Quick thoughts on the Internet on the Daily Show

[sistermagpie]

You know, I'm listening to this guy on The Daily Show talk about how the Internet is so awful and...well, he obviously has read a lot of stuff because he's referring to stuff that goes on "these threads" and all, but honestly he just doesn't really seem to get it.

I think after all this time I've gotten to the point that the minute somebody starts saying things like "but where are you? You're just sitting at home in front of your computer! You're no one going nowhere and doing nothing! Talking to somebody on the phone is totally personal, but this is talking to phantoms!" I just have to dismiss them as people who don't get the Internet. I'm as interested as the next person in discussing the differences in Internet relationships and RL relationships, but if you're just waving your hand vaguely and saying, "It's like talking to a ghost!" then get back to me when you have a problem beyond just feeling weird about something new and different.

His suggestion that we project onto other people on the 'net because we can't see them is interesting and I think there could be some truth in that, but it's obviously not *all* people do when conversing on the 'net--nor is it something nobody does in person.

Sometimes it just strikes me that I'm pretty sure when I was a kid and people complained about TV they probably would have touted the superiority of the written word. Look at all that old correspondence that famous people used to write in the last century. So eloquent and impressive, is letter-writing." And now it's "You're talking to somebody but they're not actually in front of you! You can't see them-communicating through the written word doesn't work!"

I also find it ironic that he mentioned that story about the mother who drove the kid down the street to suicide with a fake Internet persona, just because the guy's obviously focusing on the fake Internet persona and not mentioning that this was actually a neighborhood feud that spilled onto the Internet. Iow, yes the Internet offered her a way to torment the girl while hiding behind a fake persona, but the problem was created face to face. In fact, a lot of big wanks look like weird neighborhood brawls--especially if your neighborhood was Salem, Mass. 1692.

Comments

[mondegreen.livejournal.com]

His suggestion that we project onto other people on the 'net because we can't see them is interesting and I think there could be some truth in that, but it's obviously not *all* people do when conversing on the 'net--nor is it something nobody does in person.

I would have to agree that there's some degree of projection when conversing with people on the Internet. One personal example I can give was when I met a LJ friend in RL. When I first spoke to her on the phone, and then later met her in person, I was shocked at the sound of her voice; it was much deeper than I imagined. At the time I presumed it was because I had been reading her LJ posts with my "internalized" voice. My voice is pretty soft and... "girlish." So, I guess in a way I projected my voice onto her written words. I don't know if it's traceable to what I interpreted as her character. I suppose there was some invisible projection of character; although, I would consider projection in Internet relationships more visible than that in RL.

but the problem was created face to face

I agree. I'll give another personal example: one of the biggest fallings out I've had among friends originated with personal conflicts that occurred in RL. Those conflicts were carried onto the Internet and exacerbated. So I would definitely agree that the most serious Internet conflicts have some ground in RL.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I agree it definitely does happen on the 'net, sometimes without one even realizing it. I always remember a friend saying to me once, when she was getting used to me in real life, "I keep forgetting you're much bigger on the Internet." This guy was even going a step further and saying how we tend to sort of create personalities just to push our own buttons on the net as well.

And that does happen, but it also happens in real life. People fill in personalities for others in real life too--in fact, sometimes they'll even use physical cues. Like if somebody sounds like your mother, they'll start to "be" your mother to you in ways that might not fit.

[onomatopoetry.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Interesting. I wonder what this person makes of the several-hundred-year-history of important correspondences via mail, hmm? Scientists, philosophers, royalties, politicians... obviously they were all just writing to ghosts, and what they said should be ignored. Harumph.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Right! It just seems like we've gotten into a period where people are really put off by the *newness* of the 'net (and disturbed by the way younger people adapt to it) and at times I think they're mistaking that for real problems. So they just say stuff like "but you don't actually see the person" without really breaking down why that's suddenly so important.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

The next person who says that can move to my town, where there is precisely one person who shares my interest in books and genre tv, and that's my girlfriend. The internet - not having to leave your friends and culture behind - is bringing a lot of professionals out to rural areas, which is awesome, because there's a real shortage, especially of health professionals. It's a big world, and there's no reason to be isolated.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

ITA. I was going to go off on that as well, because he talked about people getting "obsessed" on the 'net, like going back to the same arguments again and again. Jon Stewart said, "Isn't that because on the 'net you can choose where you go?" That's what prompted his "but you're not going anywhere!" line, but really I think JS was pointing out something a lot more obvious. In real life you can't find people who share your interest. If you meet somebody interested in the same stuff you'll talk about it all the time. The 'net just gives you a way to easily find people who have that interest for sure. It's not like you'll get obsessed about anything you read there just because it was on the Internet.

