The Hate Model and Twitter Wars

Twitter has transformed itself from merely sharing mundane things to a platform for discussion. Issues regarding politics, economics, education, etc are often, and more often than not efficiently, discussed in social networking sites. However, as much as some people want social networking sites to be a stage for intellectual discourse, we can not avoid the chance that some people will hate a person specifically because of where the person stands and opines. 

In the past few days or weeks, I have been a witness to several Twitfolks being attacked by haters. The blogger Chuvaness (Cecile Van Sraten in real life; @jiritajackson in Twitter) was attacked by tweets from a woman based in Australia. The reason: Chuvaness is not buying the Piolo-KC relationship. Then we have Noemi Dado (aka @momblogger) and a certain @RAndRat were bombarded with hate tweets from the fans of Manny Pacquiao after the two inquired about the absence of the congressman in the Plenary Session. Twitter has been a vital medium to express their opinions and to clarify things, but what is disturbing (and in fact unavoidable) is that haters tend to resort to ad hominem attacks rather than keep their opinions in a logical manner.

So what interests me is how haters hate. So what I did is that I ran a search in Google and I bumped into this interesting article which tackles about The Seven-Stage Hate Model. Below is the summary of the Model: 

1. Haters gather- irrational haters do not hate alone. They hate because there are at least other people who hate irrationality. This reveals insecurity.

2. The Hate Group defines it self- "Hate groups, especially skinhead groups, usually incorporate some form of self-sacrifice, which allows haters to willingly jeopardize their well-being for the greater good of the cause"

3. The Hate Group disparages the target-  Haters think that they are better than the target. 

4. The Hate Group taunts the target- Time tends to tame the hate but this tendency often yields to introspection. To avoid this, haters need to fuel the hate further which explains their taunting. 

5. The Hate Group attacks the target without weapons- On this stage, the hate level grows in a increasing rate. The outlet for the hate for this stage is mostly concentrated verbally. With this, haters tend to separate themselves further from the society.

6. The Hate Group attacks the target with weapons- Violence is seen in this stage. Haters torture the target further and in turn backfires to them by separating themselves further from the society.

7. The Hate Group destroys the target- This is the ultimate goal of haters. However, as much as the hater destroyed the hated, the hater also suffers destruction physically or psychologically.

Twitter wars are less violent. More often than not, although we don't dispel the possibility, social network wars are not ending up in violence. The verbal nature of Twitter makes it easier to ignore haters but they tend to multiply themselves in forms of other people or fake accounts. What is irritating is that personal attacks are used as a weapon to destroy. At the end of the day, however, the one who knows what to say and says it in a socially acceptable manner stays. Haters usually ended up being blocked or reported as spam.

PS. Stop the hate. READ.