Sanctimonious fanatics on the internet
When I was in high school in Aiken, South Carolina, in the early 1990s, I was in Walmart flipping through the discount CD bin.1 For some reason, maybe I was headed to a football game, I was wearing my “Hornet Hecklers” shirt… a bright yellow shirt with green lettering that all the Aiken High students wore in the student section. Randomly, this guy with a long white beard and overalls walked up to me and told me I was going to hell because of my shirt.
“Pride,” he told me, “will damn you to hell. Repent.”
I’ve never forgotten the experience. I never understood why this guy felt it necessary to confront a teenager he didn’t know in public. Theologically, I’m still not sure what about my shirt offended him. I’m sure he thought he was trying to “save my soul,” but he was really just a sanctimonious fanatic who wanted to demonstrate his perceived moral superiority. And teenage me was an easy target.
There are a lot of sanctimonious fanatics on the internet. People who rush to judge. To pile on. To bully. They believe that they can intimidate others into changing. They believe they can win whatever argument of the day they want to start. These keyboard jockeys are no different than the dude with the long beard and the overalls, convinced of their moral superiority and eager to demonstrate it.
This week, a bunch of people attacked author and lettering artist Jessica Hische on Threads because she was hired to do some lettering and logo work for Meta and their Muse AI product. I’ve never met Jessica, but always admired her work and her commitment to the creative community. These people on Threads bragged about canceling subscriptions to her emails. Some people insulted her work. Others claimed that she’d let down the creative community by supporting a company that supports generative AI. (These people never considered that they were using a Meta platform to attack her. Complete hypocrites.) These attackers are bullies. Sanctimonious fanatics. Desperate to demonstrate their perceived superiority. No different than the dude with the beard and the overalls.
There are many more sanctimonious fanatics who pick meaningless fights on the internet to prove their chosen point.2 These jerks — convinced of their own superiority — undermine their message by delivering it in such a blunt and angry way. Their personal values are so broken, that they don’t understand the hatefulness of their attacks. At the end of the day, maybe they’ve succeeded in demonizing a random person on the internet. In reality, the only reputation they’ve destroyed is their own.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.