[ellecain.livejournal.com]

Heh, this is so ironic, because I've just been reading an article about the popular claim that the Internet produces polarisation among people - because they only read and seek out those opinions that they already agree with. So basically, even if you're on the internet and talking to "real people", by only seeking out like-minded individuals you're creating a sort of "echo chamber" for your own opinions, just re-affirming them over and over. In other words, you may as well talk to yourself in the mirror.

So on one hand, you're not talking to "real people" on the internet and on the other, you're talking to yourself even if you are... Catch-22, no?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh--yeah, exactly! And that is true--both on the 'net and in real life, that if you only hang around people who agree you're going to be in an echo chamber. Though if it's real life and you're only dealing with people you have physical contact with, you're also confining yourself to people in a certain place. On the 'net you might be talking to somebody who absolutely shares your same views on gardening, but maybe they live in a different country or of a different race or are just in some way somebody you would never have spoken to before otherwise.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid we had penpal from different countries. Funny how no one would fret about that being "talking to a ghost" and "not doing anything/having a life".

Sometimes it just strikes me that I'm pretty sure when I was a kid and people complained about TV they probably would have touted the superiority of the written word.

It used to be "go and read a book instead." You can read books on the internet, but no one mentions that when the horror propaganda begins. It's funny how internet seems to have taken TV's place as "the new technogical thing that can do so much damage, OMG!!1", and yet, many things that people criticised TV for really doesn't apply for internet.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the pen pal thing too-hey, remember when we kids were encouraged to have a letter-writing relationship with a stranger so that we could learn about people different from us?

It's funny how internet seems to have taken TV's place as "the new technogical thing that can do so much damage, OMG!!1", and yet, many things that people criticised TV for really doesn't apply for internet

Exactly. It's especially weird when I think about how people don't see it as a possible way to get people better at communicating through writing. I know this is because you've got netspeak to deal with, but if you want to say anything of substance (which we obsessive people always do!) netspeak doesn't suffice so you're going to go beyond that.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder if I'd gotten a top grade in English, if there had been an internet culture like there is today, at the time. Then I think of all the words I might have learned to misspel and think maybe not. But then again, I never got accustumed to read the language on regular basis until I entered uni, and definitely didn't get the habit of writing it until I entered fandom, so all in all I think the consequences would have had to be positive. Not to mention socially.

[samaranth.livejournal.com]

I have been having virtually the same argument with the people I work with. You know where I work, you know that part of the deal is seeing how the net is used, particularly by kids. There’s been the exponential growth in Web 2.0 services (LJ included – hey, we were social networking even before they’d invented the term!) – and an exponential growth in the divide between those who can see how good, and how much potential these things have and those who think it’s the embodiment of evil. It’s almost impossible to shift the latter group in their opinions.

I get really tired of the endless ‘but why would you want to do this, put all this out there, share photos, chat to people you don’t know…’ And I keep saying ‘But I do know them!’ For kids and young people there’s little distinction between communicating face to face, or via the net/mobile phone/ smoke signals. 'Friends' has a thousand different meanings. This is life now. Deal.

And exactly: the Megan Meiers case is sadly indicative of the fact that whenever something bad happens now people automatically look for an internet – usually MySpace – connection, as if it’s that which is the problem rather than the behaviour behind whatever it is. Bullying, harassment, and neighbourhood disputes all happen in the day to day world too. It’s treated like a new phenomenon when really it’s as old as the hills. Ditto with lots of other things…

It’s an interesting question about projection. I guess so – I remember in the early days trying to work out who everyone was in Frodo’s Kitchen. Perhaps not so much projection, as trying to learn how to read personalities without the usual signals. And even then these friendships have spilled into the day to day life. Names have faces and voices now. :)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This just reminded me how in Harriet the Spy Harriet used to play a game where she'd listen to people talk and try to imagine what they looked like and then check to see if she was right. That kind of be the same on the 'net.

People always talk about how you "don't know" the person because you can't see them, and it's true people can be conned--but they're conned in real life too. Why do I know the guy I met in the coffee shop is a nice guy just because he looks nice any more than I know the guy who earnestly argued Tolkien with me is nice because he sounds nice? It seems like in reacting against the 'net people sometimes put a little too much faith in their supposed instincts at telling what people are like in person!

