博文言過其實的危害

Words of intimidation that start as figures of speech can cast a pall over an environment that already has a built-in susceptibility to extreme language.

A few days ago, Wang Mudi, a television host in Guangdong province, accompanied his girlfriend to the hospital. The nurse did an extremely sloppy job putting her on a drip. It took her four attempts to properly inject the needle. All the while she was carrying on a casual conversation with a colleague.

Wang was so enraged he wrote on his Sina Weibo account, a Chinese micro blog, that "I felt I wanted to hack someone". The next day, a healthcare industry association demanded he apologize or his employer should sack him.

Wang quickly removed his blog post and later issued a lengthy apology. He has a mild disposition, he said, and he did not name the hospital or the nurse in his original post so nobody was hurt by his outburst. It was "on the spur of the moment that I made the wrong remark", he explained.

Most online denizens seemed to agree that what Wang did exacerbated China's troubled doctor-patient relations. A recent spate of incidents where patients or their family members resorted to violence and physically harmed members of medical services has raised alarm about the vulnerability of the profession. Previously, however, the media portrayed medical professionals as greedy merchants who coerced bribes from patients.

Some say Wang got away too lightly, especially compared with Wu Hongfei. Wu, a singer and writer, made news six months ago when she was arrested for posting threatening words on her blog. She said she "wanted to blow up the neighborhood committee" and a few other government agencies. She was detained for 10 days and fined 500 yuan ($82), but not prosecuted, possibly because of public pressure. She was said to have violated two clauses of the law, including "claims to use arson, explosion or harmful material to disturb public order" and "fabricating and purposefully distributing false or horror-inducing information".

Do I believe that Wang is a potential killer and Wu a potential arsonist? Not for a minute. It's a way to let off some steam. I can totally understand their frustration. We've all been in situations when clenching our teeth was not enough.

But what they did was wrong. Weibo is a public platform. Shouting "I want to kill him!" in the privacy of your home is not the same as saying it to hundreds of thousands of people. (Wang has 377,500 followers on his weibo account and Wu 133,100.) What if someone, like the police, takes you verbatim? You may laugh at the police for an unhealthy deficiency in humor, but you would definitely point a finger of blame at them if - and it's a big if - the person who posted it actually went out and did something bad but they had assumed it was just an articulation of anger.

The Internet is supposed to be a democratic platform where everyone has an equal opportunity for expression. In reality, it has evolved into a podium for shouting matches. To stand out in a pool of hundreds of millions of voices, many people will naturally resort to extreme means. Even otherwise professional websites often coin absurd headlines to lure readers. And on personal blogs, it is the most radical opinions that usually attract the largest crowds. Rationality is the biggest victim of social media, and moderates of all stripes are essentially drowned out by torrents of venom.

A dozen years ago, I was heading a film forum on Netease, then one of the three biggest portal sites in China. I made it a rule that participants could express any opinion on any movie, but had to back up his or her view with reasoning. Simply saying "this movie sucks" or "it's the greatest film ever made" wouldn't do. Actually I had an abhorrence of that kind of vociferation. If you truly believe this is either the best or worst you've ever seen, you won't be short of words for arguments.

That bulletin board of mine became something of an anomaly. It did not have the biggest following, but the most devoted. But for a website, it's the number of participants that matters, not the quality of the discussion.

That platform was only about movies. Had it been about politics or sports, you can rest assured that cries of killing would have been the norm, more or less.

Some worry about online antagonism spilling over to the physical world. There have been cases of online celebrities of different political factions who arranged to duel it out at the southern gate of Beijing's Chaoyang Park. For the most part, the combustible kind tends to appear docile and soft-spoken in real life. They may not even be able to make a coherent argument in a debate with their opponents, let alone pick a fistfight.

This duality is often seen as a reason, rather than a pretext, for their online stridency. They are the two sides of the same coin. Because they are usually restrained in manner and speech in the physical world, by personality or by necessity, they have to find an outlet for their pent-up emotions, and what's a better conduit than an anonymous social site? You can put on the air of a braggadocio and play the role of superhero in vanquishing your foes in whatever manner you can dream up.

