TED | 当网络上的言语攻击失控时

演讲简介

 

在很长一段时间里，乔恩·朗森都为推特的一个功能喝彩：让无处诉说之人可以发声。社交媒体平台让每个人都能畅所欲言，对看到的不公正奋起反击。但不久后，情况直转而下。这是一次慷慨激昂的演讲，朗森向我们展示了一种现象：很多时候我们在网上的发言都以乱喷收场——我们是时候好好反思一下应该如何同他人进行线上互动了。

 

 

 

演讲精彩片段（节选）欣赏

 

So why did we do it? I think some people were genuinely upset, but I think for other people, it’s because Twitter is basically a mutual approval machine. We surround ourselves with people who feel the same way we do, and we approve each other, and that’s a really good feeling. And if somebody gets in the way, we screen them out. And do you know what that’s the opposite of? It’s the opposite of democracy. We wanted to show that we cared about people dying of AIDS in Africa. Our desire to be seen to become passionate is what led us to commit this profoundly un-compassionate act. As Meghan O’Gieblyn wrote in the Boston Review, “This isn’t social justice. It’s a cathartic alternative.”

我们为什么会做出这样的行为的呢？依我之见，有的人确实是因为被冒犯了，但更多的人是因为推特本是个互相恭维的工具。我们只允许志同道合的人在周围出现，我们互相恭维，感觉好极了。遇到意见不一的，我们就轰走他们。知道这种行为与什么对立吗？与民主对立。我们想对非洲濒临死亡的艾滋病人表达关怀。我们太过急于表现自己的同情心，结果却导致了如此缺乏同情心的举动。像梅根·奥吉布林在《波士顿评论》上写到：“这根本不是社会正义。这是一种宣泄。”

 

For the past three years, I’ve been going around the world meeting people like Justine Sacco - and believe me, there’s alot of people like Justine Sacco. There’s more every day. And we want to think they’re fine, but they're not fine. The people I met were mangled. They talked to me about depression, and anxiety and insomnia and suicidal thoughts. One woman I talked to, who also told a joke that landed badly, she stayed home fora year and a half. Before that, she worked with adults with learning difficulties, and was apparently really good at her job.

在过去的三年，我走遍世界，走访多位和贾丝婷·萨科有一样遭遇的人说实话，这样的人还真不少。每天都有更多同样遭遇的。我们都倾向于相信他们没事，但事实并非如此。每一个人都深受伤害。他们说自己感到抑郁，焦虑、失眠，甚至想过自杀。其中一位女士，也是因为开了个玩笑，最后悲剧收场她把自己关在家里足足一年半。之前她的职业是帮助有学习障碍的成年人，并且是个相当称职的人。

 

Justine was fired, of course, because social media demanded it. But it was worse than that. She was losing herself. She was waking up in the middle of the night, forgetting who she was. She was got because she was perceived to have misused her privilege. And of course, that’s a much better thing to get people for than the things we used to get people for, like having children out of wedlock. But the phrase “misuse of privilege” is becoming a free pass to tear apart pretty much anybody we choose to. It’s becoming a devalued term, and it’s making us lose our capacity for empathy and for distinguishing between serious and unserious transgressions.

毫无疑问，贾丝婷把工作丢了，因为这是社交媒体上的民意。但更糟的是，她逐渐迷失了自己。有时她半夜醒来，竟然不记得自己是谁。人们把她揪出来，是因为她肆无忌惮秀优越。这比起其他的原因大概好很多吧。从前我们把人揪出来是因为未婚先孕。但“秀优越”一词已经成了一张通用票，用来打压任何一个我们想打压的人。这词已变得毫无价值，让我们失去同情的能力，失去区分严重过错和无心之失的能力。

 

Justine had 170 Twitter followers, and so to make it work, she had to be fictionalized. Word got around that she was the daughter the mining billionaire Desmond Sacco. [Let us not be fooled by#Justine Sacco her father is a SA mining billionaire. She’s not sorry. And neither is her father.] I thought that was true about Justine, until I met her at a bar, and I asked her about her billionaire father, and she said, “My father sells carpets.”

贾丝婷的推特粉丝只有170名，因此，想让大家点赞，她得编个精彩的故事。有传言说她是矿业大亨德斯蒙德·萨科的女儿。[别让#贾丝婷·萨科给耍了，她老爸是SA矿业的亿万富翁。她不会后悔。她老爸也不会.]我也以为贾丝婷真是富家女。直到我在酒吧同她见面，问她富翁爸爸的事儿，她说：“我爸是卖地毯的。”

 

And I think back on the early days of Twitter, when people would admit shameful secrets about themselves, and other people would say, “Oh my God, I’m exactly the same.” These days, the hunt is on for people’s shameful secrets. You can lead a good, ethical life,but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all, become a clue to your secret inner evil.

我回想起推特刚上线的时候，那时人们还会随意爆一些自己的丑事，其他人就会说，“天啊，我跟你一样。”现在呢，人人都在抓别人的丑事。你本来生活无忧无虑，但若在推文中说错了只言片语，一切就都完了，人们恨不得将你打入十八层地狱。

 

Maybe there’s two types of people in the world: those people who favor humans over ideology, and those people who favor ideology over humans. I favor humans over ideology, but right now, the ideologues are winning, and they’re creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas where everybody’s either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain,even though we know that’s not true about our fellow humans.

也许这世界有两种人：一种人相信人性高于意识形态，一种人相信意识形态高于人性。我属于前者，但眼下，后者正占据上风，这些人正在搭建一个舞台，不停上演一出大戏，戏里的人不是威猛英雄，就是猥琐坏人，即使大家都明白其实人不是这样的。

 

What’s true is that we are clever and stupid; what’s true is that we’re grey areas. The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people, but we’re now creating a surveillance society, where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.

真实的现实是我们既聪明又愚蠢：真实的现实是我们都处于灰色地带。社交媒体的好处是它能为无处发声的人提供一个发言的平台，而现在呢，我们搞出了个间谍社会，要想生存就得噤若寒蝉。