Should bigots be unseen not overheard?

“Rule number 1: no names; rule number 2: there are no other rules.”

No one is quite sure when, or by whom, ‘Overheard at Warwick’ was founded; all we know is that their legacy lives on today. The simple concept of posting amusing things overheard around campus provides an amusing insight into the private matters of Warwick students. Its success is down to our inherent nosiness; the conversations you secretly listen to in the queue at Tesco or waiting for the bus. That moment of magic when you think, “What did they just say?!” and you feel a civic duty to tell someone. But why stop at one when you can tell over 8000 at a time?

Yet ‘Overheard’ is changing in character; it is moving away from being a place for amusement, and increasingly, some of the things overheard at Warwick are disquieting. From misogyny and homophobia to racism and rape ‘jokes’, Warwick students are apparently overhearing many disturbing things. They cause upset and a war of words erupts in the comment box below. Overheard’s role now seems to be as a platform to challenge some of the murkier things said on campus, but is the comments section the right place to conduct this, or do we risk descending into trial by Facebook?

[pullquote style=”left” quote=”dark”]People think they can hide behind a veneer of anonymity and speak and act in ways they never would in the real world.[/pullquote]

The conversation that ensues leads to much questioning, from the context of the quote, to the validity of what was said, or even whether it should have been posted or not. All these questions seem to be missing that this is part of a wider trend reflected across social media. Offensive, aggressive things being posted online that are considered ‘banter.’ The internet is infective; people think they can hide behind a veneer of anonymity and speak and act in ways they never would in the real world.

What is being said is not a new phenomenon, but in the past they would only have been heard in certain closed circles. Perhaps a far wider audience, in an age of social networking, is not a bad thing; if these views are given a platform online, others are equally entitled to challenge what is being said. People learn that although they have freedom of speech, their bigoted ideas will be confronted.

Some would argue that people should only post light-hearted, humorous utterances on the group. But this begs the question: if it is called ‘Overheard at Warwick’, surely that is justification enough for posting it? There are no rules after all. Some may say it is a positive thing to have a platform to challenge these views, but what does this trial by Facebook achieve? Maybe we all need to turn the laptop off, and realise that if we don’t like the way the world is, we need to do something about it.