What causes us to be so callous on the internet?

All the major news sites recently had live streaming footage of a home made hot air balloon that contained a six year old boy, hurtling through the air, and quite possibly toward his death. And yet on Twitter amid the shocked reactions were updates from people who found it hilarious, and who made callous jokes about a child in a frightening situation.

It turned out the child was safe at home, and not in the balloon. But that’s a whole other story.

Most of us have come across the same callous type of reactions popping up on the internet in relation to actual tragedies. Many posts have been made about anonymity on the web allowing people to be rude or callous, but on Twitter and FaceBook the same callousness is often apparent even when anonymity doesn’t figure.

What exactly is the nature of these types of reactions? Would the same people find the same event humourous if it was their next door neighbour’s child, their nephew, or their own child – or is it the disconnect from immediate reality that allows them to find the humour in the situation?

Perhaps it’s the nature of the medium – on the internet there is no emotion inherent in a story. On television, or radio, the humanity of the newscaster may invest emotion in the story that we can react to. On the internet it is often plain text. On Twitter it’s 140 characters of plain text, nothing else, bar the odd emoticon.

Colorado #BalloonBoy – sibling saw the boy get into the balloon. door was unlocked. no one there when it landed. *

Or is it the sheer volume of tragedies we are exposed to? How long ago was it when if it wasn’t reported in traditional media we didn’t hear about it. Now, we hear about everything, and even the traditional media has gone 24hour – we have 24hour news channels, and they have websites, not to mention the effect blogs and social media have on our exposure to information. As part of that informational deluge comes tragedy after tragedy from around the globe.

How can we afford to be emotionally invested in each tragedy we are exposed to? Are callous reactions on the internet a symptom of our inability to cope with the sheer volume of tragedy we are potentially exposed to?

If we were to react in an emotionally appropriate manner to each tragedy that we were exposed to, then surely before long it would have a serious impact on our daily lives. If that is the case, then what number of tragedies can we afford to acknowledge emotionally before an impact is noticeable and how do we begin to select the tragedies that deserve our empathy? How do we measure tragedy appropriately – particularly tragedy we have no personal connection to?

Balloon Boy caught my own attention due to the fact that it bore some similarity to nightmares I had when I was younger, if it weren’t for that simple personal connection I might have ignored it. I would not have gone so far as to post callous updates on Twitter, but how callous would my lack of concern have been?

In conversation with John Blackbourn just after the boy was found alive and well, he pointed out this tweet to me:

Someone should do a study on all today’s #balloonboy tweets, just for the terrible things it would reveal about humanity.
@permanent4

I’m curious to hear your thoughts.