Facebook Is Overwhelmed By A Wave Of Violence? - Society

Last week, Facebook was filled with messages with the hashtag # I'm afraid to tell. This action has many supporters who believe that it helps both survivors of violence and potential victims, who will be warned about the dangers and, if something happens, will not be afraid to tell about it. However, there are opponents who argue that such flash mobs are either useless or even harmful, because they increase mistrust and fear in society. And what do psychologists think about the action?

Yuri Prokopenko

Any flash mob is a manifestation of crowd psychology, albeit in virtuality. Loss of personality, dissolution in the crowd, following the leaders and so on, described by psychoanalysts, are all there, in full bloom. A lot of people are predisposed to this dissolution, very many only in the crowd begin to feel like a person (having finally lost it), someone follows the lead of the crowd, gradually accepting its attitudes, although initially there was no predisposition, but for someone it is a way of making money …

So here too: for many, the opportunity to speak frankly about a painful situation is a blessing. Someone exaggerates their former suffering in order to "be like everyone else", to dissolve in the crowd. Someone is drooling, reading other people's revelations. Someone does business out of other people's suffering or other people's fantasies. To each his own.

From the point of view of a professional, when you read the afftor's revelations, which throughout life was raped in different cities and countries by men of different races and professions, with or without reason, the questions arise not to “this cruel world of men”, but to the woman herself. Professional questions. And at the end of the published revelation, without surprise, you see the promise of support in a difficult situation with the indication of the phone number … Did the girl feel better? Perhaps, but not for long. For those who have read, has it become easier? Doubtful; rather harder, except for those who copy the letter to themselves and masturbate over it. Those who have added their own phone - they definitely got something from someone else's "glory".

So a flash mob is a slippery concept, especially on a negative topic.

Boris Zubkov

Do I think it's a flash mob? # I'm afraid to say? - perhaps one of the most interesting and useful multiplayer promotions. And that's why:

• 1. Expressing (public or not) traumatic experiences improves all parameters of a person's health. For more than 30 years, experiments have been carried out that prove that verbal expression of traumatic experiences benefits people. Blood was taken from people for markers of various inflammatory processes. Studies have shown that after people described their negative experiences, many of their indicators improved, that is, it had a beneficial effect on their health. We can say that those who have spoken out will simply get sick less in the next six months (or more).
• 2. Also, after unpleasant incidents, a person may not understand why this happened. But the verbalization process helps to understand the situation.
• 3. This action improves empathy and many other socially useful parameters. Those who participated or at least were neutral about this flash mob made the environment a little kinder and safer.

Therefore, I believe that such a flash mob is beneficial.

Boris Novozhderkin

Everything seems to be correct, but two things confuse me a lot:

• If you need a flash mob to help yourself, should you shout to the whole world that you have ceased to be a victim? Will not all this lead to a protest-teenage "return"?
• If a flash mob is needed to help others, won't such frankness drive into even larger complexes those for whom the situation of violence is not in the past, but in the present - “Others can even publicly, but I’m afraid to think about it”?

The human psyche is not so flat as to be fooled by such "flash mobs" …

Reading posts on this topic, I come across about the same level of aggression towards each other, as recently about the events in Russia and Ukraine. The feeling that they began to "cool down" a little and, at the slightest reason, rushed in search of new "projective enemies."

I think the problem is much deeper, and sexual violence against a woman is just one of the forms of the violence that a person has been subjected to from time immemorial by the state and the authorities as a whole (in different countries it is different, think for yourself). And it is precisely these impulses crushed and endlessly altered by the "Stockholm syndrome" that people will now massively react.

It is noteworthy that the reaction is still going on in the same "Stockholm" channel: aggression is directed not at all at the real rapists and villains, but at each other.

In any case, think ten times about what is worth doing in public space and what is not. When journalists with experience in radio and TV do something like this, they are very good at calculating their risks. When they urge others to do this, it is not help, but a setup.

And keep in mind that auto-aggression, reacted to the wrong address, always returns again in the form of a feeling of guilt, which only spins the devil's “guilt-aggression” flywheel and leads to an increase in the level of violence in general.

The only question that I cannot yet answer for myself is in what proportions the process of natural structuring of the new world that is emerging before our eyes correlates with the intent of the same old scoundrels who act according to the principles of "divide and conquer" and "from a sore head to a healthy one. ".

A little more psychological educational program.

The victim of violence inevitably experiences feelings of guilt. Not being able to stand up for herself in the moment of violence, she “draws in” the aggression that could help her in this. It is this aggression redirected to oneself (psychologists call it "auto-aggression") that is experienced by a person as an irrational feeling of guilt. And after that, he begins to select for himself various logical explanations, as if he himself did something wrong. Rather, he chooses these explanations not so much for himself as for others, so as not to feel guilty even for the complete illogicality of his condition.

Now imagine that everyone around him begins to show him by their own examples that he must not only stop feeling the guilt that he is currently experiencing, but also be able to openly write about everything in public space - after all, others could! It is hardly possible to think of something more sophisticated so that a person finally withdraws into himself.

Before you write your frank texts about what happened to you many years ago and what you have already dealt with in one way or another, think about those who can read it, being “inside” the situation right now. Think seriously, not at the level of clichés: "Frank speaking always helps!"

Photo: © gualtiero boffi / Photobank Lori / PantherMedia