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
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Date: 2008-02-15 01:56 pm (UTC)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