Day 322 Question 322:
Is the Internet more good than evil or more evil than good?
So I have been hooked into the television show called Catfish. It is a spin off a documentary called Catfish which reveals the story of being deceived on the Internet. I watched the documentary about a year ago so of course I had to check out the show. The premise of both the documentary and the show are people meeting people online and falling in love with them and being completely deceived. The people that they fall in love with are not who they say they are….in one episode a young girl falls in love with a guy and after 6+ months of talking she wants to meet him but he keeps making excuses. When finally confronted with the situation it turned out to be a young girl on the other end of all of the lovey dovey emails. It was absolutely shocking to me as a viewer but I cannot imagine what it felt like as the person being completely deceived.
The Internet is this massive tool full of pertinent information that can be so useful but it can always be a terrifying communication tool. It amazes me that people can hide behind a screen and develop a character that is the complete opposite of who they are. I had been talking to a guy online and we were planning to meet and the night we were going to meet I got held up late at work and asked if we could reschedule to the weekend. Through both text message and online he proceeded to call me stupid and told me her understood why I was in my 30’s and not married with no children. He continued on harassing me by being a complete dick until I finally had to block his number and his email. I am not concerned about it because I did not give him any personal information but it can be pretty terrifying to think about how someone could turn into something completely different than what you expected. People can dig (and it doesn’t even need to be deep) and find out all kinds of information about you and use it against you or use it to bully you. Bullies aren’t only young people nowadays.
The Internet can be a great source for knowledge and initiating and building relationships but if used with malicious intent (which happens probably more than we realize) it can be a weapon of destruction. To my readers, do you have any stories to share about your Internet experiences…either positive or negative???
It's a New Day... 
Sad but true. The internet is a huge tool for all forms of manipulation. People can only give what they have and manifest who they are.
My hope is that internet users develop themselves in honesty and fill themselves with good intentions.
Imbibing selflessness and discarding selfishness gives us a better chance of making positive impact.
Genuine love makes all the difference.
Quite thoughtful of you to have posted your observations.
I also regret about such negative passion online. On the other hand, internet is a lovely tool to deliver kindness online. You know we are often encouraged by brogrolls and even someone completely new by comments. May goods and many evils. Wish goods would exceed evils.
Reblogged this on O LADO ESCURO DA LUA.
I happened to have watched that program last night for the first time (did see the movie) and I was left feeling very sad for both parties. The person being deceived has a huge level of disappointment at being betrayed and the person doing the deceiving has to have such a level of desperation and insecurity.
Hey, they can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true.
Where did I hear that? On the internet!
I looooove that commercial 🙂
the internet is obviously a double-edged sword. it might be a matter of how well you protect yourself. i had a company – not an individual – use my credit card and charge me a few hundred dollars. i got it all back, but they somehow got my info from an internet purchase. i’ve had someone copy my picture off the internet and use it to create a phony facebook page, pretending to be me, and then causing personal problems for me. yet, it’s allowed me to share my writing, read the writings of others, and other positive things. so – i don’t think there’s an answer to your question. it’s all an individual, case-by-case situation.