Then there is the penchant for hyperbole, which goes much further than the Internet. Chinese is a flowery language with strong literary roots. Being plainspoken is rarely embraced as a virtue, especially for the educated. There were descriptions of "a million-strong army" in history books when the total population of that particular jurisdiction had less than 1 million residents. Confucius was so tall that he would have towered over Yao Ming - if you take the numbers literally.

In the early 1990s when I was in the United States, I read a news story about a Chinese student leaving a voice message on a classmate's phone, saying he would have him "die in 10,000 pieces and with no place for burial". Naturally it conjured up a gruesome picture of attempted murder. Had you read this in Chinese, it simply means "You, go die!" If he had said, "I wouldn't shed a tear if you vanished from the face of the Earth", he would not have got into legal trouble. (He was promptly arrested and charged with attempted murder.)

Again, that was an example of someone blowing a fuse in a most inappropriate way. The language made it seem worse than it actually was. Sure, there are stories of classmates killing each other, as in the recent case of a Fudan University student poisoning his roommate. But I doubt that guy threw a fit before he put poison into the water cooler. For one thing, his fury would have been a warning. People who kill usually do it quietly.

The bombastic style of some parts of the Chinese language is a heritage that has been passed down to us through political slogans and costume dramas. Before we learned the art of the understatement and deadpan humor, which have also found a few exponents online, the Internet had become a breeding ground for floridity. Only this time it was for blustery rages that are considered a menace to the public.恐嚇威脅，最初是一種修辭手法，現在卻給本就對極端語言敏感警覺的社會蒙上了一層陰影。

幾天前，廣東衛視主持人王牧笛陪女友去某醫院打點滴，但粗心大意的護士連扎四針才找準血管。因爲在此過程中，她一直都在與同事閒聊。

王牧笛怒不可遏，隨即在其新浪微博上發佈了一條微博“我真想拿刀砍人！”次日，中國醫師協會就要求他就此事道歉，否則就要求廣東衛視“責令其下課”。

王牧笛很快刪除了微博，並隨後發表長篇致歉。他稱自己本身性格溫和，而且在微博中自始至終隱去醫院名字，也沒有提及護士姓名，因此並沒有人因他的一時暴怒而受到傷害。他解釋說自己的行爲是“用錯誤的方式表達憤怒，氣時口不擇言”。

大多數網民似乎都認爲王牧笛的言論加劇了本就矛盾重重的中國醫患關係。近來，患者或其家屬暴力毆打醫務人員，惡性傷醫案頻發，這越發警示着人們，醫護人員是何其脆弱。然而此前，媒體都把醫務人員刻畫成貪婪的商人，迫使病患賄賂他們，給醫護人員塞紅包。

有人覺得對王牧笛的懲罰太輕了，特別是與此前吳虹飛一案相較而言。吳虹飛是一名歌手兼作家，六個月前，她因發佈了一條帶有威脅字眼的博文，而被警方拘捕。她在微博發文中寫道“我想炸居委會”還有一些政府機關。她因此被拘留10天，罰款500元。但或許是迫於公衆壓力而未被起訴。警方稱其違反了兩條法律條款，包括“揚言實施放火、爆炸、投放危險物質擾亂公共秩序”以及“編造、故意傳播虛假恐怖信息罪。”

但我會就此認爲王牧笛和吳虹飛是潛在的殺人犯或縱火犯嗎？當然不會！他們的行爲只是宣泄情感的一種方式，我完全理解他們的不快。我們都會有咬牙切齒也不解氣的時候。

但是他們的做法確實是不對的。微博是一個公共平臺。對着成千上萬人大喊“我想殺人”與在自家咆哮有着天壤之別。（王牧笛和吳虹飛的微博粉絲數分別達37.75萬和13.31萬）萬一有像警察這類人對你的言論咬文嚼字呢？你或許會嘲笑他們缺乏幽默感，但是如果，發微博者真將惡性言論轉爲實際行動，――這種可能性很大，而此前若是警察推測這只是他們宣泄憤怒的一種方式，你一定會嚴厲指責他們瀆職。

