Internet ranting only goes so far

DA Staf

Jul 1, 2015

Life in the digital age has made many activities unquestionably simpler. Sites used for shopping,
communication, knowledge and entertainment are available right at our fingertips at all times.
Because of the Internet, details about current happenings are broadcast worldwide as soon as
events begin to unfold.
Everyone can chime in on the newest hot discussion simply by turning on their smartphone. Its
very easy to post your opinion online and do little else to impact the world or put change in
motion.
While starting discussions and furthering existing ones via Internet is an efective step in inciting
change, without people going out into the world and putting their ideas into action, many issues
could easily be unresolved.

It is also due to the Internet that people worldwide are being informed about activist Bree
Newsome. Deeply unsettled by the racially-motivated murder of nine black churchgoers during
the Charleston Massacre, Newsome, a well-established activist, scaled a flagpole in Columbia,
S.C., in full climbing gear and took down the Confederate flag that flew over the capitol. Aided by
James Ian Tyson, a white man who spotted her while she climbed the flagpole, Newsome
intended to make a statement about how current racial boundaries can be overcome with the
tireless work of black activists and their white allies.
Upon returning to the ground with the flag, Newsome and her spotter were promptly arrested,
but the two had prepared for this to happen while planning the demonstration and calmly
allowed themselves to be handcufed and escorted of the
premises.
The flag was once again placed atop the flagpole less than an hour later, but Newsomes display
of bravery and civil disobedience was seen by enough people to breathe new life into the
discussion on the racial divide in America. Many people took to social media to voice their
support of Newsome and Tysons actions. It didnt take long for crowdfunding eforts to begin in
order to collect donations in support of the two. One simple act that could have easily gone
unnoticed by media was picked up in a frenzy of Internet activity.
Newsomes courageous and ambitious display should serve as a reminder to everyone,
especially the young adults of the student community, that there are still a great deal of things
we can fight to change. While it is easy to assume young people arent in possession of much
power or agency, Newsomes history of activism and the outpouring of support subsequently
displayed across the Internet are a reminder that one act of solidarity can bring about change in
the minds of millions.
This editorial board believes our generation has the luxury of utilizing a tool that those seeking
social justice in the past did not have access to and with the aid of the Internet, our voices and
our impact can be magnified exponentially.

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BY ELLEN ROLFES February 28, 2014 at 3:03 PM EDT

Can the online rant help manage anger? Photo by Flickr User Stefan 1981.

Its hard to mistake the Internet rant, often characterized by

its run-on sentences, inflammatory remarks, capital letters
and liberal use of the exclamation point. Often rooted in a
heightened level of expressed emotion, uncensored anger or
frustration, the rant is accessible to anyone armed with a
computer keyboard and an Internet connection.
We wanted to know what are these Internet ranters really
after? And does ranting bring them closer to their goal?

As a moderator of the cyber publication

and forum TELECOM Digest, Bill Horne has read at least a
thousand digital rants. One of his duties is to filter out the
typical complaint from the rant. The rant, he said, rarely
makes the cut.
I have had ample opportunity to watch others being burned
at the electronic stake as they abandon logic, courtesy,
common sense and self-respect, Horne said.
But there are plenty of places in cyberspace where people
can express their wrath uncensored, from Twitter and
Facebook to sites dedicated exclusively to ranting.
Many who write rants say they do it to feel less angry the
written outburst calms them.
In 2010, Leo Choi, a self-professed ranter himself, started a
website called D-rant.com, an online forum that exclusively
publishes anonymous rants. His goal: to provide a safe place
for people to vent, without consequences. He contacted
several anger management clinics and asked them to
promote his website to their clients. (Fair warning: this site
contains objectionable language and subject matter.) Having
an outlet to air feelings can be helpful for people, he said.
Ryan Martin, a psychology professor at University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay, found the opposite to be true. The

emotional relief, his research showed, is only temporary.

