Age of the Geek

Monkey say, monkey do?
     Political rallies are rapidly starting to mirror the progression of Black Friday sales. They used to be relatively civil events, but the violence is becoming more commonplace and it seems like only a matter of time before somebody gets killed.
     But who is responsible?
     Donald Trump supporters have become notorious in their treatment for protesters, cheerfully egged on by the candidate right up until the word “accountability” pops up.
     But while Trump accepts no responsibility for saying things like he’ll pay or legal fees or recalling the good old days where protesters were taken out back and beaten, he does apparently feel that Bernie Sanders holds a powerful sway over his own supporters.
     Which is fair, I suppose. While I applaud their motivations, the methods of Trump protesters leaves a lot to be desired.
     The difference, of course, is that while the disruptors at the Trump rallies are likely Sanders supporters, Sanders himself doesn’t encourage that kind of behavior (unless you count enabling it by allowing rude people to highjack his own rally). And let’s face it, you don’t strictly need to be in Bernie’s camp to dislike Donald Trump. Plenty of people would oppose Trump no matter who his opponents were.
     People like the Make America Awesome Super PAC, which recently used risqué photos of Trump’s supermodel wife against him in Utah. I have to admit, I didn’t understand the ad at first. I would have guessed it was pro-Trump, but apparently my perspective on Melania Trump’s photo shoot differs greatly from the Mormon demographic.
     Interestingly enough, Trump didn’t strike out at the Super PAC responsible. Instead, he directed his counter-attack at Ted Cruz, threatening to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife.
     As though going after family wasn’t bad enough, Trump isn’t even going after the right person. While Cruz may benefit from the ad, the Super PAC that created it is clearly in the “anybody but Trump” camp.
     It’s not fair to blame Cruz for the actions of Trump’s other enemies.
     But when does it become fair?
     Trump doesn’t have to look for beans, much less spill them himself. He has 7.21 million followers on Twitter. If one-tenth of one percent of those people decide to dig into the life of Heidi Cruz, that’s more than 7,000 pairs of eyes capable of looking for dirt and spreading it around for the world to see.
     Meanwhile, while Trump himself may have missed the mark, his supporters haven’t. Liz Mair, who runs the Super PAC that actually ran the ad, has reportedly received multiple threats from Trump supporters.
     Obviously, at the end of the day, everybody is ultimately responsible for their own actions. Any large group is going to have a tiny fraction of extremist elements that go above and beyond what’s acceptable to the rest.
     At the same time, it’s hard to deny the feeling that people with the ability to affect those elements should be held accountable when they incite others to take action on their behalf.
     But where do we draw the line?
     This happens outside of politics as well.
     Take Daisy Ridley, whose force leap to fame via Star Wars has resulted in giving her 1.5 million Instagram followers.
     You might remember a string of headlines earlier this month about Ridley “shutting down an online body shamer.” They were hard to miss as it generated more than 400 articles online.
     Still, if you’re not up to date, here’s the scoop: Somebody tagged Ridley in an image of her Star Wars character with a caption complaining about how Ridley is reinforcing unrealistic body expectations and that “real women have curves.”
     Ridley struck back with a reasonably level-headed response about how all women are “real women” no matter the shape or size. Fair enough.
     Some of her 1.5 million followers were… less diplomatic.
     But hey, whatever. It’s the Internet and people play rough. There are better people to feel sorry for than body shaming jerks who harass beloved actors.
     Here’s the kicker, and it’s the part that the bulk of entertainment media didn’t report on. Presumably because they saw something shiny and got distracted.
     The image in question was created by Lyndon Perry, a blogger who used it as part of a satirical review of the movie. Perry derived a lot of amusement over the ordeal until he realized the full extent of what happened. You see, Perry is not the one who directed the image to Ridley’s attention, nor is he the one who received the ire of her followers.
      According to Perry, that distinction belonged to a teenage European girl who had apparently made a hobby of browsing the Internet for Star Wars images and posting them to her Instagram account. As such, it’s assumed that this girl came across Perry’s image and simply filed it away with the rest of her collection. It’s unlikely that this Star Wars fan meant any offense or even understood the context of the image when she posted it. She was just doing what every Star Wars fan does and expressing her love of the series in her own way.
     That didn’t save her from being bullied off the Internet by Ridley and her self-righteous fans. You won’t find a trace of the girl’s Instagram account anymore, or much else linking to her former username.
     It breaks my heart to think of a wide-eyed Star Wars fan getting dumped on by one of her heroes in front of the whole world over a miscommunication. More important though, when Ridley responded she also put a spotlight on this girl. Within hours Internet sleuths had worked out the poor kid’s real name and the city she lived in. That’s dangerous information to have out there when the Internet has started one of its crusades.
     That’s the power of having an audience. And, as Spider-Man teaches us, with great power comes great responsibility.
     So where does that responsibility end?
     Bernie Sanders doesn’t call for people to disrupt Trump rallies, but does he have a moral obligation to discourage such behavior?
     Donald Trump skirts the line of the law with calls for violence, but is he really responsible for the actions of his angriest supporters?
     Daisy Ridley inadvertently exposed the real world identity of a teenage fangirl before shunning her off the Internet. Can something that serious be written off as an honest mistake?
     If there’s a line to be drawn, I’m not sure where it would go.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is not responsible if you decide to not waste your money on “Batman v Superman” this week.