Headline June 14, 2019/ '' 'CRYBULLIES -TROLLS- CROONINGS' ''

'' 'CRYBULLIES -TROLLS- CROONINGS' ''

''MERIUM - RABO - DEE - Haleema, Saima, Zilli, Sarah, Lakshmi, Aqsa, Hussain, Shahzaib, Salar,  Bilal, Jordan, Ali, Zaeem, Reza/Canada-

Toby/China, Vishnu, Ghazi, Danyial, Anique, Haider, Reza, Imran Shahani.......and Little Angels : Maynah, Maria, Harem, Hannyia and Merium, and  the students of the entire world ''  :

''Were you ever to orient your life around money, you will never feel you have enough''. That's how David Foster Wallace puts it in that famous Kenyon commencement address.

TROLLING, CRYBULLYING and other attention grabbing tactics emerge out of a feeling of weakness, and create a climate that causes more pain, in which it is not safe to lead with vulnerability, not safe to test out ideas or do the things that create genuine companionship.

OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, - teenage suicide rates have spiked horrifically. Depression rates are surging and America's mental health overall is deteriorating.

My answer starts with technology but is really about the sort of consciousness online life induces.

When communication style changes, so do people. In 1982, the scholar Walter Ong, described the way, centuries ago, a shift from an oral to a printed culture transformed human consciousness.

Once, storytelling was a shared experience, with emphasis on proverb, parable and myth. With the onset of the printing press it becomes a more private experience, the content of that storytelling more realistic and linear.

As  L.M. Sacasas argues in the latest issue of the New Atlantis, the shift from printed to electronic communication is similarly consequential. I would say the big difference is this : Attention and affection have gone from being private bonds to being publicly traded goods..

That is, up until recently most of the attention a person received came from family and friends and pretty stable. But now most of the attention a person receives can come from far and wide and is tremendously volatile.

Sometimes your online post can go viral and get massively admired or ridiculed, while other times your post can leave you alone and completely ignored.

Communication itself once mostly collaborative, is now often competitive, with bids for affection and attention. It is also more manipulative - gestures designed to generate a response.

People ensconced in social media are more likely to be on perpetual alert: How are my ratings this moment? They are also more likely to feel that the amount of attention they are receiving is inadequate.

As David Foster Wallace puts it in the famous Kenyon commencement address. if you orient your life around money, you will never feel you have enough.

Similarly, if you orient your life around attention, you will always feel slighted. You will always feel emotionally unsafe.

New social types emerge in such a communications regime.

The most prominent new type is the troll, and in fact, Americans have elected as the commander-in-chief.

Trolls bid for attention by trying to make others feel bad. Studies of people who troll find that they score high on measures of psychopathy, sadism and narcissism.

Online media hasn't made them vicious, they're just vicious. Online has given them a platform to use viciousness to full effect.

Trolls also score high on cognitive empathy. Intellectually they understand other people's emotions and how to make them suffer. But they score low on empathy affective empathy.

They don't feel other's pain, so when they hurt you, they don't care.

Trolling is a very effective way to generate attention in a competitive, volatile attention economy. It's a way to find righteous and important, especially if you claim to be trolling on behalf of some marginalized group.

Another prominent personality type in this economy is the crybully. This is the person who takes his or her own pain and victimization and uses it to make sure every conversation revolves around himself or herself.

''This is the age of the Cry-Bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper,'' Julie Burchill wrote in The Spectator a few years ago.

The crybully starts with a genuine trauma. The terrible thing that happened naturally makes the crybully feel unsafe., self-protective and self-conscious to the point of self-absorption. The trauma makes that person concerned about self-image.

The problem comes from the subsequent need to control any situation, the failure to see the big picture, the tendency to lash out in fear and anger as a way to to fixate attention on oneself and obliterate others.

Crybullying is at the heart of many of our campus-de-platforming and censorship outrages. 

The World Students Society thanks author and researcher David Brooks for this brilliant work.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See Ya all on Facebook, and prepare to register for ''Great Global Elections'' on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Technology & Consciousness '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless