“Dylan Hesp is awesome. LOL jks he’s a slut” is an all-too-common thing to see on Facebook these days, (OK maybe not about myself, but Facebook pages similar to this appear all over Facebook). They are 'Like' pages which are used to publicly insult others: commonly known as hate pages.
We’ve all seen them, whether they use a ‘lol jks’ or not. There are plenty of this sort and if you’re in high school, you may even know somebody who’s been on the receiving end of a hate page. But it shouldn’t be this way.
The way these pages are just passed around like it’s no big deal is disgusting. People like away not realising the harm it does to people. Actually most people do realise and that’s what makes it so terrible. These pages shouldn’t exist, so why do they?
First of all, it comes down to a problem of people not being able to handle conflict properly. And when I say conflict you’re probably thinking a punch up is in order, but that’s not what I mean. I mean talking to the other person, in person, with the purpose of resolving the problem in mind. Instead of resolving the problem properly people want to take the weak option and insult people - and insult them in a way that doesn’t come back to them. Creating hate pages is not just anonymous bullying, it’s attempting to build a following, a tribe against other people.. And that’s terrible.
Sure we have to realise that some people in life just aren’t very nice, some people do mouth us, but that doesn’t mean that they deserve to have an internet following against them. There’s an old saying that says ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ and it’s so true. Retaliating against someone else's actions against us doesn’t fix the situation – in fact it makes it worse. Retaliating doesn’t make us a better person than the other, it just makes us equally as bad. Retaliating is a slippery slope. There are far too many Facebook conversations that occur between people that are full of false threats and “you did this and you did that”, and they just gradually come to involve more and more people.
We shouldn’t have to retaliate against people. If people say something against you that isn’t true, you don’t have to defend yourself. When you think about it, why should you? Retaliating isn’t going to change their minds and your friends aren’t going to believe it because they know you. So what are you proving by retaliating? A big fat nothing.
Our security in ourselves shouldn’t come down to what people who don’t know us well say about us. We shouldn’t feel that we have to defend ourselves against false claims and hurtful and untrue remarks, because at the end of the day, you’re just taking the bait and you’re sinking to their level. Stooping to their low. And you’re better than that.
So if you are creating pages against someone or liking them (which, by the way, is just as bad as creating one yourself) then really you’re just taking the weak option. I’m not saying that you should go out and punch somebody in the face because that’s still retaliating; instead, don’t rely on what other people say about you. If you can, try to resolve the situation properly with both parties best interests in mind..
Facebook hate pages represent a human failure to resolve conflict properly and it’s not a new issue, it’s shrouded us for years and years, but hate pages have just brought this problem into a digital and anonymous setting, and together I think we should do what we can to see their demise. No one deserves to have a hate page about themselves no matter what they’ve done. After all, we’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all done something wrong. How would you feel if one of those moments was brought to life on Facebook with 300 likes?
Hate pages shouldn’t exist, whether they’re there because of retaliation or just a ‘joke’. No excuse is good enough. So I encourage you, if you’re creating these pages, stop it, because no retaliation makes anything better and when we like a hate page, we’re just as much to blame as the person who made it.
