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The term digital dehumanization might sound obscure. It surely sounds bad, and referring to the dark side of the internet makes it worse. But what do we mean by digital dehumanization, and what does the internet have to do with it?

The term dehumanization refers to the process of depriving a person or a group of persons the qualities of being human. Take a look at my article on zombies and dehumanization. I wrote back then:

The thoroughly disturbing aspect in all this is the concept of Dehumanization. If you’re interested, read Jonathan Glover’s Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century to see how it works. Basically, you convince a group of people – normal, everyday people like you and me – that another group of people are not really humans. Then, it becomes far easier to convince the first group to turn on the second. This is how the Holocaust happened, this is how Hiroshima happened, this is how My Lai, Bosnia, and Rwanda happened.

Let’s begin to unpack the process of digital dehumanization – a dehumanization process occurring digitally, on the internet – with a little hypothetical scenario. It will perhaps set up the tone for today’s article.

An Allegory of not so Digital Dehumanization

Imagine you’re in a pub, enjoying some beer with a group of people. Some of them you might know better than others, some you might not know at all.

At some point, a guy whom you don’t know makes a comment you strongly disagree with. It could be a mildly sexist or racist remark – not aggressive, perhaps, but still off-putting. Perhaps the man says something like “I think black people overreact about police brutality”.

Now, imagine that you’re standing up and you begin shouting at that person, telling him to go fuck himself, at the same time drawing the attention of other tables at the pub. You tell this man he needs to apologize to everyone in that pub, then you leave the table, without listening much further.

Then, you go straight to the bar and ask the bartender about that guy. You find out he’s working as, say, a postal worker. You phone at his work place the next day, say what happened, and you try to get him fired.

Digital Dehumanization: Reality Check

This hypothetical scenario above surely sounds ludicrous to you – at least I hope it does. I can’t expect anyone who’s not a sociopath to behave like that.

And yet that’s exactly what so many people do on the internet.

Internet “discussions” (they’re not) have some unusual characteristics, in the sense that they clearly diverge from face-to-face behavior.

Non-Verbal Communication Is Absent

Face-to-face communication involves a complex series of non-verbal communication which allows you to detect subtle hues.Body language such as one’s posture, the way they move their fingers, or the way they look at you while talking, allows you to form a subconscious (or even conscious) knowledge of their mental state.

This usually adds to your understanding of one’s motives, which is hugely important to articulating an appropriate reaction. If someone appears uncertain or timid, you would not usually respond in an angered or arrogant manner (unless if you’re cruel and self-righteous).

The Benefit of the Doubt Is also Absent

Usually, when you speak to someone face-to-face, you subconsciously try to think the best about a situation or a person. This is a result of accountability and the desire to maintain harmony.

In other words, when we’re talking with someone face-to-face, we tend to be more willing to concede that s/he meant something different, perhaps not as harsh as we initially thought. It’s also easier to clarify matters immediately, too, by expressing our concerns directly.

Herd Mentality, Echo Chambers, the Bandwagon Fallacy

A crucial aspect of internet communication is its chain-reaction properties. Due to the potential for massive participation, with untold thousands of people following and participating in, say, a Twitter argument, there is a clear danger of losing perspective.

As I have mentioned before, in my article on why writers should stay away from Twitter, online discussions tend to become inflammatory because they occur in environments where peer pressure doesn’t allow one to take a step back.

Digital Dehumanization Is a Jekyll-and-Hyde Phenomenon

Just because you don’t see a person on the other side of a tweet or a forum message, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Behind the words there is a human being, with aspirations, fears, desires, and opinions. Forgetting that (or pretending that you do) is to dehumanize them. And this process of digital dehumanization is a precursor of abusive behavior.

It becomes far easier to lose perspective and control once you no longer accept the other side as a human. Remember the pub allegory, further above. It would seem (I strongly hope) unthinkable that you would react in the way described simply over what someone said.

The thing is, digital dehumanization on the internet is a Jekyll-and-Hyde phenomenon. Anonymity and the herd mentality of the internet facilitates the emergence of a different personaNot to go to deep into psychology, but talking about emergence inevitably implies the feeling is repressed (this can be a valid reading of the original Jekyll story, too.

In other words, people who become excessively aggressive and confrontational on the internet, might be repressing such feelings in their everyday life, too..

Avoiding Digital Dehumanization

How does one avoid dehumanizing others on the internet? It’s simple, yet also complex. It’s simple once you know, but knowing it is the complex part.

In other words, it’s a process requiring self-reflection and looking one’s self in the mirror.

If one were confrontational on the internet, taking advantage of anonymity, I’d tell them to ask themselves whether they felt frustrated in their everyday life.

Is there an employer or colleague giving them trouble but they couldn’t seem to find the way to bring it up? Were they in an unhappy relationship but they didn’t know how to break free?

It’s easy to take one’s frustration on some random person, and even easier when that person is not seen as human. I’d like to believe we can be better than that.