The Blogosphere: With Cruelty and Malice for All [View All]

WP: With Cruelty and Malice for All
It's Dark Out There In the Blogosphere
By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007; Page C01

....In popular culture as well as politics, snark has taken on a cruel new dimension, thanks to the brawling blogosphere. A new breed of celebrity-focused bloggers will take their luckless saps wherever they can get them, even if they happen to be non-famous schlubs who just happened to do something really embarrassing on tape. Remember Miss Teen South Carolina? The Crying Britney Boy? TMZ.com stalks tipsy, buxom babes stumbling out of Los Angeles nightclubs, recording every slurred syllable. Perhaps such sites are the mutant kin of "America's Funniest Home Videos" or "Candid Camera." Except this is no gentle ribbing at universal human foibles. Increasingly, there's a tenor of mean-spiritedness creeping into public discourse, a gleeful maliciousness....

"I don't know what it is about this particular moment in human history which lends itself to the sanction of miscellaneous and casual cruelty," says cyber-guru John Perry Barlow, vice chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cyberspace, he says, "has a way of making us feel like other people are informational artifacts. If you cut data, it doesn't bleed. So you're at liberty to do anything you want to people who are not people but merely images."...

In the beginning, the Web was spun as a plugged-in Utopia, with everyone allegedly playing nice in a free market of ideas and goodwill. On the Well, one of the earliest Internet forums, posters were admonished, "You own your words." When the first batch of cyberspace flamers spewed venom in the early '90s, Netizens were shocked at the vitriol; it didn't fit into their self-image of a benevolent Infobahn....

There's a part of human nature that feels compelled to tear down others. In the days of the Inquisition, Venetians, under the cloak of night, would tiptoe to the Palazzo Ducale and slip unsigned notes detailing acts of their neighbor's alleged heresy into a slot in the door -- the better to guarantee said neighbor a quick trip to the torture chambers.

The cloaking anonymity of the Internet also provides a safe place for unleashing the id. Just about every message board, whether it's a support forum for women seeking fertility treatments or sites for reality TV fans, is on the alert for "trolls," mischievous souls who seem to delight in stirring the pot...."There are folks who've been sitting in the upstairs bedroom where they're still living with Mom a little longer than is cool," Barlow says. "They've got a little too much time on their hands, and they spend it staring at the screen. They're frustrated with themselves and they take it out on other people."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111302302.html?hpid=sec-artsliving