Identity is a topic that has become computer code. We have digitized the self. We're working our way through all the DNA on the planet and isolating it into binary, just simple 0s and 1s. I sense people are trying to run from this, as the spurious need to identify more genders stretches the limits of testable science. Everyone wants to be unique and original yet the trenches they are fighting in are all fairly routine in biology, not psychology. Your entire life, as wild and crazy as it may be, could be encoded onto a small diamond's lattices in binary. A billion times over...
As long as it can be in the realm of offensive, it seems not so much what was said, but who it was that said it. That person harboring such rhetoric must be taken down, canceled, doxed, or sentenced. What they said will spread like the Telephone Game and get twisted as the story grows until we accrue enough hate to reject the person who said such and such. Hate Speech is like pulling a fire alarm on the English Language. Certain words the speaker had in his or her vocabulary have been put together to show to an extent how violent their minds are. This is an edge of communication.
The anonymity of the online world allows people to say what is going through their heads. Many trolls play the Devil's Advocate. They send death threats to people who have offended their ideals. They mock people's beliefs and take issue with appearances and comments. Even the most genteel of online creators, even an 80-year-old monk, gets hateful comments and accusations that can ruin his day.
If a thread gets malicious and gains traction, like-minded copycats will gather in such huge numbers that they can close businesses, change the course of a city's budget, or drive people to suicide.
But we walk around these people all day in the physical world, not knowing who is really a monster online. Something happens when we are unaccountable and free to spread hate, make threats, and dilute the goodness of others with negative indictments through our English alphanumeric filth. We become little demons, little electronic whispers from hell.
