Age of the Geek: Vocal minority report

    Captain America is a Hydra spy and always has been.
    At least that’s what writer Nick Spencer wants you to believe after reading the first issue of “Captain America: Steve Rogers,” which hit shelves a couple weeks ago.
    The details aren’t entirely clear, but it appears Captain America’s history has been rewritten to turn him into a Nazi loving double agent.
    The only thing more absurd than that premise is the reaction it has invoked. In spite of the fact that Captain America has, in just the last decade, been dead and turned into an elderly man (in that order), and come out of both changes no worse for ware, a surprising number of people seem to think that this is the shocking twist that will change the character forever.
    It won’t, but some people don’t realize this. So now Spencer is receiving the same kind of grief not seen since the last time somebody at Marvel made a huge change to a beloved character. Which, of course, includes a number of death threats.
    Death threats over silly things are hardly uncommon on the internet. As Spencer was dealing with the fallout from his Captain America reveal, game developer Sean Murray had the misfortune of telling an overly eager audience that the upcoming game, “No Man’s Sky,” had been delayed.
    That’s right. Death threats over the relatively common practice of delaying a video game. People can get really passionate about things.
    Outside of pop culture, we see similar behavior in politics. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have very little in common when it comes to their political platform, but both have attracted a contingent of, let’s say “spirited” supporters. Ones that feel perfectly comfortable sucker punching black kids or harassing super delegates with 2 a.m. phone calls. (Hillary Clinton seems to have avoided this problem by going to great lengths to ensure nobody gets too excited about her campaign.)
    Late night phone calls aren’t reserved for national politics either. Before voting down the economic package that would have facilitated the Prestage pork plant in Mason City, the city council members shared their displeasure with the behavior of some of the project’s opponents. Specifically, the ones that called their jobs and yelled at their co-workers.
    Who does this? What’s happening here?
    Is society crumbling? Are we all just meaner than we used to be? Have we always been like this and is the internet just exposing how bad we’ve always been?
    Not really. No.
    While the internet has made it easier for the worst among us to spread their toxic messages, these people should not be taken as representatives of the whole. The amount of attention we give to outliers is more of a problem than the outliers themselves. Overreacting to an overreaction has a multiplicative effect.
    Sometimes it’s a matter of laziness. A couple of internet trolls decide to lay out some bait for the media and the next thing you know “Racist Fans Boycott Star Wars” is trending across the web. Not because there was actually a legitimate movement, but because it’s easier to play a game of internet telephone than doing any investigative legwork.
    Other times, it’s a deliberate effort to push a narrative. When the video games journalism industry was caught with their pants down two years ago, sparking the ongoing Gamergate controversy, they were quick to label their detractors as sexists, racists, terrorists, and any other label they could think of to deflect attention away from their own failings.
    Extreme examples may make for entertaining reading, but they don’t serve well to represent the whole.
    The few Captain America fans that sent death threats to Nick Spencer don’t represent the people who merely think the idea is dumb.
    The few gamers that sent threats to Sean Murray are vastly outnumbered by the ones who expressed sentiments of support and understanding.
    Not all Donald Trump supporters are racists.
    Not all Bernie Sanders supporters are idiots.
    And while plenty of people have their concerns about the Prestage project, they should not be collectively represented by the guy incoherently yelling at the Mason City Chamber of Commerce about squirrels.
    I’m not saying that the outliers aren’t worthy of notice or discussion, but it’s important to put them in the proper context. Oddly enough, it seems like the more we try to lump people together, the more divided we get.
    Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and thinks there’s enough idiocy and hate in the world without manufacturing more.