what is it about the anonymity of an on-line community that seems to enable some people to indulge in their most prurient tendencies?
oh, did i answer my own question? anonymity?
you take two people who, in person, might get along just fine, but give them some virtual anonymity and they become raging ghengis kahn’s.
i do believe that it would be a great idea if someone invented software that forced people to read their emails and their posts 5 minutes after they’d written them.
the levels of vitriol and animosity that can be found in some on-line communities (and, to a small but still lamentable extent, ours) are really striking.
we’re all a bunch of savages, aren’t we? ok, i take that back. in the right (wrong) circumstances we’re all a bunch of savages. i’m often amazed at how the on-line world can so often resemble ‘lord of the flies’.
what can we do, as humans who obviously have some pretty aggressive inate tendencies, to vent these aggressive tendencies in healthy and non destructive ways?
sports? music? sex? gardening?
maybe being on-line genghis kahn’s is healthy for some people, who knows?
but it sure is disconcerting to step into the middle of an on-line war of the words. i’ve read things that are so vitriolic that they take my breath away.
personally i blame flouride in the water supply (ha, ha,,,actually i’m only half kidding).
or mercury in our teeth.
or dioxin.
or power lines.
or fax machines.
that’s it, it’s those accursed fax machines.
and, to flagrantly disregard my own belief that people should re-read their emails and postings, i’m going to post this now.
-moby