互聯網應該是一個讓大家都享有平等發言權的民主平臺。而事實上，它卻已經演化成一個大聲爭論的平臺。爲了在億萬人中受到關注，許多人就很自然地採取極端方式。甚至許多專業網站也常常想出怪誕的標題來吸引讀者。在個人博客上，通常是最激進的言論能夠吸引到最多的粉絲。由此，理性成了社交媒體最大的犧牲品，形形色色的溫和派就這樣徹徹底底地淹沒在了洪流般的惡言相向之中。

十幾年前，我在網易公司主持領導一個電影論壇，網易是當時中國前三大門戶網站。我給參與討論者定下一個規則，那就是每個人都能就任何電影，發表任何看法，但前提是必須有理有據。若僅僅只說“這電影爛透了”，或“這是有史以來最棒的電影”都不算數。事實上，我對那種無實質內容的喧嚷深惡痛絕。如果這真是你看過得最棒或最爛的電影，你就不會對此毫無實質評論。

我的公告欄成了個反常之物。雖然它的追隨者不是最多的，但確是最熱忱用心的。但對於一個網站而言，參與討論的人數纔是最重要的，而非討論的質量。

當然，那個論壇只討論電影。若它也涉及政治或體育，我向你保證，喊打喊殺幾乎多少會成爲家常便飯。

有些人擔心網上的敵對情緒會蔓延至現實生活中來。此前，不同政治派別的知名網友就發帖約對方在北京朝陽公園南門“談一談”。大多數情況下，虛擬網絡中的“暴脾氣”往往是現實生活中的“溫和黨”。他們甚至連與對手爭論時都磕磕巴巴，更別說互毆對方了。

這種兩面性常常被認爲是他們在虛擬世界中強勢的原因，而非藉口。兩種性格就好比是一枚硬幣的兩面。由於他們通常在現實世界中壓抑自己的言行舉止，不論這是出於性格原因還是必要性的考慮，他們不得不爲他們壓抑已久的情感找一個宣泄口。由此看來，還有什麼比匿名的社交網絡更理想的場所呢？你可以在網絡中大吹大擂，也可以用你所能想到的一切方式，把自己僞裝成超級英雄以打敗對手。

人們往往有誇張的傾向，而這種現象在網絡上又更是愈演愈烈。中文是文學底蘊深厚，辭藻華麗的語言。直言不諱向來都不被奉爲美德，尤其是對接受過良好教育者而言。歷史書中也常把總人口數還不到一百萬的特定管轄區，稱作擁有“百萬大軍”。身長“九尺有六寸”的孔子，如果真的按照字面數字理解，那他可真比姚明還高。

20世紀90年代早期，我還在美國。當時，我看到一則新聞，說一名中國學生給同班同學電話留言，揚言要讓對方“碎屍萬段，死無葬身之地”。這很自然地會讓人聯想到企圖謀殺的可怕畫面。然而倘若你看的是中文消息，這名學生的意思不過是“你給我去死！”如果他說的是“就算你在地球上消失，我也不會留一滴淚”，他就不會因此受到法律制裁。（當時他被立即逮捕，並被控告蓄意謀殺。）

這又是一個用極不恰當的方式發泄憤怒的一種方式。他們所使用的語言讓事情看起來比實際嚴重得多。當然，確實有謀殺同班同學的案例，譬如近來的復旦大學舍友投毒案。但我對投毒者是否在往飲水機裏投毒前，曾大發雷霆表示懷疑。因爲，如果有的話，他的怒氣就會讓人警覺。而真正的殺人者往往不動聲色。

中文裏一部分語言有大放厥詞的風格，這是通過政治口號或古裝劇流傳下來的。網上也同樣有低調陳述和冷幽默，但在我們學會這兩種技巧之前，互聯網已然成爲華麗浮誇語言的滋生地。只有這次，因爲狂暴憤怒語言的出現，它才被人們看做是對公衆的威脅。