Someone created the internet but what has the internet created?
It's often said without conviction that television will soon become obsolete due to the ubiquitousness of the internet. It may not happen in the next few years, as conventional wisdom claims, but it's inevitable to happen somewhere down the line.
Almost 75% of US households have a computer with internet access according to most recent government data. That figure has risen by 5% since 2010 unlike cable-television subscribers which have gone down from 87% of households to 83% of households during the same time.
Why is that happening? Because media on the internet is more cheaply and easily accessible and, unlike television, adds a fourth wall where the viewer can, through social media, instantly critique the program they are watching while they check their emails, catch up with friends, order takeout, and do pretty much everything else, required or desired.
Television is not the only thing that the internet is making, or has made, obsolete. Speech and actions that are considered taboo or unacceptable for public consumption can be found in abundance on the internet. Pornography, for instance, by definition is known as offensive material, but as the internet has made pornography extremely accessible to people early on in their lives. What was once known as pornography is mainstream sex now and the material that may be deemed offensive has reduced to a very fringe area within pornography.
The internet gives people, particularly men, the ability to explore within themselves what society labels as feminine without facing any repercussions due to cultural stereotypes. That practice is so common that one of Britain’s biggest dating site disclosed a few years back that most of the women looking for casual encounters on the site are actually men pretending to be women.
The anonymity of cyberspace allows people to express what they may otherwise hide. And it doesn't always has to do with sexuality.
In 2013, when the Obama administration was planning to attack Syria, many troops apparently took to the internet to express their views against the move, albeit anonymously. In full military uniform and holding posters that completely covered their faces the troops posted photos online and were basically saying that we didn't join the military to be al Qaeda’s air force against the de facto government of Syria.
The troops knew that an explicit expression of their opposition would be against their oath of enlistment and would invite warranted public criticism. A case in point is the other-than-honorable discharge of Sergeant Gary Stein after he criticized Obama on Facebook. Doing it anonymously on the internet, however, avoids it becoming a controversy which otherwise steals all the focus. The pictures were widely reported on mainstream media and shared by thousands online and added to the public discourse resulting in strengthening of the anti-war narrative.
In essence, the internet has created, and keeps on creating, a space in real life public sphere where taboo topics can live after first thriving online.
Taboo > Internet > Normalized for Public Consumption
The restrictions that the Millennial generation inherited from their parents don't really exist in their traditional sense. And as we move into an all internet media landscape - where television, radio and print are entirely obsolete or limited to the very fringe - these restrictions will continue to fade away at an even more faster pace.
How so? Discussion of taboos or speech that is unacceptable for most often results in backlash. But if done anonymously the issue then is about what is being said and not who is saying it. Take, for instance, a Trump supporter at a place where most people are against Trump or don't like his campaign rhetoric. If the supporter expresses his optimism in front of people that would naturally provoke warranted questions and in some cases backlash against that individual. The message would be lost in the judgement of that individual.
However, if the supporter puts his message down on a poster and hangs it at a crowded place chances are that most people will read and talk about the message itself. They may not agree with the message but in process of discussing it will allow the process of neutralization to begin. Same happens on the internet, which is a free-for-all-forum and a lot easier and cheap for spreading a message unlike placing a poster in a public space which is costly and time consuming. People, under anonymous or fake identities, engage on various social media platforms and online forums. Their political or social activism encourages them to talk about taboos or topics that are generally considered hate speech without fear of repercussions since their real identity is hidden and that is where it all starts.
One can argue that the rhetoric Trump has used in his debates may be an internet creation too. Had the issue of the wall along the Mexico border not existed for years on social media, Trump would have faced considerable difficulty in making the idea a signature of his campaign. A search on Twitter reveals thousands of tweets, from identifiable accounts and from accounts operating under various aliases, posted before Trump announced his run for office in June 2015 with the words Mexico, Border and Wall in them.
The reason that social media is helping Trump enormously is the fact that people will believe what they want to believe and seeing posts that is of interest to them circulate on social media and on various websites only strengthens their resolve.
A survey of several studies that overall looked at the behaviour of 350,000 people found that most of them bias their interpretation of evidence towards what they desire.
Its for that reason that the internet has been remarkable in creating spaces in real life public sphere for taboo topics.