Reacting to tragic news, like that of the killing of Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo, is perfectly normal, clinical psychologist Dr. Erin Thase, UC Health, said, and it’s been part of human nature for a long time.
What is new is that thanks to social media, those reactions are preserved and amplified.
Saturday’s shooting of the rare male silverback gorilla by the zoo’s Dangerous Animal Response Team, to protect the 3-year-old boy who had fallen into the Gorilla World enclosure, has unleashed a torrent of comment.
“I think people’s intention with social media is you post something with the intention that you want a reaction, right? If you didn’t want a reaction, then you wouldn’t post it on social media, so I think a lot of time people post with the intention of having some kind of response, even if it can be negative,” Thase, with UC Health, told our news partner WCPO-TV.
Before Facebook and Twitter and even email, those conversations would happen in person. And, Thase said, there was perhaps a greater level of self-restraint.
But with the partial or total anonymity of the Internet, “you don’t necessarily have the repercussions of having to really have that social interaction and make eye contact and have that emotional response from somebody that you may not necessarily agree with,” she said.
Thase also points to a viral aspect at play when people say something others may find questionable or even outrageous: “Everyone wants to be the expert, because if you’re the first to say it or you have that tweet that becomes famous or if you have that Facebook comment that gets put on the news or gets streamed somewhere, then you have that instant recognition. You have a little bit of fame to it.”
But as a psychologist who encourages people to talk openly about their feelings, Thase said she couldn’t necessarily condemn people for expressing themselves or fault them for where they stand.
“When it’s face to face, we don’t necessarily tell a person you’re wrong or you should never say that again,” she said. “We kind of respect the fact that maybe if we don’t agree, you’re still expressing yourself. It’s hard with social media, for the most part, because that lives on… If it’s a post, it lives on as long for as people want to comment on it, or retweet it or put it again on Facebook.”
Thase reminds that people should consider the ramifications of their comments.
“I think you have to trust that people who are professionals make the right decisions and that we are all put in situations that are not our best moments,” she said. “To make huge judgments about those moments, about organizations or about people is not fair because none of us really know unless we are put in that situation.”
