Although many on the Internet might doubt the vigor and even the courage of the average keyboard warrior, that little amoeba squirming in the dark, I have no doubt that these are only warriors according to their own tattered and abused definition. Upon a bit of consideration and not a little charity of thought, anyone would realize that these are just warriors of the mind, a battlefield where the opponents face off as their valor goads them into mutual destruction. But while Nietzsche said that the man of a warlike nature sets upon himself in the absence of battle, when confronted with the same absence, the keyboard warrior has no choice but to set upon others.
This type of warrior is more outward-looking and apprehensive than the usual run-of-the-mill warrior, more insecure and always dissatisfied, seeking battles where there aren’t any and always forgetting to look where it really matters. The cool balm of anonymity is good for the reputation and even better for the ego—not that these warriors would admit it to themselves. And that is because we human beings are blind to ourselves: this is my reasoned stance based on the Kantian assertion that the mechanisms of our knowledge—knowledge not only of the world but of ourselves—are innately limited. Even when telling what we think is the truth, we become unwitting liars who speak out of ignorance of the whole truth.
So what is the keyboard warrior? Or who is the keyboard warrior, to be more precise? If we assume the premise that us as a word refers to human beings, it could potentially be all of us. Those who imagine keyboard warriors as just symptoms of the times are mistaken. Instead, they are symptoms of that hazy and wondrous feeling that comes with existence itself, that of a human nature that gives us two things: emotions and an ever-so-thin veneer of reason. These are changeless aspects of human nature, unaffected by the passage of time and merely enabled by technology. A victim of his impulses, the keyboard warrior is just one of many instances of our unlovely nature, free at last to unburden itself on the Internet. Far from being an upstanding citizen of the world, the keyboard warrior is a person whose thoughts, if they exist, are merely whimpers in the dark.
