A Mogger named *nicki*, who's one of my Trusted, threw up a thought-provoking post called "*Beware of the Online Collective*":http://mog.com/nicki/blog_post/35172 which points to an essay by Jaron Lanier called "Digital Maoism"...Her post begins with a quote from Lanier which begins like this:"... There’s one observation of mine, about a potential danger, that has caused quite a ruckus in the last half-year. I wrote about it initially in an essay called Digital Maoism....People have often been willing to give up personal identity and join into a collective. Historically, that propensity has usually been very bad news. Collectives tend to be mean, to designate official enemies, to be violent, and to discourage creative, rigorous thought. Fascists, communists, religious cults, criminal “families” — there has been no end to the varieties of human collectives...I wonder if some aspect of human nature evolved in the context of competing packs. We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the lure of the mob.One of the most wonderful things about the rise of the Web and other Internet-based communication schemes is how anti-mob they have been...In the last few years, though, a new twist has appeared. Along with all the sites that encourage individual expression, we are seeing a flood of schemes that celebrate collective action by huge numbers of bland, anonymous people. A lot of folks love this stuff. My worry is that we’re playing with fire." (click on her MOG for the link to that whole piece)Some of the sentiment above points to a topical bee that's been buzzing around in my bowler hat recently, so when I read her post I thought I'd comment; share my thoughts with her but the comment got hairy and grew teeth, so, instead of turfing her landing page with a grandiloquent reply I thought I'd do a quick pass and slap this baby up on my own little slab of MOG-estate"I remember the first time I noticed myself becoming mean when I left an anonymous comment on a blog. What is it about that situation that seems to bring out the worst in people so often? " I can relate to this sentiment; once anonymity is obtained, some "avatars" like to become tools just for the sake of doing so...not only do I think it's shameful, it's pathetic...especially when all you hear from such particular "persons" is impulsive, poorly thought-out, super-snarky and always sarcastic retorts that always seem to magically appear hours after a post have gone up (implying that in a real, human to human banter,these self-styled "witty-conversationalists" would be out of their league)...don't even get me started on the losers who lie in wait; stalk female user (based on their avatar photo)...That said, I try to keep things above board, to hold on to those last remnants of civility I hear talk about at parties...that shite's becoming like Big Foot or the Yeti up in this piece, son (just a pinch of hyperbole won't hurt, right there).....re: "should we be worried? Is the epidemic spilling over into the “real” world and our daily lives?" Yeah, I think we should have pause in respect to this scenario because people seem to be losing the facility for simple human interaction; the good sense they're naturally born with- my friends IRL will tell you that I call 'em "dinosaur food": were this 1,000 years ago, many of the latter would've been pounced upon by a saber-toothed skunk or something big 'n woolly 'n ferocious but not now...our (supposed) mastery of the natural environment has rendered the latter, gene pool-refining aspect of the natural selection process moot...or has it? Maybe the punchline in the cosmic joke will be that our species will become so caught up in; dependent on our machinery and electronically broadcast "pod-thought" that when Mother Nature's critters finally do rise up and strike back, biologically speaking, we'll be caught with our intellectually hubristic pants around our ankles, so to speak (in the tune "Pray to the Junkie-Maker" Fishbone's Angelo Moore called it a "mental shitty")...let the herd-thinning commence, yo!...I said all of the above to say that I, for one, think it is an inevitability and maybe,in fact, that we are painting ourselves into a cerebral cul de sac and the nabobs of negativity are speeding said process along in some ways, like the little drone bees that they are which reminds me, once a bee has used it's little stinger, to ward off a hive intruder, he expires...hmmmm...truth be told, I'm a believer in James Lovelock's "*Gaia Hypothesis*":http://erg.ucd.ie/arupa/references/gaia.html ...so, in closing, I'd like to point you to a few words that Uncle George Carlin had to say on a similar subject...saving the planet..
ScottyB says
Great post.
I am continually amazed at how mean, bitter, and spiteful people can be when they are hidden by faceless avatars and "screen names" - And that bile seems to only become more acid when they have the ability to post anonomously.
I'm just wondering from whence all this incivility arises...
jenny says
I have had some extremely negative experiences in online music communities. I don't think MOG is like that. It seems very civil to me.
My theory: many of the people who dominate the "mean" boards are under-20 males who have never had sex and who, consequently, have very mixed feelings about women.
nicki says
Here's a question, which is somewhat related to the issue of whether online incivility leaks into off-line life: would they do it if no one were watching?
I'm reminded of some incidents of people in my neighborhood being harassed and knocked around by bands of teenagers; most, including the police, agree that it's done for show and if you drag one of those punks to the police station, he starts whimpering like a baby. "It's a rite of passage to look tough in front of his peers."
