The Blogosphere: With Cruelty and Malice for 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

they are helpless. This is the only way they find to fight. Boss is losing business, takes it out on employee, employee comes home takes it out on spouse, spouse takes it out on kids, and so on. I think it may be a sort of panic attack.

zalinda

I write under a pseudonym, and my comments are on "moderate" unless I know you well. My blog made national news a couple of weeks ago, and now I'm dealing with The Trolls.

I'm not sure what motivates people to troll where they're not wanted. I'm not especially a fan of the WaPo, but in this instance, they've hit it on the head -- there seems to be an inordinate amount of people who have nothing better to do with their time than stir the shit online.

IMHO, YMMV,
Julie

brought to light something I guess I knew but hadn't seen expressed in print.

Isn't that something we all want to do though (or at least lots of us)? Find some ignorant schmuck on the other side and prove to yourself, him/her, and the world what a fool or a hypocrite or an a$$hole they are.

...bit of that 'round these parts too, methinks...

that in first reading the article, these parts crossed my mind.

and they practice the useful arts of social shaming.

And it goes beyond some harmful posts

Some of these folks are so threatned that they will do what they can to destroy others profesionally

And yes, every board has them... even DU.

Been dealing with them from early in my Online Experience, late in 1987

You said it.

"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."...

BINGO!

There are alot more frustrations in life than living at home too long. The internet becomes a place to vent those frustrations. Maybe they are sitting in a crappy apartment and frustrated with that.

I think there is a certain payback too. When the world is tearing YOU down all the time, you want some way to feel better about yourself. What better way than to focus on some looser who is clearly a moran. Ha, ha, ha, look at that, I am not so bad after all. It's kind of a game where you slug the person next to you and say 'the world is full of hate, pass it on'.

One was putting herself on a stage and on TV trying to win a contest, and the other was obviously doing something exaggerated and farcical that he meant for people to laugh at anyway. (Although the death threats are inexcusable. DEATH threats?!? Please!)

But I have never understood the vehemence of trolls against ordinary people on the Internet, except to say there are a lot of bullies out there who sure enjoy the luxury of being able to say whatever they want to about someone else without ever having to pay for it socially in the form of being ostracized by everyone else.

And to edit: I also am amazed by the quickness of some people to jump to conclusions about bad things that happen to other people--be it a celebrity, the mother of one (like Kanye West's mom) or a nobody--and decide that they "deserved" whatever happened to them. "She died? Too bad, so sad, she shouldn't have ________!" (followed by a witty pun about the death). Of course, that's a self-defensive act--some people really don't want to think about the possibility of bad things happening to THEM that they don't deserve, so they are very quick to conclude that when misfortune happens to others, it is earned. But still, the cruelty and quickness with which it's done, not to mention the rush to make jokes about it, is disgusting.

But I don't think it's all bad..

How many times have we all railed at what Matthews or Scarborough or Russert said? How many times do we cringe, and grab for the remote to mute the tv when Bush comes on tv?

Do we have a magazine gig? a weekly column in the NYT? a 3 hour radio show every day? a 1 hour tv show every day?

Do publishers line up to beg us to write a book? Is Hollywood filling our answering machine with messages beseeching us to call them back to talk about the movie they want us to do a screenplay for ?

OUR ideas are every bit as good as anyone else's, and NO ONE has EVER really listened to us..EVER.. They pretend to , with a hand outstretched as the ask for campaign donations, but when they are safely in office, they vote AGAINST the things that made us vote FOR them..Is it any wonder why the internet is "popular" and vitriolic, and profane?

Some people will always cross that line and some people just have some pretty weird ideas, but I would rather have them typing away in Mom's basement, or their loft, or their office or their family room, than to have them bottling it all up until the snap and murder their families, or co-workers.

At least online, one can find a group of people who will listen.. They may agree at times, and they may recoil at the lunacy of some people's rantings, but at least we ALL have a better chance of making a connection, and being heard, than we have ever had before.

To me this is the GOP in a nutshell. This is what gets them off.

That many people can't be living with their parents. Most of the baby boomers aren't, and the baby busters who are could have legit economic reasons - better to live with your parents than on the streets or with an abuser, etc. and liberals, going on about unemployment being higher than the government statistics say, shouldn't be viscious against people in that unfortunate situation. So I won't pick on those people. They're lucky to have parents who care enough that they aren't on welfare or on the streets.

And there's nothing to prove the correlation.

There are whole contingents that don't fit that pattern. Like the ones with the attitude "I got mine, who cares about anyone else?" Who claim to be driving their SUVS and when gas prices go up, brag they don't care. Though you can never take anything as true on the internet.

In some of the responses, there's been the thought that people who strike out online may be involved in situations where they feel helpless -- and it may be work, or it may be something else -- but they take out their rage on the internet. And it may well have nothing at all to do with whether or not they live with Mom.

You might learn something. You might find out that the stuff on TV is a load of horseshit. (apologies to horseshit)

I value the internet so much that I do wish people would respect it a bit more, and not use it to such an extent as a place to be anonymously cruel to others. But you're right -- we don't want to turn people away from it.

