viz.

As the Northeast prepared for Hurricane Irene last week, southerners who had weathered dozens of hurricanes sent both insults and helpful advice to their less-experienced neighbors in the north. The internet was abuzz with people wondering why New Yorkers were incapable of understanding what to do in a hurricane, and snarky retorts concerning Texans' inability to manage mild ice storms abounded. On reddit.com, the Australian redditor Xsophos posted this infographic comparing Irene and Hurricane Katrina with Tropical Cyclone Yasi, which hit Queensland, Australia this year. 

Image credit:  ABC News

Some American redditors promptly took offense, thinking that the post was intended as an insult to Americans' preparedness or fright, even though Xsophos offered no commentary about Australian superiority or the danger involved in any of these storms. One user sarcastically calls Australians "lucky" and another thread devolves into Australians insulting American sexuality and Americans making snide remarks about Australian censorship, as well as comparisons of flora and fauna.

The accuracy of the data is called into question on this thread, but it is most fascinating (and perhaps unsurprisingly stereotypical of internet culture) that an image comparing windspeeds generated more arguments about Americans' repressed sexuality and the ugliness of possums than it did arguments about media representation of natural disasters. Users' devolution into insults rather than discussion of the facts about these storms, or even the purpose of Xsophos' post, highlights the contradictory relationship between user anonymity and personal insult on the web--users fling insults at assumed Australians who may or may not be Australians at all. And the same goes for stereotyping New Yorkers and Texans: Though this time we know who they are and where they live, the distance creates an assumed anonymity in which it's okay to laugh at someone facing a natural disaster.

As Irene hit the U.S., one young YouTube user, Christian Flaherty, embraced the "haters" who comment on his videos by creating this interactive video in which those same haters can send natural disasters his way in order to punish him for the quality of his videos.

By pressing various buttons, users can send tornadoes, earthquakes, and blizzards in Christian's general direction (he creates a video for each in which he acts out the disaster), rather than merely commenting that he is "gay" or a "faggot" as some users have. Christian's response to those insults is remarkably apt and reminiscent of some ultra-conservative reactions to Katrina--for instance, Pat Robertson arguing that God sent the 2005 hurricane as punishment for legalized abortion. By interacting with Christian's video, we can play God. Instead of calling him names, users can send him a fictional chance at death.

Following Irene, some politicians again said that God sent the hurricane to punish Americans, except this time it wasn't to punish abortionists or homosexuals. At a rally in Florida, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann argued that God is punishing us for the size of the federal government's budget. Maybe there will be a YouTube video?