Online Catharsis

Internet has been an avenue for so many different things nowadays – communication, sales, news, information, entertainment, and the like. Apart from these, it has also become a gateway for self expression. People posts (among many other things) there whereabouts, opinions, emotions, favorite videos and music, literary works, and pictures on their online journals, blogs, and social network sites. For some, internet has also become a medium for their catharsis – a mode to expel the bottled-up emotions of bitterness, anger, pain, and hurt within them. Although psychologists would agree that it is helpful to release negative feelings and to channel them into something else, releasing such catharsis in the internet can have serious implications, considering the want of privacy in such medium. Boyfriends posting incriminating pictures and videos of their former girlfriends and people creating ‘hate’ fan pages and fictitious accounts to tarnish reputations of people they dislike are becoming more and more rampant.

This ongoing online catharsis poses a serious problem for everyone whose privacy and security are at stake. Take for instance what I discovered when I searched for my college teacher in Google. (Yes, I think it’s common knowledge that internet is a very efficient vehicle to stalk people.) A number of websites of different Multiply accounts appeared in the results and when I accessed them, there were besmirching comments about my teacher posted on the said sites. Multiply does provide some kind of measure to regulate abusive and vulgar comments and posts – one should just have to report those accounts to the administrators of the site and tell them the reasons for such report (which I did). Though I haven’t checked yet if they have deleted the said accounts, I think that an effective regulation of comments and posts made by internet-users is still a work in progress -- a really, really long work in progress.

But anyway, just in case you feel like doing an online catharsis, I found a quite safe way to do such-- just go to http://www.ihateyoupeter.com/ -- the website makes sure that you don’t divulge the identity of anyone. Or if you’re feeling otherwise -- why not try going to http://www.iloveyoumorethanblank.com/ and let the whole world know about your love?