How Tolkien, HG Wells, And Plato Explained Trolling Long Before The Internet
A ring, invisibility, and why anonymity makes social media ugly
Social media isn’t fun anymore. It’s dark. I have the fortune of remembering the innocent beginnings when Tom at Myspace was everyone’s friend. Long before what we now know as normal.
And I’m not alone in thinking this way.
A Pew research poll on social media says sixty-four percent of Americans think it has a negative effect on the country. In fact, this is one of the few things Republicans, Democrats, and Independents agree on, with a majority of each seeing it as damaging.
Psychologist and author Dr. Jonathan Haidt explains the internet began as a wonderful tool to spread knowledge and people’s voices. Social media promised to improve this ability to speak. He says it offered a dream where everyone could be part of the conversation. However, that wasn’t the case.
Just like the social situation at a bar, not everyone participates, and the loudest voices can crowd out the others.
In this case, the extremes are more likely to speak— often negatively. Haidt says, “When everyone gets a dart gun, most don’t want to shoot anybody.” But this doesn’t bother trolls or people on the fringe; they enjoy conflict.
Something else adds to it as well: anonymity. Unlike talking to someone face-to-face, we communicate with digital avatars or pictures, so something personal is lost. Hence a lack of civility has become the norm.
Psychologist Mariana Plata at Psychology Today says, “The anonymity factor contributes to online rudeness and trolls.” She also notes a study done by the University of Haifa in Israel which shows a lack of eye contact is “the chief contributor to the negative effects of online disinhibition.”
But while we tech-savvy folk got blindsided by the dark side of social media with its anonymity, we were warned of the hazards long ago. Plato raised the first red flag. Not to mention J.R.R. Tolkien with his hobbits, and H.G. Wells in his classic The Invisible Man.
Although they didn’t use the word anonymity, but invisibility instead. And it all started in ancient Greece with a ring.
Plato’s Take On Anonymity And Human Behavior
In the Republic, Plato uses his teacher Socrates as a mouthpiece for his ideas about human nature. In typical Plato fashion, the thoughts are deep. A famous section of the work has Socrates and his student Glaucon discussing justice.
Namely, do people act justly because it’s right to do so, or because of the threat of punishment?
Glaucon comes up with a thought experiment that’s now known as the Ring of Gyges. The student tells the story of a shepherd named Gyges that finds an opening in the earth and the body of a giant with an ornate ring on its finger. The young man takes the ring, thinking it ordinary.
But while sitting with his fellow shepherds later, he twists a section of the ring and becomes invisible. The amazing power gives Gyges an idea. He becomes a messenger for the king of Lydia, and with access to the palace, uses the ring to sneak around.
The shepherd seduces the queen, turning her against the king. Then, Gyges murders the monarch, taking the kingdom for himself. Glaucon declares that invisibility makes it pointless to follow societal norms because no one can punish you. In fact, only idiots wouldn’t take advantage of the situation. It’s only reasonable.
Socrates disagrees saying the unjust person’s soul would suffer. They’d be a slave to wants and a stranger to reason, so happiness wouldn’t be possible despite their gains. Tolkien strikes a similar tone. He even uses a ring to teach his lesson too.
Invisibility Is A Two-Way Street
“It appears that Tolkien — a philologist, a maker of dictionary definitions for the OED, and a translator of both Old English and Middle English — was aware of these two different uses of the word ‘invisible’ in Middle English: one associated with good and one associated with the absence of good.”
— Journal of Tolkien Research Volume 2 | Issue 1 Article 8 2015 “Why is Bilbo Baggins Invisible?: The Hidden War in The Hobbit” Jane Beal PhD University of California, Davis
While the Ring of Power makes the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) and The Hobbit invisible, Dr. Beal says it also takes something. Their vision becomes affected. So, the wearer sees their surroundings through a mist or fog — like a shadow world.
Likewise, invisibility in Middle English didn’t only mean “not being seen,” or anonymity, but an absence of good. And the more time you spent in the Ring’s power, the greater your vision became affected, and the wearer drawn into its world.
