Letters to the Editor
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Civility
is a great comforting kindness, and not near so kind as sharing truth and bearing the gift of its necessary discomfort.
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Dear Gary
I am not certain why you would have chosen to write an article on the lack of manners and civility on the Internet, unless you could not have thought of a better subject on which to expound.
This article is a rehash of over ten years of articles all over the net exclaiming the self same problems you ennumerate in this one. I have read the same plea from writers here on Salon, Slate and numerous other online magazines, blogs, usenet newsgroups, pre-internet bulletin boards and online communities for at least 10 of the 16 years I have been communicating and reading in cyberspace. Unfortunately, your article has added nothing new to the general discourse.
At one time, Salon, as you pointed out, selected representative letters to the editor and actually edited said letters. Then, one day it was decided to allow all readers, both paid subscribers and free readers to write anything they so chose without any editing or disciplinary action from whatever is left of the editorial staff. Consequently, depending on the subject of the article, hundreds of letters followed specific articles, especially those in the Life section, and flame wars erupted.
It was after Joan Walsh wrote her diatribe concerning misogyny on the Internet, that the editors decided to reign in some of the more offensive LW's and begin deleting some letters without notification that a particular letter had been deleted. I, as well as, any regular reader of the Letters sections have no idea how many letters have been deleted for content or language. I think that by not making mention that a specific letter had been deleted is cowardly and dishonest on the part of the editors. If a letter is deleted, then a message should be posted saying so, if only for continuity.
However, back to your article, while statistics may say we, as a people or nation may not be ruder than we were 30 years ago, I must disagree from my own experience. I do believe society, as a whole is ruder than it was in 1977 and that rudeness is not only accepted, but in some arenas almost expected. The Internet has become a lightening rod for obsenities, flame-wars and behavior that would not be acceptable in person, but this is not news, and since many have written on this subject year after year for at least the past 10 to 16 years, I cannot find one new idea in your article and have to wonder why you wrote it and why it was published?
Was it a slow news day?
As always, I sign my real name to everything I write on Salon, since if I cannot stand behind my words, why write them and at least until my subscription runs out, I have paid for the privilige.
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Yep
Good lord do I agree with this article. I started leaving comments on a conversative blog (already a bad idea, with me being a liberal and all). At first, I was leaving angry comments, and then -- a moment of epiphany! -- I realized that I was being, you know, a dick. I made pledge to myself to never again leave an angry comment on Salon, Slate, etc., etc... On the conversative blog-site, I apologized and tried leaving polite comments. These got a certain percentage of nasty comments, no matter what I wrote. I started leaving comments discussing my (fairly obvious) revelation that if online conversations were to have any merit -- or future -- we all needed to start being nicer to one another. This got a certain percentage of nasty comments, no matter what I wrote.
I stopped leaving comments on the blog.
I guess a certain percentage of people in the blogosphere just like getting in fights. And it takes a serious effort of will not to get involved in fights with them. One guy -- while I was leaving longer and longer comments calling for internet civility -- left me progressively ruder responses, until I called him a dick. And once I fell into this (obvious) trap, he was then able to write, "Oh, look who the real a**shole is! The guy who's calling for civility just wants to fight! Dude, you're the real jerk! Blah de blah bloo."
It's hard. You have to train yourself not to respond, and by doing this, you leave yourself wide-open. It reminds me of when political candidates make a pledge to go "all positive" with their ads. ...What happens? The other side just runs attack ad after attack ad until the poor bastard finally crumbles and respondes. ...And what then? The other said says, "Oh look! 'Mr. Positive Campaign' guy is the real a**shole here."
I don't know if I have a real point here, beyond "it's hard," but man, is it hard. It takes a sense of humor, a sense of empathy, stoicism, and possibly the occasional foray into saying to some rude commenter, "You're just such a hopeless dick that I will never reply to anything you write. So go ahead; knock yourself out."
I guess. ...Or is there another way?
Here's the link to my blog where I vaguely discuss this. I leave you the link because I'm annoying like that:
http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/nervevideo.aspx?id=144e15079#15079
cheers,
Oliver
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A Matter of Character
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing”. Robert E Howard (Creator of Conan)
Gary's article raises a key issue but I think he missed the main point. As the quote above implies, many people are only 'polite' when they fear the negative consequences of being impolite. The main reason that Internet discussion threads get so out of hand is not a lack of politeness, rather it is the anonymity that the Internet offers. On the Internet a '98 pound weakling' can weigh into a '800 lb Gorilla' and survive! The poster is shielded by a made-up name and his IP provider, and is sitting safely behind his keyboard thousands of miles away.
At the risk of destroying my carefully crafted image, I will disclose the fact that I play online poker. If you want to see pure viciousness read some of the chat that goes on between players. After losing a hand, some players will attack other players' character, sexual preferences, intelligence, parents (mothers and wives are also open game), poker skills, you name it. The sites have programs that automatically replace the vowels in expletives with asterisks, but you have no doubt about what the poster is saying. Even worse, some players will use 'scope' sites to find data to publicly humiliate players with losing records.
Some of this is done by unethical players trying to unsettle their opponents, or put them on 'Tilt' in poker slang. However, the vast majority of the abusive chat comes from people with oversized yet fragile egos. They are probably spineless cowards in person but they use the anonymity of the web to show how 'tough' they are. I was taught the true judge of character is what you do when no one can find out about it. Modern life can be a pressure cooker, and I suspect that many people who feel powerless or downtrodden in their daily lives morph into verbal web assassins on the Web.