Áilín Quinlan: Decent Ireland has been lost, to horde of keyboard warriors

Have we been innately nasty all along, and just done a bloody good job of hiding it - or are we just plain cowardly, ignorant, and stupid?

I mean us. The Irish, born in what used to be the Land of Saints and Scholars.

We need to start taking a serious look at ourselves.

Because that traditional decency and good-natured slagging we’re so proud of has morphed into something infinitely closer to sheer nasty.

And when I say nasty, I mean real, deep-down rotten. Vicious. Personal. Cruel. Utterly lacking in compassion.

Or else, of course, we’re just cowardly, ignorant and stupid.

Cowardly because we seem to revel in cruel, mocking, vicious, and often devastating personal comments about people online that we’d never dream of saying to anyone face-to-face.

Ignorant because we may be ignorant of (despite all the publicity) the potentially deeply damaging effects of those toxic comments we so casually hurl at other people from our keyboards.

Or plain stupid (a) because somehow we can’t either seem able to visualise how we’d feel ourselves if someone did the same thing to us or take on board the warnings about the real-life personal effects of online bullying - the destruction of another person’s self-esteem, the depression, self-harming, and, yes, the suicides that have resulted from the nastiness and derision meted out at people online.

Also stupid because (b) by triumphantly engaging in this online viciousness, we are witlessly normalising a lack of empathy, a casual cruelty, and the absence of accountability for the next generation – who are seeing our lack of compassion in practice every day on social media.

Anyone who raises their head above the parapet in this country gets it in the neck on social media from members of the Great Irish Public these days; politicians, sexual assault victims, schoolchildren, gardaí, reality show contestants, the families of homicide victims, teenagers, writers, actors, teachers, TV presenters, commentators of any kind; you name it. Everyone is fair game.

The ugly commentary about some of the contestants on The Traitors Ireland became so deeply personal and unpleasant that Kevin McGahern, host of the companion series Traitor Uncloaked was inspired to remind the public that these were real people.

Acknowledging that we all love a bit of friendly slagging, he asked those making the cruel comments to please refrain from the spiteful name-calling and the mean-spirited remarks.

All of this - and Andrew Tate’s input notwithstanding, but we can’t blame him for everything – has created an environment devoid of compassion but full of judgement and harmful negative commentary.

It’s turned into a form of repression.

We used to blame the church, communism or lack of education for repression and judgmentalism.

Now we’re doing it ourselves. With no help from church, communism or lack of education.

The effects are visible, even in the smallest, most unobtrusive and saddest of ways – in the past few weeks, a beautician observed to me that she has noticed that many young clients now avoid bright nail polish.

Many don’t want to wear vibrant shades of red, because – and believe this or not - they tell her, wearing it could draw shaming comments.

They are looking for less noticeable nails and far subtler make-up, she said.

Beige-er. Colours that blend in.

“They don’t want to stand out,” she told me.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

She was absolutely serious, she said.

They didn’t want bright nails or vibrant make-up that might make them stand out because this could attract hurtful comments about their appearance online.

When I checked, the statistics showed that 67% of girls and young women in this country have experienced abuse or harassment on social media.

So here we have it.

Schizoid Ireland.

On the one hand, we’re all about our rights. Our rights about this and our rights about that.

On the other hand, we’ve become so deeply judgmental and so nasty, so lacking in compassion, so viscerally cruel, and so casually derogatory in our public assessments of others that it’s creating a culture of fear and shame.

It’s time to take a breath. Those who take gratuitously spiteful potshots at other people online should pause at the keyboard and really consider the potential effects of their comments on somebody else.

How would you feel if somebody criticised you or your appearance like that?

If you feel like inflicting hurt, try going out and thumping a tree instead of a keyboard.

Have a look at the way you have written about other people on social media.

Do you see yourself as a person who deliberately shames or dismisses someone else for the sake of looking clever, or who goes out to hurt others or dismiss their experiences?

Is this really the kind of person you always dreamed of becoming?

Get a life.

We must introduce legislation against this kind of awful stuff; it’s time for the State to recognise and penalise this behaviour as a form of harassment.

Why not slap a strong financial penalty on people who slither around in this state of keyboard disembodiment, sneering at, smearing, offending and intimidating other people with their spitefulness and their threats?

Whatever you feel about Enoch Burke - and people feel plenty about this man and his opinions - at least he didn’t hide behind a screen.