Ursula Muñoz Schaefer/ Contributing Writer
On Tuesday, Oct. 16, the University was rocked with another controversy when our chapter of the right-wing political group Turning Point USA came under fire because of a leaked group chat that showed vile and disturbing content under the guise of “jokes.”
After PantherNOW covered the scandal and shared the article on Facebook, it was unsurprisingly met with a barrage of complaints and video footage from the group’s regional manager Driena Sixto, who thought exposing blubbering Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter president Andy Vila’s weird anti-capitalist ramblings would somehow excuse her own group’s deplorable behavior.
I can’t believe I’m about to use this obnoxious scenario as a cautionary tale, but it has to be said: how naïve do you have to be to freely and openly declare that you want “the capitalists to get their heads cut off” with a phone pointing right at you?
How credulous do you have to be to share atrocious illustrations depicting xenophobic rape jokes and express your desire to “aggressively grapple Latinas and deport them” in an open chat without the slightest feeling of unease that people will find out and there will be consequences to your words and actions?
Pushing aside the troubling implications of our university’s dubious tolerance towards hate speech, there’s also an important lesson to be learned about how careless we can be when it comes to social media.
A 2015 New York Times article argues that a big difference between Millennials and the Generation Z — those born between 1996 and 2010 –, is the newer generation’s greater understanding of the importance of social media privacy.
“While the millennial generation infamously pioneered the Facebook beer-bong selfie, many in Generation Z have embraced later, anonymous social media platforms like Secret or Whisper, as well as Snapchat, where any incriminating images disappear almost instantly,” writer Alex Williams explained pointing to Millenials’ supposed carelessness online as a cause of why this younger generation of “digital natives” seems to favor anonymity.
And while that may be true, I can’t help but think that many of us have become too trusting of these platforms to weigh the consequences of oversharing.
Even in if you’re unable to download a picture from someone else’s Instagram account and even if your Snapchat story disappears after a couple of seconds, there’s a thing called the “screenshot.”
Having a cartoon profile picture on WhatsApp and being under an anonymous username won’t save you when your professor finds out you’ve been using the class group chat to upload pre-written essays in exchange for money.
It’s not that I pity those who get caught misbehaving, but for goodness’ sake, I’ve been in group chats for classes of almost 200 students, and come across many a shirtless mirror selfie that I did not ask to see. Even if you’re not worried about your own safety, keep that to yourself!
In all seriousness though, you should be worried about your own safety.
Last year’s cyberstalking report from business and marketing website Brandon Gaille shows that 29% of teens in the United States have been cyberstalked at least once by someone who they described as a complete stranger, and while email is the most common form of cyberstalking, 22% of victims report an escalation of the stalking happening on Facebook.
This could be attributed to the fact that 63% of Facebook profiles are visible to the public. The report even says that “some privacy settings may allow cyberstalkers to see more information than Facebook friends are able to see.”
Other venues for an escalation in cyberstalking include text messages and phone calls.
Perhaps most worrisome, it is reported that 55% of teens will share personal information with the general public on social media without putting any privacy settings in place.
Hopefully, we can all learn to be more cautious when it comes to sharing personal thoughts and information online.
As for the Turning point scandal, I don’t mean to give racists any safety tips, but maybe it’s for the best that they lay low where we can’t see or hear from them any longer.
DISCLAIMER:
The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of PantherNOW Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.
Photo by Robin Worrall on Unsplash
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