A very interesting article. The general idea seems to me to be that the internet enables "satire", which in these cases is just thinly veiled lying – making things up for "laughs", which is in turn just a thinly veiled way to be very nasty and get away with it. Excerpt:
There are a few things at play here. First, words are losing their meaning, cheapened by the blather found in places like YouTube comment sections and aided by anonymity. Second, bullying has traveled from the middle school hallways of our pasts into our daily digital lives, becoming the unofficial language of the internet. And third, we no longer acknowledge the humanness of celebrities; they are larger-than-life and fair game for a death hoax. Instead of consoling the daughter of a famous comedian, we bully her on the day of his death. Instead of disagreeing with a comedian’s style of humor and moving on to something more agreeable, we wish her dead. It’s as if we’ve traded our sensitivity chips for all of the ones in our gadgets.
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