Also it seems like people don't get the kinds of conversations you have the 'net, that so many of us really are just interested in conversing with people rather than posing or tricking people. So maybe you talk about a certain thing but eventually it spills out into your life--like in Frodo's Kitchen I can't remember how it came for all of us where we were all from, but it turned out it was a big international group. If you're talking about hobbits what's the worst kind of deception that could be going on, after all? That the person really doesn't like Samwise?

It's like anything involving people, it's complicated. Sometimes the anonymity does add something to it for people.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

It seems like in reacting against the 'net people sometimes put a little too much faith in their supposed instincts at telling what people are like in person!

And a little too little faith in their abilities to tell what people are like based on what they say and how they say it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it's like they're so weirded out by the whole thing they don't think they can tell anyone on the 'net apart at all. We're all just talking in random numbers, letters and emoticons.

[truehobbit.livejournal.com]

I dunno - the people I've met on the 'net are all a bunch of nutcases.
Sometimes they apparently even enjoy my company - I mean, how wacky can you get?

:P

Using the internet for communication, rather than information is still not quite common here, I think. Communication is largely restricted to e-mail, but even that's sometimes considered slightly odd.
Two anecdotes from my recent job, which I thought were strange but telling:
One day I overheard a colleague telling another how she felt annoyed by someone expecting her to have received an e-mail the same day it was sent - she made it sound as if she thought it was odd to read your e-mails each day.
I wondered whether she also thought it odd to pick up the phone each time it rang, or even to see if there's something new on your answering machine when you get home...
The other time, I got an e-mail request from a colleague, but couldn't be bothered to answer right away, thinking I'd do it the next day. However, I forgot and only remembered the day after. I felt rather guilty about the delay when I replied - only to be thanked for the 'swift response' in the answer back (and it didn't seem to be meant ironically). :D

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee! I love that difference in people. It really is the weird thing about e-mail. It gets there right away, but there's a big difference in how fast people can get to them. You can tell you're an Internet person that you feel guilty about the couple days wait!

[anehan]

His suggestion that we project onto other people on the 'net

As if that doesn't happen in RL.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, it totally does!

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

People like that guest on the Daily Show seem to think that deception never happens in face-to-face communication, and that it's easy to read someone's character if you have them sitting there in front of you. Excuse me? It would be possible to argue (okay, a little perversely) that the internet in some ways makes honest communication more possible. True, it filters out some social data that we use for perfectly legitimate and important social judgments: body language, difficulty looking someone in the eye -- things that can alert us right away to the presence of someone who isn't quite all there. But the net has its own craziness filters that emerge over a series of interactions (is someone constantly angry? constantly flattering?). Personally I've found the twenty-post test to be a much more accurate predictor of someone's general temperament and character than any physical indicator (twenty-post test: read twenty of someone's posts and count up the number in which they're angry or harshing on other people -- any people, whether they're people they know or random celebrities. If the person is angry or cruel in the vast majority of the twenty posts (and not in response to some major life event like a recent divorce) then there's a problem there that might not show up for a long time when you see them face to face).

The internet also filters out some physical cues that are irrelevant to character but that (very unfortunately) are sometimes not irrelevant to the snap social judgments we make (class and income indicators, even, to some extent, gender and race, except to the extent that someone chooses to disclose them). So it's a different means of interaction, not a lesser one. The net has its social disadvantages, sure, but plenty of compensatory advantages.

Sometimes I wonder whether the anti-internet people are primarily interested in social control -- making sure people's, especially young people's, friendships and interests are being supervised at all times by their parents, teachers, etc. No, the net isn't safe, but LIFE isn't safe. People have been using words to be mean to each other since those cool language centers evolved in our brains a few hundred thousand years ago. You can only blame the internet for mean if you ignore, well, human history. They should go read a book. :D

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

You said this so much better than I could--yes! It's like the internet has suddenly created this nostalgia for the time when we interacted face to face and used our flawless spider-sense to know who everyone was...right. Like that happened.

And I also like that you brought up signs on the net that someone is crazy. On the one hand I don't want to smugly suggest that "you can tell" whenever somebody is crazy--as in life, some people will fool you. (And one person being gullible doesn't excuse the other person preying on them.) But still a lot of big Internet hoaxes have included tons of people along the way saying "this person is obviously lying." Just like in real life. It's the same phenomenon. The Internet isn't half as useful a tool to liars as a victim who wants to believe what they're saying. People can enter into joint fantasies in real life and on the 'net.

