.
It makes me feel like I’m going insane. This sentiment is, luckily, shared by others. One TikTok user, @user61178203, posted, “Gonna be honest some of you guys are so online that you haven’t noticed it yet, but you’ve become just really mean.” The post received over 500,000 likes, with people commenting about how the normalisation of cyber bullying is becoming scary.
“Bring back empathy,” one user stated.
We can recognise this issue but have not done anything about it. Some commenters stated their own prejudices make them upset. “Everyone is so mean nowadays including me.”
Source: Unsplash
Modern social media algorithms are designed to keep users engaged by delivering content that aligns with their existing beliefs and interests. This creates echo chambers where users are almost exclusively shown content that reinforces specific views based on previous interactions. This effect is amplified by the anonymity provided by the internet, which can embolden individuals to express extreme opinions they may not voice in public, real-life settings.
What I think has changed between now and four years ago was what quarantine provided - a space to express yourself without judgement, even if in retrospect it didn’t align with your current identity. Adolescence is the time to discover yourself, but if even semi-publicly expressed, you are prone to the unabashed, unfiltered opinions of complete strangers. What once was seen as an earnest attempt at self-expression or political engagement - is now dismissed as nothing more than naïveté.