The 21 Century bystander effect

For a very long time, we have been guilty of something in our online lives. It isn’t trolling as a blatant exercise to establish power over another’s presence in the same space, but trolling because everyone else is doing it. Sociologist Erving Goffman called it ‘backstage behaviour’ — a presentation of one’s self to a stage drama. While the drama in itself will be ‘frontstage behaviour’, sitting in the second row creates a space that is relatively anonymous, thereby making room for behaviour that would otherwise be private but has now been made public.
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