But they are, as you say, also ignoring the potential good things about the 'net. I think it's great that I've gotten used to not assuming as much about whoever I'm talking to, even with something as simple as not assuming that I'm talking to people from my same country because I've realized how annoying it is when people throw out stuff like "first amendment" when speaking to somebody not covered by it and not interested in it. Or even just the way you can get someone first and then find out about their race or gender or disability. "I'm blind" has a completely different meaning coming from somebody on the 'net than it does somebody telling it to you in person where you may have already noticed.

[misscake]

The thing is, I think he's too late to jump into the the discussion with that argument. Yes, we've all heard about extreme situations involving internet interactions, but it seems to me that there is a huge effort now to encourage, particularly in children, responsible and effective internet usage.

But this argument that the internet is inherently 'bad' and 'dangerous' is laughable, because the positive that has come from online interactions has far outweighed the negative. Like you said, people that continue to make this argument just don't get it.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's like--I remember a comedian years ago saying he'd gotten a computer. For years he hadn't had one, and just said, "I'm not interested in the whole computer thing" and now he realized he was just being silly. He said, "It's like saying 'I'm not into the whole telephone thing. It's just not me.'"

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

Heh. That comedian got my sister online. I mean, literally, that "I'm not into the whole telephone thing," is her exact quote of what made her decide to get email. Finally! (Now if only she'd check it regularly -- but, baby steps.) :D

[elanor-x.livejournal.com]

I'm listening to this guy on The Daily Show talk about how the Internet is so awful
I agree. :) (Quote) "Of course, there's a great deal wrong with the Internet. For one thing, only a minute proportion of the world's population is so far connected."

well, he obviously has read a lot of stuff because he's referring to stuff that goes on "these threads" and all
Which threads? In Internet there are numerous threads, communities, blogs, etc. On many of them things, that "go on", are very good indeed! Of course, just like most published books aren't The Classics, many threads don't have plenty of intelligent discussion (imo). The key is finding the ones you like. Hasn't he seen anything worthwhile? If not, the speaker probably looked for proofs for his theory, not honestly tried to get the Internet.

Your post reminded me of one quote, which I afterwards found in "How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet".
http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

Quote: "everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal; anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really."

In that article I didn't understand the sentence:
Because the Internet is so new we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to.
What is Internet if not a tool for communicating and gathering information?

He would probably name this picture "How Internet killed Love on Valentine's Day".

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I did wonder which threads he was talking about--the fact that he said "threads" at least showed some familiarity with how things work (and he made sure to say OMG and WTF too, as if he hadn't gotten past those wacky Internet saying that are somehow so much less meaningful than expressions in person!). He seemed to be talking about political threads--which in itself is funny because while one could say that there's a danger in things getting too polarized there, there's also a reason political blogs are becoming important that's connected to the whole point of journalism to begin with.

"everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal; anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really."

LOL! So true!

Because the Internet is so new we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to.

I don't think he necessarily means that it isn't a tool for communicating or gathering information, but that it's a new type that has a lot of things unique to it. It's not just a different form of something that already exists. At least that's what I'd assume he meant.

That comes up a lot in fanfic discussions where I agree with that sentence. People talk about posting fanfic as "publishing" and therefore interfering with copyright, when I would say that in fandom posting is more like sharing a story with friends--it's social as well as publishing, part of a conversation. So I don't think you can just say "It's like you put it in a book and sold it" just because in some ways it's like that.

chanology!

[shusu.livejournal.com]

This is incredibly ironic because oh fuck, the Internet is HERE.

Re: chanology!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! That's awesome!

[lokifan]

Quite. This is exactly like so much of the worry over telly - it's dangerous, it exposes kids to unsavoury things, it's unhealthy, it stops real human interaction, it's not intelligent. I actually think the internet helps solve the problems that TV can but doesn't always cause - as you said, we read and interact!

Besides, why is it necessarily a problem if the discussion threads are sometimes less than intelligent? Maybe people don't always want to read them, but it's not like all conversations in RL are deep and thoughtful. Discussion on the internet, particularly about books (for me, anyway, so it's obviously biased by my interests) is often at a higher standard than that in real life. I've learnt so much.

