However, besides these positive trends, recently there has been a situation where some young people, when expressing their attitudes and feelings, lack maturity, are even somewhat extreme, causing negative and contradictory reactions in the community, being exploited by hostile forces and political opportunists to serve impure goals. Through specific incidents, it can be seen that the main cause of these behaviors is impulsiveness, heavy on emotions leading to immaturity in thinking and perception. Especially when accessing many conflicting information streams on social networking platforms, some young people lose their direction, cannot control their personal perceptions and emotions, so they are easily manipulated and led by "herd syndrome", leading to behaviors that are not in accordance with social norms.
For example, on social media, there is a situation where some netizens specialize in searching for images of the flag of the Republic of Vietnam regime (the yellow flag with three red stripes) to criticize and attack anyone who appears with this flag, even if it is unintentional. In February 2023, Hanni Pham, an Australian singer of Vietnamese origin and a member of the Korean music group NewJeans, was called for a boycott after someone discovered that her family member's social media page was displaying the "yellow flag". Those who boycotted singer Hanni said that admiring a singer whose family "followed the Republic of Vietnam" was a betrayal of Vietnam, causing the incident to cause excessively tense debates on social media. Similar acts of extreme patriotism often appear on major national holidays or issues related to sovereignty over seas and islands. Some experts are concerned that some youth trends on social networks today show signs of becoming ostentatious and lacking depth, thereby creating the risk of exploiting patriotism to serve personal interests and possibly leading to extremist ideology if not properly oriented. It is necessary to clearly define that true patriotism never goes hand in hand with extremism, and is not synonymous with extremist actions. If patriotism is expressed correctly, soberly and wisely, it will truly be an important resource to consolidate and strengthen the strength of the great national unity bloc.
