Bobby Shaftoe goes viral

by David Benjamin

“There are really two core principles at play here. There’s giving people a voice so that people can express their opinions. Then, there’s keeping the community safe, which I think is really important. We’re not gonna let people plan violence or attack each other or do bad things.”
— Mark Zuckerberg

MADISON, Wis. — The other day, Dr. Wilhelm “WhatsAppDoc?” Bienfang, the world’s foremost “idea man,” unveiled for me an experiment in social media. Previously he had chosen at random a teenage boy, Little Bobby Shaftoe of Mishawaka, Indiana, whose online presence was almost non-existent. Bienfang composed fifty scurrilous and devastating lies about Bobby and spread them internationally on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, HootSuite, WeChat, Snapchat and twelve other platforms covering territory that stretched from Nome to McMurdo Station. He accompanied this torrent of slanders with a photo-shopped image of Little Bobby that depicted him as a chimpanzee with a harelip and a face full of festering boils that dripped pus off his chin.

I recoiled from the image.

“Yeah!” said Bienfang. “The Picture of Dorian Gray, right?”

Within five hours, content monitors on most of the sites onto which Bienfang had loaded his persecution of Little Bobby had deleted the offending post. But it lingered on other sites for as long as 48 hours. These efforts to stifle Bienfang’s gratuitous attack on the innocent 14-year-old were, of course, pointless, because the original post went viral within 90 minutes. Before the first takedown, by an exceptionally alert Twitter watchdog, the Bobby Shaftoe post had earned 14 million likes and was re-posted, forwarded, uploaded and otherwise circulated eight million times. It became immortal and spawned a tsunami of giddy messages sent directly to Little Bobby, calling him obscene, unspeakable names in 38 languages and threatening his life — by Bienfang’s count — 12,987 times. More than 600 anonymous correspondents volunteered to drive over to Mishawaka and behead Little Bobby.

“Is this awesome, or what?” said Bienfang.

I wasn’t actually awed, especially after I googled Little Bobby Shaftoe and found his obituary. He had hanged himself in the garage two days into his social-media pukestorm. I mentioned this to Bienfang.

He said, “Well, kid, you know. If you’re gonna make an omelette…”

I struggled to understand why Bienfang had conducted this contemptible test of human cruelty.

“That’s exactly it,” said Bienfang, slapping me upside the head. “My point is that it’s totally contemptible. And yet, look at these numbers! They’re still going up. Millions of mobile phone addicts eager to keep piling on to poor Bobby, God rest his soul.”

I pressed Bienfang to elaborate.

“Look, kid,” he said, “until Zuckerberg, Dorsey and all the other amoral propeller-heads in Silicon Valley came up with social media, we had no idea how much people really, deeply, hate each other — and we don’t just hate the rotten bastards and ex-lovers we know personally. Every inch of space on the planet is overrun with people who despise everybody else on general principles. Of course, you know this, kid. You weren’t born yesterday. But the real issue is…”

Bienfang paused for a deep breath.

“… how do you monetize this much hate?”

Bienfang’s ideas always boil to do-re-mi.

His plan, already conceived, written up and beta-tested, is the deployment of a vast global social-media goliath called Hatebook. Bienfang’s simple, brilliant brainstorm is to reduce webtalk to its most reliable and popular function.

“Right now, all these platforms are cluttered with superfluous warm-hearted dreck, like kitten videos, family photos and wedding anniversaries — none of which generate a penny in advertising or subscription revenue. All this anodyne content takes up space that slows down the flow of bigotry, vituperation and rage that makes the Worldwide Web the greatest engine for violent psychosis in the history of the world. Every pissed-off twelve-year-old on earth now has access, in the privacy of his room, to the most antisocial social institution since the Gestapo. Best of all, if you filter out all the smiling grandkids and birthday videos and put it behind a paywall, it’s the most lucrative.”

“You’re saying,” I said, “that hate pays?”

“In spades,” Bienfang exulted. “I promise you, friend, that right now there is not a neo-Nazi, violent skinhead, Aryan Brother, terrorist, closet racist, misogynist, homophobe. anti-Semite, Islamophobe, Klansman, xenophobe, Oath Keeper, Proud Boy, Three Percenter, QAnon conspiracist, religious nut, incel, survivalist or Freedom Caucus Republican who isn’t already itching for a Hatebook subscription — not to mention all those bitter high-school nerds, jilted girlfriends, bullies, bullieds, ex-wives, ex-husbands under restraining orders and vindictive former presidents. This baby is an open forum — no holds barred, no slur censored — that answers the deep, abiding human need to achieve risk-free quietus with a sucker punch from the next block, or a thousand miles away.”

I questioned the size of the “hate market” Bienfang was touting so confidently.
“Okay, set aside the tragedy of Bobby Shaftoe. Let’s talk about Black soccer players in Europe. Today, there are countless rabid, sociopathic fans of Manchester United or PSG St.-Germain whose sole interest is not whether their teams win, lose or even play a damn game. All they want to do is go online and demand the expulsion or, ideally, the lynching of every Black player in every premier league.”

I sighed.

“I always wondered why soccer fans are so violent, especially for a sport that’s so… soporific,” said Bienfang. “But then, no sooner had I floated the beta version of Hatebook than I was hip-deep in soccer rage. I realized that futbol isn’t actually about ‘supporting’ your team. It’s about being small, helpless, useless and anonymous. It’s about sitting in a giant stadium surrounded by masses of nobodies and fearing that you are the biggest zero of them all. It’s about all the schools, companies, agencies, soccer teams, bosses and spouses who have shrunk you into being the most insignificant shmuck not just in this stadium but in your whole crummy life. It’s about payback. It’s about wanting to kill the other team and all its fans. Or, if you can’t get onto the field or over the fence, it’s about hating and wanting to kill the stranger in the next seat.”

I shuddered but couldn’t muster a retort.

Bienfang explained the beauty of Hatebook. “It’s a release, a sort of pressure valve. If you can hate someone online to the point of trying to destroy them, whether it’s the snotty president of your senior class, or some insufferable celebrity like Hillary Clinton, or a totally blameless stranger like Little Bobby Shaftoe, you’re much less likely to suddenly lose control of your rage and actually strangle your wife or beat a Capitol policeman to death with the American flag.”

I wondered if the inauguration of an all-hate all-the-time social media platform can really provide a harmless outlet for a vast army of bigots, rage-aholics and hair-trigger malcontents. Bienfang responded by producing a stack of internal studies. They show that the unfettered expression of anger, prejudice, fear, contempt and hateful insanity is a perfect balm for the savage breast.

“It’s like a tantrum in the candy aisle at Safeway,” said Bienfang. “You give the brat a handful of M&M’s, and it all blows over! No damage done.”

“Except,” I muttered, “for the M&M’s.”