The basic reality of detaching mass communication and socialization from face-to-face communication means that normal inhibitors for all kinds of antisocial behavior are eradicated. People can’t see you, they don’t know who you are, and you can say things in online venues you’d never have the nerve or even impulse to say to people in person. Everyone you encounter is a disembodied little image or username, not fully human, and this form of social interaction makes the true substance of human connection—recognition, love—nearly impossible and replaces it with the chemically similar but wildly
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