Beware the Internet Warrior
By GREGORY ZELLER
From scientific startups in university incubators to hundred-year-old stalwarts, businesses everywhere – in nearly every industry – have made dramatic pivots to virtual operations.
Nothing new there: Home offices, dial-in meetings, Zoom workshops and Instacart define tumultuous 2020 as much as COVID itself. How we work, how we shop, how we’re informed and entertained – everything has changed, personally, commercially, permanently.
As more chunks of society gravitate online, several threats emerge. Government and academia buttress against the big stuff – cyberterrorism, large-scale corporate hacks, ID theft – but individuals and especially commercial interests face an equally insidious challenge from a different kind of enemy.
Behold, the Internet Warrior – philosopher, patriot, critic, expert conspiracy detector and coward, always ready with an opinion, content to hide behind a screen and eager to lob virtual bombs.
The Internet – particularly in an era of top-down ignorance and government-sanctioned hatred – has given a platform to the spiteful, the bigoted and the willfully misinformed. People who wish the world was dark but never get to say so, because that would require stepping into the light.
A North Shore family I know well had a Molotov cocktail thrown at their house last week. A beer bottle, filled with gasoline and citronella, lit on fire and thrown at their front porch. It shattered a dining room window but, thankfully, started only a small fire; the family – a single mom (a professional social worker), her 72-year-old mother and her 12-year-old autistic son, who was in the next room when the cocktail exploded – has no idea who would do this, or why.
The police immediately suspected their lawn signs: a small, traditional “Biden/Harris 2020” sign and two colorful wooden boards, one encouraging people to love their neighbors, the other noting that “In this house, we believe science is real, black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, love is love,” etc.
Enter the Internet Warriors. When word of the firebombing reached social media, speculation immediately pivoted to what the victims had done to deserve it. “Probably had a Trump flag on their porch,” noted one astute citizen. “In my experience, stuff like that does not happen for no reason,” observed another.
The completely innocent and quite traumatized family now has two concerns: being firebombed in the night by strangers and suffering the slings and arrows of ignorant neighbors who don’t bother to check their facts, just lock and load.
In our Miller Place home, we decided to follow the science and not hand out Halloween candy this year. A bummer for sure, but the prudent play. To avoid disappointing less-cautious trick-or-treaters at the door, we put a homemade sign at the end of our driveway, decorated with ghosts and aliens, noting we had no candy (“TOO SCARY!”) and wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday.
It occurred to us that our sociable gesture could rub some people the wrong way and wind up on a neighborhood chat board, where everything from our political motivations to our common sense might be in play. We debated posting the sign at all, before deciding to do the right thing.
We didn’t wind up on a chat board. And these are personal examples, of course. Now imagine if we owned a local restaurant. Imagine if that firebombed mom was pitching a startup to investors.
This is the virtual ocean the corporate world wades into, ever deeper, every day. Everything from fundraising capacity to talent recruitment may hinge on what people say about you, whether they know you or not.
When a potential customer – or a potential employee, or regulator, or investor – Googles your business, what’s waiting? Remember, many of these searchers may themselves be new to this whole “online” thing, and might not know a vetted reviewer from a begrudged pinhead. So, what are they reading about you? Where are they reading it?
In this environment, vigilance against the Internet Warrior is critical. For early-stage enterprises like those under the AERTC’s wing, it’s imperative. An innovative service or breakthrough product is terrific, but business reputations are now made, and broken, online. Keep a close eye on yours.
Gregory Zeller is the vice president and editor of Innovate Long Island.