The Internet is an Angry Place

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The Internet is a very angry place. I’m not talking about vicious right wing bloggers, or fanboys screaming about console/format wars. Those are to be expected. Rather, I’m talking about the online population in general, rather than trolls, and about things not just isolated to the trivial. Angry knee-jerk responses are becoming more and more common, and sometimes it’s enough to disturb me. This is something I’ve blogged about before – my entry on Don’t Obey Kneejerk Reactions back in April. Here’s another example of recent kneejerk hatred that shocked me enough that I want to say something.

Here, we have this Digg post: My Christian daughter says I’m going to hell. This Digg entry links to an advice column, where a non-Christian man’s 13 year old daughter has been taken to an evangelical Christian church for her whole life by her mother. As a result, the daughter is very religious, believes deeply in Christianity, and thinks her non-Christian father is going to hell. He himself thinks this religious stuff is damaging his child, and doesn’t know what to do about it. The columnist responds with a poor analogy to sports, and then advises him to go to church with his daughter, to not try to bring her over to his beliefs but rather to try to better understand her, become more involved in her life. The columnist advises that 13 is the wrong age to be trying to debate religion with his child, and rather he should just try to be a good parent at this time. Go to her church, talk to the priests, give her peace of mind and worry about who is right and who is wrong when she is older.

This advice makes sense to me. It’s very hard to argue with anybody about something they believe in deeply, much less a 13 year old girl. The columnist isn’t advising him to suck it up and turn Christian, she’s telling him to put things aside for now – trying to do anything will only damage his relationship with his daughter, and it’s more important to put her at ease and worry about this religion stuff later. I’m not sure I’d really agree with it, but does seem like a reasonable course of action. I’d like to note that I am not Christian or religious myself, however, I have a generally positive attitude toward religion and specifically Christianity, if not organized religion. Some of the smartest and kindest people I’ve been privileged to know in my life have been very religious.

So, what did the Internet population at large (as represented by Digg) think of this? Let’s see a sampling of comments.

“Why on Earth would somebody who does not believe in God have a kid with an Evangelical? Yikes!”
“He should scare his daughter and make her read Leviticus, then tell her that she’s going to hell too. Has she ever eaten shrimp? Does she wear clothing of mixed fibers? Has she ever spoken aloud in a church? Sorry bitch, but all of those are “abominations unto God” and will send your little ass straight to hell.”
“I figured Dad’s answer should be ‘If I don’t worship your god I have to suffer eternally? That sounds like terrorism to me.’”
“Just make sure you tell your daughter her mom is going to hell as well because she married a non-believer, had his child, and then got divorced. That will really make her feel awesome.”
“‘If you go get brainwashed too, you will better understand your daughter’ (paraphrased of course)”

There are a few isolated voices of reason, but most comments are pretty much along these lines. I didn’t even quote some of the more outrageous ones for reasons of length. So, apparently, the average Digg user believes that 1. If you are not an evangelical Christian, it is completely insane to fall in love with one and 2. The correct way to deal with your religious 13 year old daughter who fears that you are going to hell is to tell her that she and her mother are also going to hell. Parenting? Understanding? Those things are stupid, Christianity is evil!

I truly hope these people are all young teenagers themselves or something, because if this is way the adults of tomorrow think, it’s going to be a sad future.

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