People experienced a downward shift in mood after reading
rants, and after writing rants, they became more angry, not
less. The study was published in the journal Cyberpsychology,
Behavior and Social Networking in February 2013.
Also from their research: ranting is linked to fighting, both
physically and verbally. By surveying visitors of rant sites,
they found that those who rant online are more likely to
experience consequences of their anger in the real world,
averaging nearly one physical fight per month and more than
two verbal fights per month. Because of the limitations of the
surveys methodology, its unclear which comes first
physical aggression or virtual aggression but Martin
suspects the two feed off each other.
They express their anger badly, which is why they are on a
rant site, and being on a rant site encourages them to
continue expressing their anger badly, Martin said.
When some people rant, it opens up a Pandoras box,
said John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University,
who studies human behavior online. He said there is no way
to predict whether ranting will even have the temporary
emotional relief that ranters say they seek.
They (could) discover even deeper layers of frustration and
hostility. When people rant, it leads to feelings of shame and
guilt about being so angry and out of control. For many
people, ranting is a dead end. It goes nowhere.
Choi believes his website can provide a starting point to help
people deal with unwieldy emotions. Still, he says he often
doubts that site users are taking the next steps to deal with
their anger in adaptive ways.

Misunderstandings, confusion and misplaced anger are also

common in rants.
When you are talking about something in a purely written
context, Martin said, it becomes harder to infer emotions.
Sarcasm gets missed.
Horne describes this recent online dialogue: When he read a
rant that poked fun at the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation
of Cherokee people, and joked about what it called a secret
government order, he became enraged. He thought the
writer of the rant was white and making fun of the deaths of
thousands of Native Americans.
Horne wrote to the ranter in a private message:
According to my familys oral history, my great-great-great
grandmother walked the trail of tears. My father was on the
Cherokee rolls, so I know that theres a good chance its true.
The secret government order you received was the idea
that genocide is funny, and that its OK as long as white men
do it to somebody else. They probably mixed it in with your
Wheaties.
The ranters response surprised Horne:
Im Cherokee on my mothers side, and Blackfoot on my
fathers side. Being quick to offend has started more wars
than bullets have.
It wasnt the first time Horne regretted a rant submission.
When ranters mistake sarcasm for genuine belief, flame wars
can ignite. The regret comes, Horne said, two milliseconds

after that you press the Send key, because sometimes you
just know that wasnt something that you wanted to say.
I (have) had posts that I thought were lucid, which others
labeled as rants. And I think to myself, Oh dear, did I really
say that?'
Two-thirds of the rant-site users who responded to Martins
survey said they appreciated when people commented on
their rants, indicating that ranters seek an audience, and a
response.
Unlike the physical world, where yelling in someones face is
not likely to yield a positive response, online, people can be
rewarded for their expressions of anger receiving likes,
favorites, retweets and comments or responses to their rant.
Suler says rant sites have created an unprecedented culture
for anger, frustration and hostilities. In a way, it does
become a spectator sport where people try to compete with
each other, while others watch the show.
More than half of Martins survey participants said they read
rants as entertainment. That doesnt surprise Horne. He said
he enjoys reading them as amusement, in a fascination-ofthe-abomination kind of way.
Ranters reach increases when they post their angry thoughts
on social media rather than discussion forums or rant sites.
People can target their rants to their like-minded friends and
yell figuratively louder as a group. In December 2013, when
cable network A&E cancelled the reality TV show Duck
Dynasty, one of the stars made anti-gay comments in a
GQ interview Martin saw one such mob of ranters form.

I watched with fascination as an angry, online mob gathered

their pitchforks and went after A&E, non-Christians, and
liberals, Martin wrote in a post on the science-of-anger blog,
All the Rage. In this case, Martin observed, the ranters
werent trying to appease or convert people to their position;
they were only interested in finding other people who felt
exactly as they did.
Researchers who analyzed millions of posts on Weibo, a
Twitter-like platform used in China, discovered that angry
posts were shared more widely and more quickly than any
other emotion.
I think that people are responding more quickly to that kind
of emotional expression. And so people feel rewarded for that
kind of thing, Martin said.
Its not that anger isnt a valuable emotion, he added.
Emotions are the bodys way of telling us things, of letting
us know, in the case of anger, that we have been wronged or
that there is a problem.
The problem, Suler said, is that the ranting is an ineffective
and probably negative way to express that anger.
The expression of anger only has long-term, positive
consequences when we understand the roots of the anger,
Suler said. And when we set out to resolve the conflicts we
have with other people, and within ourselves.