Letters to the Editor
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Gary, You Ignorant Slut! Worst Article in the History of Journalism. You stink!
Sorry, you already alluded to this in the article, but I couldn't help myself. Just hope I get first letter!
Peace!
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Bad manners are often the message.
A most welcome opinion, indeed.
Unfortunately, those most prone to using bad language are, I believe, not doing so out of a lack of manners. These missives are a deliberate act with deliberate goals, depending on where they are sent.
If they are sent to a site they agree with, then the bad language is an attempt to establish "cred" - to tell other posters, "Hey, I'm one of you! I hate who you hate, maybe even more than you do!"
If they are sent to a site they disagree with, then they are sent to silence that site. They seek to label the site as profane, partisan, and worthless as a venue for serious discussion.
In either case, the message is not in the words, but in the tone.
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Oh the Incivility!
Gary, you ask too much. In order to show manners, people have to actually have them or at least know what they are. You claim that society is not less civil that before. Perhaps so, but the general preponderance of incivility in society today is made more visible via internet culture.
It's easy to lob rocks at invisible "others" from behind the protective scrim of the monitor. Where there is no social penalty for aggressive and obnoxious behavior, it will flourish.
I wish it could be different, but unlike you, Gary, I despair that it ever will be.
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oh man
you wrote:
"our egalitarian, largely classless and ritualless society..."
Gary, I love ya man, but that might the single most daffy thing I've ever read!
Everything else though is spot on.
cheers.
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I agree
After pestering Salon to do more to edit the letters to the editor which relied primarily on name calling and obscenities, I was thrilled when Salon deleted one of mine because I had used a word which I obviously cannot use here without getting this letter censored, too. Although I was not using it in conjunction with the writer of the article or the posters commenting, I was still censored. And although I generally believe in free speech, sometimes editing is necessary.
Actually, I am frequently stunned not by how rude people are online but how civilized. In my early days online and when I tried something new, I made a lot of "newbie" mistakes. But in general, my fellow posters were pretty considerate in the way they pointed this out to me. It depends on what sites you frequent, I suppose.
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donning my monocle
I think the biggest issue in written/online communication is that the written word leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to showing tone. What one person may write to be taken with the utmost seriousness may read as a joke to another. You may think I'm being sarcastic, but am I? Who knows! When I'm talking to you, even on the phone where you can't see me, it is incredibly obvious whether I'm taking the mickey out of you, or being really truly rude.
The other big issue is that there is no way to judge how the person we are communicating with is reacting to our statements. In a 'real' conversation we can immediately see the impact our words have on others. We read facial expressions and body language, and moderate our tone and approach accordingly.
The internet is a crazy place where we can be really mean to eachother (sometimes without even intending to be), and never have to see the other person's hurt reaction. Best not to take it too seriously.
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Manners are great and all, but...
While better manners would certainly help streamline conversations between people who are making honest but perhaps abrasive attempts at debate, it does absolutely bugger all to thwart the people whose sole purpose is to piss others off. Sure, not knowing whom you're addressing may make you less likely to consider their feelings, but it's the other side of internet anonymity that really presents a barrier to civility — that being that no-one knows who you are.
The fact is, there are people on the internet who make it a point to disrupt discussions not because they have poor manners but because they take a perverse glee in seeing the sputtering rage that they produce in others. Of course they would never do this in the real world: someone would punch them in the nose or call the cops. But thanks to the internet, they're anonymous and physically removed from the people they're abusing, so they have no incentive to rein in their otherwise-suppressed inner twat.
As much as I'd love to have civilized debates online, there will always be someone out there waiting to call me a dick-sucking Nazi moonbat retard. So three cheers for self-imposed human decency, but I'm still putting my faith in Times-like moderating even if it would constrain my God-given Internet Freedom to write profanity-laced diatribes.
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fine article
everything in moderation
a call for a personal Fairness Doctrine
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The Stick Factor
The problem being one of diminishing returns. To keep her audience, folks like Annie 'The Stick' Coulter has to out-coulter herself constantly. It's not like she actually has anything intelligent or interesting, or even new for that matter, to say (we can't accuse her of not being 'green' -- she keeps recycling her schtick), it's how she says it. I mean, how many chicken heads can you bite off before the rubes move on to the next sideshow??
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Other half of the story
Gary, while it is well known that people are far less polite in online discussions than, say, in person, I think you are missing the real story here.
Online blogs and discussions are a threat to organizations that like to have control over the message, as well as an opportunity for organizations to get their message out in an economic fashion.
Think about the issues that have real money behind them. Is global warming real? Is XBox the best game console? Did the mercury based preservative thimesoral cause 800k cases of autism? Does [random industrial chemical] cause cancer? Will hundreds of hours of cell phone use have any long term health impact? Is chemotherapy effective?
Any organization with a financial stake in an issue like the above would consider it money well spent to have their PR firms post comments to blogs and other online forums; it is ridiculously cheap to do so.
Besides plugs and pro or con posts, I'm sure many discussions are being "poisoned" to decrease the signal to noise level, thus smothering civil discussion, as this is even easier.