Online Accusations can have far greater consequences than we could imagine.

            Without class this past week I am going to use this blog to reflect on some of the new information that I have gained about the internet from this class over this semester. In the past I had always thought of the Internet as a tool that was only used for good and that only a few people misused it to do wrong. Now I know that there are dangers that I could only have ever imagined. In recent weeks we have talked about how the Internet changes the very way our brain thinks and how it can change the way we attack people. The Internet is changing the very essence of our society and making us more and more divided as it goes. The readings from this past week have highlighted this with the creation of trolls and Internet shaming. There have always been people that like to hurt people and not care, but in the past there were social consequences and it was harder to stay anonymous. Now with the advancement in technology and social media it has now become so much easier to try to hurt people and stay hidden. Social media has also amplified the amount of people that individual can reach, meaning that these people who used to only be able to hurt limited amounts of people now have unlimited amounts of people with an endless amount of topics to start arguments over. We have also always had rules that we were innocent until proven guilty but now we have a phenomenon called public shaming that has gotten completely out of hand. Overnight any small indiscretion can blow up and turn many people against a single individual with little to no proof of wrongdoing. This can have serious repercussions for the one who is being shamed from feeling targeted to worse things such as threats or losing their jobs. Overall this semester has shown me that the Internet is a far more dangerous thing than I could have ever imagined.