Social media and bloodless deaths
(Baonghean.vn) - Of course, life is not as glamorous as the selfies on the internet. But don't let the bloodlust take you too far in the bloodless war of social networks. Bloodless does not mean painless.
A media crisis is always a nightmare for business people, especially in an era where even a small incident like a mosquito can be easily blown up into an elephant by the media.
Recently, a luxury resort in Phan Thiet was criticized enough to build several more facilities after a famous youtuber filmed a clip reviewing the receptionist's poor service attitude and intention to cheat and rip off customers. Immediately, fans of this youtuber simultaneously searched for the resort's page and voted for 1 star quality, causing the resort to be devastated and had to close its page before the "meteor shower". In this case, perhaps calling it a comet storm would be enough to describe the extent of the damage.
But the story does not stop there, after this resort "disappeared" on social networks, the keyboard forces seemed to have no place to vent, so they turned to attacking all hotels and resorts with the same name or similar names. Even a hotel with the same name but located in... Japan was unfairly "shot" when a series of Vietnamese netizens voted for 1 star quality. Even more ironically, an English teaching center in Ho Chi Minh City is also crying out for being "attacked" just because it has the same name as the resort in the incident. Who knows how far the wave of anger from keyboard heroes will take them when another youtuber, after expressing his personal opinion on this incident, is also being targeted. My condolences to him and his chain of bakeries, even though no one has reviewed it, it is still voted 1 star as usual...
From a media perspective, this incident is a typical example of crowd behavior in the digital media environment. Encouraged by the so-called “online community”, reassured by the ability to hide their true identities behind their computer or phone screens, internet users tend to react more strongly, faster and sometimes more extreme to news and social phenomena. Their motivation can be emotional in the form of supporting the viewpoint or imitating the behavior of the person they admire. This is the case with fans and it is this psychology that makes celebrities - Influencers, KOLs - influential. But crowd motivation can also come from the desire to represent and enforce justice. Superhero movies combined with dissatisfaction with social injustices have sown in the crowd the seeds of hope for a real superhero. It just so happens that social media gives them the power to become heroes. Or at least they think so.
The question is, who will play the villain when everyone chooses to play the hero? The desire to express themselves, to be heard and acknowledged turns keyboard warriors into bombs waiting for an excuse to explode. They need a bad husband to attack, a home-destroying whore to despise, a pedophile to loathe, a pack of dogs that bite people to kill them hundreds of thousands of times in all the horrible ways their imagination can think of. Never before have I seen life as scary and ugly as the way people make it out to be on social media. And then when I turn off my computer screen and walk out the door, I am surprised to find that I have not died in a breath or a step.
Of course, life isn’t as glamorous as the selfies on social media. But don’t let the bloodlust carry you too far in the bloodless war of social media. Bloodless doesn’t mean painless.