Anyway, it actually takes some effort and luck to find the good discussions. I don't even know how I managed it or how The Daily Show guy could. It's like fanfiction - a cursory Google would find you the Pit of Voles, not Underwater Light.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

When it comes down to it, the Internet has people interacting and that's always going to bring trouble--it might have its own ways of doing it, but there's going to be some things that are familiar. I remember seeing something about TV for instance, where it said people seem to have this idea that if kids are forced to not watch TV they'll immediately pick up a book and read when they might actually do something just as mindless. (I love The Simpsons where they imo do a tongue and cheek fantasyland that results when they turn off their TVs--the kids are all playing with hoops and making soap box racers and the bullies are whitewashing fences.)

It's also funny that it didn't occur to him that one reason threads on the 'net get so contentious is that people often care about what they're talking about, even if it's something another person would find meaningless.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

There may be some truth to this: we're physical beings, not just brains in vats, and we really do need to hear voices and see faces, and we make them up when we don't have them. If you take this projection too far, it's easy to mistake imaginary relationships for real ones. It's easy to get sucked into a world where you don't have to accept the realness of people and their emotions and agendas and interests that are truly separate from yours and to a large extent beyond your control. I think the MsScribe stuff that went down a few of years ago was a good example of that. MsScribe saw people online as just specters in her own fantasyland. I don't think she was some kind of sociopath who would have inflicted pain on people who seemed real to her. It's just that the GT folks and Christina didn't seem real to her.

Not that people don't often inflict pain face-to-face. Of course they do. But the Internet gets rid of one of our instinctive barriers against that, which is the necessity of dealing with consequences in the physical social world (even if that consequence is just someone bursting into tears in public and you having to watch). That's a world you can't shut off and disconnect yourself from the way you can from your computer and your online friends.

On the other hand, there may be some advantage to occasionally having conversations without getting distracted by someone else's weight, hair color, ethnicity, personal history, socioeconomic class, annoying facial tics...you can meet people who you'd never talk to otherwise and become friends with them.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. It's not like the Internet doesn't bring its own brand of dangers in interactions. But even when people are duping others they're using a combination of Internet things and real things. The picture in my icon is from a movie called "Le Corbeau" that's about a person in a little French town who starts writing poison pen letters and the motivation and reactions are very much like what you'd get on the 'net--only of course with the additions of it being a small town where people know each other face to face.

Or think of something like Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood and the whole Bit of Earth fiasco if you know that--there were a lot of people duped there, but long before it came out there were a lot of people saying "This person is obviously lying to you." There was a point where it wasn't just about not having a face to face interaction (I believe some people were fooled by her face to face--and even accepted her explaining away such silly things as why she had a totally different accent than her family did), it was about drawing people into the fantasy she'd created.

[kaiz.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it just strikes me that I'm pretty sure when I was a kid and people complained about TV they probably would have touted the superiority of the written word.

Hey you kids, get off my lawn! *shakes fist at rowdy young'uns playing that loud [rock/rap/hiphop/techno/-insert youthful music of choice-] music*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Music? *shakes fist with you* That's not music!

[godspoodle.livejournal.com]

I think it's like with everything else-- a) you can't have one single explanation for how different people react to any wide-spread social phenomenon; b) it's always the loudest, most 'shocking' or just plain blatant reactions/interactions that make a good-- and quick-- story, so they're what gets rehashed over & over again until it's taken as a given.

It's not that the internet can't lead to blah-blah-blah dissociative behavior or blah-blah insincere manipulation, etc, it's just that you'll have certain sorts of people this involves (ie, newbies, young adult male forum junkies, debate forums & anon dating sites), and certain sorts of scenarios. The experience you get reading an interior decorating blog is a zillion miles from being in a chatroom on irc, or reading slashdot or a blog with a different, esp. political, focus, which is a zillion miles from livejournal slash fandom (which is waaaaay different from yaoi/shoujo manga forums in terms of both demographic and interaction style), which is a zillion miles from myspace and y!m (which has a subtly different culture/demographic than AIM or icq, etc), respectively, and forget about the online gamers and the RPG-crazy people. All of those are 'representative' of the online experience in their own way, if you go by demographic. Very few people actually have experience with all these widely different milieus, esp. people who then go on to write about the social dynamics on the internet for some strange reason. Research, what?? haha. I... er... happen to be familiar with many different online subcultures, but that just makes me realize how little I really know-- 'cause I dip my toe in somewhere like 4chan or the blogging world & find an abyss. :P


