Hate Trends on Social Media




Human emotion has been the central topic of many videos, songs and articles - both online and in hard print, simply because everyone can relate to it.

Since "we're only humans," we inevitably react from one emotion to another and it feels good when some movie directors, song composers or article writers are able to tap into our hearts like they know us personally.

Love, hope, dream, inspiration -- these are just some of the positive emotions that humans should be thankful to have as these set aside our species from other known life forms and these also draw the main difference between living and merely existing.

On social media -- a place where everyone experiences total freedom of expression, it seems -- we see people share their wonderful experiences of happiness, love and affection. 

While most people can relate to these positive moments in life, there are a few who would react adversely, possibly because they do not share the same experiences, that they're in an entirely different situation.

Differences like these cause the negative reactions and allow negative emotions to proliferate and as members of the more intelligent species, we ought to close this gap by using a positive product of our emotions - understanding.




"You might not be able to choose how you feel but you can choose how you react," I remember my high school teacher saying this, referring to how we acknowledge unfortunate or inimical situations. The trick is to take a pause before reacting to situations, take time to think things through - to be smarter than the situation itself.

The same line of thinking can be used on social media.

We have seen on the world wide web - and we will continue to see - the most bizarre and surprising reactions in the form of a Facebook comment, a tweet, a hashtag or a hate video.

Recently, just a few days after the Brexit vote, a video of teenagers were shown verbally abusing a tram passenger, just because the latter doesn't look and speak like a traditional English man.

Also, just this week, a guy in Singapore has been arrested for publishing fabricated online stories, that were deliberately instilling hate on foreigners in the city-state.

In addition, a recent Miss Earth participant had been receiving mockery for her answer in the Q&A portion of the pageant.

While some are seriously airing much anger and antagonism simply because of differences in beliefs -- and this doesn't just apply to religion -- some have decided to troll around by putting a seemingly smart yet badass response to posts, most of the time just to get minimal attention.



There's already so much hate around as seen on news recently -- the Orlando shootings (at the gay nightclub and Chistina Grimmie's), the Istanbul airport attack, Trump vs Clinton camps, fan bases discounting one another -- the last thing we want to give the future generations would be more hate.

While we may have no authority nor power over the ISIS, we can definitely stop hate proliferation starting from our own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

So before reacting in a vile manner to a post from someone you hardly know (also from people you actually know), let's try to pause and maybe ask ourselves "is it worth it?" or "would anyone benefit from this remark?"

Better yet, try to understand where the sender of the comment was coming from - try to gap your differences in opinion. Opinions tend to clash, anyway, but there is a smart way to have opposing opinions blend harmoniously.

Negative emotions, especially hate, have ever been attracting vast reactions but instead of feeding hate with more hatred, we can try two things: (1) to understand, and (2) to let go.

"Change is coming" has been the new president's slogan. And we all know that real change starts from within.

Peace cannot exist with all the hate around. If we are driving for the proverbial world peace, certainly there are things that we can do to contribute. The question is, which side would you want to contribute to?




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