Probably the same thing that happens on-line: a verbal assault hit-and-run. So it's harder to gauge its impact on the rest of our lives. Perhaps it's not the rudeness itself that spills over, but our collective frustration in having to witness and deal with it...
ivylander says
One of the things that amazes me about the supposedly high-toned Huffington Post is the inanity and viciousness of the comments on the stories there, on both sides of the political spectrum. You can posit that politics is the root cause of the bad faith there, but I suspect it cuts deeper. I'm trying to resist the urge to go off on an extended tangent about what community means to people in an age where mass culture is being atomized. But how it relates to us is this: MOG is an authentic community, and there are people among us who recognize it, and cherish it, and do what they can to preserve and extend it. There are also people among us (not for long, usually) who, because of their own no-doubt-pathological power issues, try to undermine the sense of community here. Luckily we are mostly composed of people who understand that one of the greatest freedoms is the freedom not to be an asshole.
Nicki, have you ever read a short story by Garrison Keillor (who used to be a hell of a writer before he became a cultural icon) called "Don: The Story Of A Real Human Person"? It's a minor classic of rock and roll literature, and it speaks to exactly the phenomenon you describe.
Jess Horrible says
"...we are painting ourselves into a cerebral cul de sac and the nabobs of negativity are speeding said process along in some ways..."
Nicely put, and I couldn't agree more.
A Mogger named *nicki*, who's one of my Trusted, threw up a thought-provoking post called "*Beware of the Online Collective*":http://mog.com/nicki/blog_post/35172 which points to an essay by Jaron Lanier called "Digital Maoism"...Her post begins with a quote from Lanier which begins like this:"... There’s one observation of mine, about a potential danger, that has caused quite a ruckus in the last half-year. I wrote about it initially in an essay called Digital Maoism....People have often been willing to give up personal identity and join into a collective. Historically, that propensity has usually been very bad news. Collectives tend to be mean, to designate official enemies, to be violent, and to discourage creative, rigorous thought. Fascists, communists, religious cults, criminal “families” — there has been no end to the varieties of human collectives...I wonder if some aspect of human nature evolved in the context of competing packs. We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the lure of the mob.One of the most wonderful things about the rise of the Web and other Internet-based communication schemes is how anti-mob they have been...In the last few years, though, a new twist has appeared. Along with all the sites that encourage individual expression, we are seeing a flood of schemes that celebrate collective action by huge numbers of bland, anonymous people. A lot of folks love this stuff. My worry is that we’re playing with fire." (click on her MOG for the link to that whole piece)Some of the sentiment above points to a topical bee that's been buzzing around in my bowler hat recently, so when I read her post I thought I'd comment; share my thoughts with her but the comment got hairy and grew teeth, so, instead of turfing her landing page with a grandiloquent reply I thought I'd do a quick pass and slap this baby up on my own little slab of MOG-estate"I remember the first time I noticed myself becoming mean when I left an anonymous comment on a blog. What is it about that situation that seems to bring out the worst in people so often? " I can relate to this sentiment; once anonymity is obtained, some "avatars" like to become tools just for the sake of doing so...not only do I think it's shameful, it's pathetic...especially when all you hear from such particular "persons" is impulsive, poorly thought-out, super-snarky and always sarcastic retorts that always seem to magically appear hours after a post have gone up (implying that in a real, human to human banter,these self-styled "witty-conversationalists" would be out of their league)...don't even get me started on the losers who lie in wait; stalk female user (based on their avatar photo)...That said, I try to keep things above board, to hold on to those last remnants of civility I hear talk about at parties...that shite's becoming like Big Foot or the Yeti up in this piece, son (just a pinch of hyperbole won't hurt, right there).....re: "should we be worried? Is the epidemic spilling over into the “real” world and our daily lives?" Yeah, I think we should have pause in respect to this scenario because people seem to be losing the facility for simple human interaction; the good sense they're naturally born with- my friends IRL will tell you that I call 'em "dinosaur food": were this 1,000 years ago, many of the latter would've been pounced upon by a saber-toothed skunk or something big 'n woolly 'n ferocious but not now...our (supposed) mastery of the natural environment has rendered the latter, gene pool-refining aspect of the natural selection process moot...or has it? Maybe the punchline in the cosmic joke will be that our species will become so caught up in; dependent on our machinery and electronically broadcast "pod-thought" that when Mother Nature's critters finally do rise up and strike back, biologically speaking, we'll be caught with our intellectually hubristic pants around our ankles, so to speak (in the tune "Pray to the Junkie-Maker" Fishbone's Angelo Moore called it a "mental shitty")...let the herd-thinning commence, yo!...I said all of the above to say that I, for one, think it is an inevitability and maybe,in fact, that we are painting ourselves into a cerebral cul de sac and the nabobs of negativity are speeding said process along in some ways, like the little drone bees that they are which reminds me, once a bee has used it's little stinger, to ward off a hive intruder, he expires...hmmmm...truth be told, I'm a believer in James Lovelock's "*Gaia Hypothesis*":http://erg.ucd.ie/arupa/references/gaia.html ...so, in closing, I'd like to point you to a few words that Uncle George Carlin had to say on a similar subject...saving the planet..
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