I've been in publishing for a long time and it always amazes me when this problem (and no, it isn't new at all!) gets discussed as a one-way event. Without demand (readers, visitors, etc.) the snark fest wouldn't be so prominent on the Internet. Whether we want to admit it or not, many of us at one time or another actually seek out, respond to, or otherwise help propagate the discussion launched by the snarky ones. Some people tend to be in the middle of every dust up, even if they don't start the problem, they reward the original poster with a response, expand the issue, then feel good about themselves for "squashing the troll" when really they just encouraged the troll and brought the fouled discourse into wider circulation.
It is hard not to respond to a Bill O' or Rush rant with an online rebuttal, but even if the response is measured, mature, and accurate, it has the inevitable side effect of further publicizing the original snarky rant and proving that the trolls and snarkmasters do matter enough to justify a response.
Not taking a the moral high road here, I love getting into a juicy debate and there are times when watching a flame war flare is great fun. I'm just pointing out that the vox populi has always been a rough and tumble environment (people cursed the printing press for enabling snarky handbills). However, it is because people listen and respond (and are entertained by it) that it continues. The Internet makes it as easy as ever to publish, it just doesn't change human nature much.

it's below him and i wish it would stop.

in some cases would be better.

There are several aspects of this type of story which interest me:

1. First hand accounts. A story may be posted, as an example: " Scientists from XYZ thinktank have reported that people with " innie" belly buttons are more likely to prefer pretzels over potato chips" Invariably the replies will be:

a. This cannot be true! I have an innie! I love potato chips! All my life! Everyone I know! EOM!
b. XYZ thinktank? aren't they the ones who did another study we all dont agree with that one time? cant. be. trusted.
c. Was this posted on redmeatfrommars.com? media whores who cant be trusted.

On another more personal level, someone in any forum may have first hand knowledge of a national story that refutes or promotes some aspect of the story in an intimate first hand way. This has happened to me several times now, and I guess its just cyber nature: because I am posting anonomously and unable to play the "gotta link for that?" game ( How can you provide a link for first hand/ eyewitness information? ) The post, and invariably the poster, is disregarded, ignored, or attacked. I've had people argue with me about factual information of my profession, with 12 years of school and 20 plus years of experience under my belt, and they've naught. Its like "ok, you go man"

2.The speed with which a hoax or false story becomes beyond and urban myth to commonly accepted knowledge, and when disproven the truth ignored. 2 recent examples:
a. Jenkim (sp?): I wonder how many people fouind out the hard way you cant get high from sniffing your own poop? Yet it was picked up and run with, not just on the net but on local talk radio. Expounded upon exponentially. Hilarity ensues, truth not.
b. The rocket launcher turned in for a pair of shoes story. No it was not a missle launcher, it turns out. Another DUer in the thread with intimate knowledge happened to say " hey thats not a missle launcher, its a (somthing else)" Posters respond with: "NEWS 6 says is too!" When proven otherwise, its like it has fallen off the radar, never to be true again.

A more serious story (not to pick at old wounds) the Duke rape case: What % of DUers had those guys guilty in the first days without facts other than,,,oh hell I dont want to go there.

3.Now to the trolls and extreme points of view: the mundane is made more mundane on cyberspace. The only way to get any attention is to ratchet up you POV to the extreme and get those flames going, facts be damned.

4. And this is the crux of the matter: all we really want is attention, not truth nor reality.

back in the mid 1980's, there were a large number of university campuses experimenting with a variety of different networking systems. Group email lists were common, as were primitive conferencing systems (similar in many ways to this forum). That's not even counting the bulletin boards people ran. Flame wars are as old as the internet.

There was NEVER a time when the internet or its ancestors were anything other than the wild west. It's always been the way it is now, and if anything, it has gotten slightly more polite. It has ALWAYS been used to circulate porn. It has always been used to spew vitriol, and remember, one person's vitriol is another person's critical comment.

Take the issue of fertility treatments. It's one thing to have private meetings in the physical world to provide support to one another, but do it in public and people are just going to have to face the facts. There are a lot of people out there who think that fertility treatments are the last refuge of the genetically inferior, of the self-centered, of the rich, of those who should have planned their lives out a little better.

Likewise, there are entire communities--eg furries, zoos, otherkin and so on--who really do deserve all the electronic ridicule they get.

Frankly, I believe they're more concerned about the cruelty and malice toward their own bottom line, and loss of influences as they feel increasingly threatened by the Internet. They're just taking a page from Karl Rove's book as he gave a recent speech against Internet anonymity. I believe he had something against CIA anonymity as well, when it differed with the neocon's fallacious agenda. Brian Williams labels Internet Bloggers as Vinnie in a bath robe in his mom's basement and the Washington Post starts goose stepping in unison stereotyping people on the Internet as the same. I'm sure they would love nothing more than to throw the baby out with the bath water. I haven't seen an apology from them yet for slandering Al Gore for so long, of course they didn't need to do it anonymously, as they combined with the majority of the rest of the corporate media had the one way megaphone and the money on their side to attack the messenger, they didn't need facts or truth to attack the message. I believe it's the political message they're afraid of rather than the rough and tumble nature of the Internet.

P.S. Here is a recent example of what I believe the Washington Post hates about the Internet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2287299