Dr. Beal explains when Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit escapes with the Ring, his first act is to lie to his companions and conceal the item. The character also goes to lengths to avoid parting with it. Later in LOTR, the wizard Gandalf must confront Bilbo to pass it on to his nephew Frodo.
Over time it also wears down the new Hobbit. Moreover, in his journeys, Frodo also meets the Ring’s original owner, Gollum, who becomes completely corrupted. This shares parallels with our anonymity issue today. Dr. Beal says:
“Tolkien’s knowledge of medieval literature, and the tradition associated with the story of the ring of Gyges in Plato’s Republic, suggests that when people’s actions are not visible and open to the moral scrutiny of others, they may become self-serving and cease to be virtuous….so that being invisible (or being “not able to be seen”) becomes a way of metaphorically representing evil as the absence of good in the world.”
H.G. Wells had a similar take on invisibility but didn’t need a ring to get there.
Anonymity’s Reign Of Terror
“Because he is invisible, Griffin (theoretically) does not face consequences for his actions. He uses this freedom to commit immoral acts, such as burgling the vicarage and shooting a policeman. Through Griffin’s actions, the novel presents a bleak view…suggesting that if there were no consequences…many people would choose to commit evil.”
— Litcharts’ Review of The Invisible Man By H.G. Wells
Wells’ thought experiment on agency, anonymity, and justice involves a former medical student interested in science. Like the shepherd, Bilbo, and Frodo, he’s not out to do evil. A power just falls into his lap.
The student, named Griffin, finds he can turn human tissue invisible. His vision first gets blurred when he decides to try the process on a neighbor’s cat, leaving the poor creature to fend for itself. After all, he can’t suffer any consequences for it.
As he becomes bolder, he torches the apartment building he stays in to hide his experiments from prying eyes. Then, he goes on to steal, injure people, and eventually kill.
But as Socrates mentions, Griffin’s new power never truly makes him happy because of the limitations it exacts. The gift of endless freedom by invisibility has hidden boundaries.
Griffin must be careful eating or drinking because digestion inside his body becomes visible to the world around him.
He can’t go out in rain, fog, and snow, or it gives him away.
While he can move about unseen, his activities cause him to be hunted, so he must constantly be aware.
Like the hobbits, Griffin drives further into his own anonymous shadow world, totally losing his moral compass. He becomes increasingly aggravated and angry. So, Griffin eventually starts a “reign of terror” aimed at the public to punish them and keep them compliant with his wishes.
Obviously, these are stories. But the trio — created long before the net — points to a base human desire to cheat societal norms when invisible. Social media by nature makes it that much easier to do this.
In Summary: Social Media’s Ring Of Invisibility Hurts Us Two Ways
So, what are we to make of all this? Well, Plato, Tolkien, and HG Wells explain two major drawbacks to the invisibility of social media.
First, anonymity can encourage those with more troll-like tendencies to commit reigns of terror. It’s easy enough to point out. How often have you caught yourself mentioning that a random person on social media would never say something so horrible in person?
They’re Griffin or Gyges. Since there are no repercussions, why not bend social norms as far as you can? But happiness can’t be found here, so the troll strikes harder.
But the second drawback isn’t as obvious. Invisibility works two ways as Tolkien reminds us. Even our more noble characters don’t see an actual person on social media, we see avatars — figures representing someone. As Mariana Plata says, there’s a lack of eye contact.
As with Tolkien’s Ring, our vision gets blurred to reality and we don’t interact with a person, just a picture. The shadow world of social media makes them less real.
Admit it. You’ve typed some things over social media, text, or via email that you would have avoided saying to someone’s face. Honestly, I’m sure most of us have.
While social media may eventually clamp down on anonymous trolls, there’s still a ring on our finger. Our own eyes are compromised.
The only way to end the ugliness is to become visible ourselves. At least for me, it’ll be an effort to remind myself an avatar isn’t a picture. It’s a person. And this practice will become even more important as everything becomes web-connected.
Otherwise, we’ll truly be living in the shadow world of Tolkien’s Ring.
-Originally posted on Medium 10/25/23