One reason no one gets it is that no one gets that to talk about the internet social game with authority, you can't see it from the outside. You have to be able to not just observe these subcultures, but interact in a way that fits in somewhat, to get the real flavor. You *have* to fit in, or you won't get it, bottom line. And who could really fit in in both 4chan, slashdot, an interior design blog circle, HP slash fandom and so on an so forth? Certainly not me, I just live here :P

My point is, you have to approach it like an old-school anthropologist, and no one does; they don't get that the online world both is and isn't like a separate country with its own regional and sub-regional specifics in terms of dialect and custom (and speech-pattern), which means it's still human, still real, still... rational. Back in the day, anthropologists did exactly this-- they tried to fit in and observe, spent years staking out their 'prey' and getting slowly deeper in. That's what you'd have to do on many different fronts before you could really have any right talking about how people communicate online.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ha! So true--it's like somebody saying "here's the problem with people talking to each other..." and giving this one-size fits all answer. But everybody wants to start with the thing that looks the most different--you're not face to face, you're typing...and then the person can read what you wrote right away. And you can have lots of interacts, and you still haven't met face to face. But that then has to explain everything when it doesn't. To understand any community on the 'net, or any one crazy scenario, you'd have to look at a lot more than the way the two people happened to be communicating. That would certainly be part of it because it's going to affect how they're dealing with each other, but it's not like that's the thing that's making them act the way they do when other groups are gong to act totally differently.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

yes the Internet offered her a way to torment the girl while hiding behind a fake persona, but the problem was created face to face.

It's that "way to torment" stuff that's troubling. The neighborhood brawl may have gone the way of the Hatfields and McCoys, but maybe it would have never progressed farther than some insults shouted over the hedges and flaming bags of dogshit on porches. The internet provided a whole new, unique way for this woman to punish these people, and provided her with the anonimity to conduct herself in a way she might not have dared in real life.

I'd say that's one of of the best and worst things about the internet. It gives people a forum and the anonimity to express themselves in a way they probably can't in real life. But it also gives some people the license to give vent to their inner asshole in the worst possible way.

I didn't catch that whole interview, but I did see Jon Stewart asking the guest if stuff on the internet wasn't "easy to ignore." Speaking as someone who's been wanked by more than a thousand strangers over the course of a week, I can emphatically say...it's not.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I was thinking exactly the same thing about the "easy to ignore" thing. It's more like it's an added difficulty that you feel like people expect you to be able to ignore it. Or even worse, the people who are doing the attacking act like it doesn't count because it isn't "real." It's like if somebody in your town was like "Look, we're going to hold a hate rally against you a few blocks away, but if you don't like it, just don't come by, okay?"

The Internet does offer new ways to torment people. truepenny has been reading books about the Salem Witch trials and she read this one book that sounded really interesting in the way it tried to pinpoint why these certain people got accused of witchcraft. Basically, what social codes did they "break" that people went after them that way--and it wasn't all that different than thinking about what would make a person considered in need of a super wanking. Though also in Salem it seemed like it probably took a long time of festering resentment where as on the 'net people will jump in right away.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

It's like if somebody in your town was like "Look, we're going to hold a hate rally against you a few blocks away, but if you don't like it, just don't come by, okay?"

Exactly. I think maybe a trained Buddhist monk would be able to ignore something like that but the rest of us...not so much.

on the 'net people will jump in right away.

There have always been, and will always be people who just love being part of a mob. All it takes is a few ringleaders to get things going and they'll pile on. The big difference with the internet is that you can be part of a mob without anyone knowing who you are. So once things cool down (assuming they do), you never have to face the person you attacked, or their friends or anyone who might have criticized the mob. You never have explain your actions or take any sort of responsibility for anything you might have said or done. And you can act like it was all no big deal because, hey, it's just harmless internet fun.

[horridporrid.livejournal.com]

The only thing I have to add here is that people do connect in RL from internet meetings. And not always in creepy, news at 11 ways. Didn't the first Harry Potter cons spring from internet groups? And within the Dunnett books discussion groups I believe tour groups were formed to follow in the footsteps of her protagonists.

On a smaller scale, my husband is involved in online law groups based on region, practice area, etc. And he's met up with some of the online folks at various CLEs.

I mean, the internet wouldn't work the way it does if people didn't like to connect in the end. Sure, sometimes that connection can go in ugly ways (we're all united in how we don't like that person or group) but I think probably more often than not, it's in positive ways.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's kind of gotten past the point where the *only* people on the 'net could possibly be crazy people and predators. So much of it is truly based on people looking for others with their special interests, of course people are going to have groups of lawyers based on region and practice areas.