The Internet, Anonymity and Misanthropy (X-Posted from GD)

[SidneyCarton]

All things considered, the Internet is a fascinating and insidiously useful creation. Need a fact, google it. Looking for an association of like minded individuals? There are groups for every possible group imaginable, from liberals, to atheists, to people who enjoy fiction involving invisible women (I kid you not). Don’t want anyone to know who you really are? Create a persona, no one need really know. After all, the only reason you have to believe that my name is Sidney Carton (Though I will freely admit it’s not) and that I am a Mormon, and a male graduate student in early-adulthood with a wife and child, is because I say so. As there are few ways to check, it could be equally likely that I am a middle-aged female wiccan who works as a stripper in Omaha. (Naaah, probably not.) Anyway anonymity is a two-edged sword it protects the user, who need not fear that his comments will result in bags of flaming dog feces on his doorstep (Or other, far less pleasant experiences such as death threats) while at the same time giving him license to attack his fellow man without mercy.

For examples of this viciousness, one need look no further than recent headlines. There was the young woman who hung herself after the mother of one of her classmates, who pretended to be a boy she liked, hounded and mocked her mercilessly on myspace. Then there was the South Korean starlet, who fell prey to such serious and vicious Internet gossip, that she committed suicide. Whether it be the online tabloid sites, such as TMZ or PerezHilton, or message boards, or even some online sites that purport to report news, snark is king and the more cutting the commentary, the better.

There is nothing necessarily new about the phenomenon of snark in popular culture, as long as there has been printing, there have been pamphlets which have ridiculed the powerful and the public. For those who could not read there were bawdy songs and the ever present gossip. Yet prior to the Internet revolution, it would be rather unlikely that some guy living in his mother’s basement in Tallahassee would see fit to spend his time tormenting a housewife in Phoenix. The reason is simple, printing was expensive, and rarely were songs written about obscure individuals, if you were being slandered, chances were it was by someone you knew. Not anymore. Even I have done my fair share of attacks from behind my pseudonym, most recently to Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who I called an idiot. (A rather milquetoast attack, in comparison to some I admit, yet nonetheless I could do it without any fear of Mr. DeMint, or his staffers attacking me personally, the worst they could do is attack Sidney Carton a moniker, which I can choose to hide behind, or discard at my leisure.

So what’s my point? The anonymity of the Internet allows for a level of freedom of speech unlike any previously experienced. Like Carnival on every day of the year, it is a masquerade ball which allows each to come in whatever form they wish to portray themselves, and erases the boundaries between genders, classes, and races if so desired. Yet as the mask allows each to pursue their deepest fantasies without fear of reprisal, we begin to see that not all fantasies are harmless. Indeed, there seem to be quite a few closet misanthropes out there, who seeing a sphere in which they may act without the consequences which they would face in face-to-face contact, choose to indulge this trait to the extreme. Were people to communicate with each other in public the way they do on message boards, discourse would swiftly degenerate to physical violence as the invective, vitriol and hostility spread so thoughtlessly via keyboard would be answered with blows.

So people are mean on the Internet, so what? If I don’t like snark, I certainly don’t have to be here. This is indeed true, but I have a hard time believing that such an outpouring of misanthropy online does not reach beyond the keyboard. I find it unlikely that one can be an absolutely thuggish brutal monster online, and then be a perfectly calm, rational and respectful human being away from the net, eventually the temptation to attack with the same license which characterizes one’s online persona will take hold and we see the effects of such temptation in the coarsening of dialogue in society. I have no prescription to solve this problem. The anonymity of the web is not merely a liability, but an important protection as well, and one that I would not want revoked under any circumstances. Yet, as long as it exists the potential for bullying, cruelty and general despicable attacks by faceless assailants remains.

Perhaps the greatest argument against pursuing such behavior is the question of identity. Who are we really? Are we the facade we show to the world, or are we the person we choose to be when no one sees what we are doing. The way we act while hiding behind our online personas reveals much more about the “real us” than any portrait ever could.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. imagine that...thoughtful and provocative. The last comment especially

:thumbsup: