If a society was based completely around the internet, freedom and liberty and democracy would not e
Originally published at shanefitzsimmons.com. You can comment here or there.
I don’t know what kind of system of government an internet-based society would have, but it wouldn’t be anything approaching a democracy. I kind of look at the internet these days as a post-nuclear wasteland akin to Fallout or Mad Max, basically where you’re free to do what you want and you’ll completely get away with it, as long as you do it by yourself and don’t attract too much attention. If you wander into some else’s village, you suddenly have to follow their rules and laws and codes of conduct. Brutal honesty, or even honesty in general no longer matters. The only law that matters is the laws the owner of the site makes up, the only justice is mob justice, and if you want to be a part of the community you (usually) have to conform completely or get the boot.
About a year ago I was a member of a writer forum absolutewrite.com, which was basically just a place where wannabes would gather and pat themselves on their backs and give each other blowjobs reinforcing that they were doing everything right and that their unpublished or self-published writing was perfect. Going there to actually learn the craft of writing was futile, as the regulars, most of whom were above 5,000 posts in as short a time as two years had so thoroughly convinced themselves that they’d figured out the mathematical formula to writing the Great American Novel (meanwhile almost none of them had actually been published [unless you count self-publishing, which you shouldn't]), that they were there more to let everyone else who didn’t agree with them that their way was the only way, and if you tried to disagree with them too much they’d just openly make fun of you. I saw this behavior irritate new people so much that they’d wind up retaliating in kind (no worse than they’d been attacked), only to have the moderators suspend their accounts or ban them entirely. I watched this go on for about a month before I couldn’t take it anymore and left. I’d decided early on that the place wasn’t going to be of any use to me, but I held on for far longer than I should of, duking it out with the mob and not giving in or losing my composure, but eventually if you keep on fighting the same fight with the same people on the internet, you eventually have to face up to the fact that there’s really no good reason for you to be there when it’s so obvious you can’t win, at which point you have to either decide that you simply like arguing on the internet and keep on going, or give it up.
As frustrating as that place was for me, and anyone who couldn’t be assimilated for that matter, there was at least a sense of public influence there. I had no idea who “ran” the forum, as there were several moderators, and while everything seemed to defer to the mob, there is at least a certain (albeit extremely limited) level of integrity in having popular opinion dictate who was beheaded and who was allowed to stick around. And don’t get me wrong, of all the forums I’ve been a part of in my life, that one was the most irritating of all.
But then there’s those shits at No Mutants Allowed, who’s community not only consists of the most idiotic and self-indulgent of all hyper-obsessed fanboys (the type of morons who, if for instance Indiana Jones’ hat wasn’t of the proper pigmentation in the most recent movie, would claim [and very vocally piss and moan] that this movie shits on the integrity of the franchise as a whole and shouldn’t be considered to even be an Indiana Jones movie), but who’s leader, Brother None, is by far the biggest self-stroking piece of shit I’ve ever encountered on the internet. And not because he’s an idiot (he is, but he [at first anyway] at least comes across as fairly intelligent compared to most internet folk), but because he’ll actively engage in forum brawls with anyone he even remotely disagrees with, actively picking at every word they say so as not to actually combat your arguments, but instead to attack you personally or to ignore your actual argument in favor of labeling it as a strawman or something equally inane. And if that doesn’t work, then he’ll just delete your post without informing you. When people have complained about this practice, he ignores them or deletes their complaint posts, pretty much engaging in the worst form of censorship possible in order to manipulate perceptions as all falling in line with his own.
Currently, all that’s really coming out of NMA is bitching about the upcoming game Fallout 3. If you believe that by making what was originally a turn-based game real-time with pause, or what was originally a isometric perspective first person, you are gutting every important aspect of the game until it’s no longer even remotely recognizable and it’s completely impossible for this game to even be considered a part of the former franchise and on top of that, it’s completely impossible for this game to be at all good and anybody who disagrees is a complete piece of shit moron who should be shot and have their children mutilated, then No Mutants Allowed might just be the community for you.
About a year ago the site Somethingawful.com did an article on NMA highlighting actual screenshots from chat logs in the NMA forums. It’s by far one of the most hilarious things I’ve read on the internet. I mean, it’s the same kind of internet stupidity you can find just about anywhere, but the difference is that NMA’s community is pretty much composed of nothing but this kind of stupidity.
These two sites highlight some pretty extreme examples, but most internet communities have rules that limit what you can say or how you can say it, to try and sterilize conversations and arguments until all you can say to someone who’s a moron is: “I disagree with your opinion.”
All right, so we get it. The internet is filled with bullshit and stupid people. What’s your point? Well, we live in a society where our most beloved forms of entertainment are reality TV shows and gossiping about celebrities. The internet is the only mode of media where the average Joe has any voice whatsoever, and instead of using it to better ourselves by getting millions of different viewpoints and having them battle intelligently for supremacy, forcing the lesser viewpoints to die while the strongest ones with the most solid backings stand up, we choose to either force everyone to treat all viewpoints as completely equal, or the owners of a particular site where other arguments are made simply censor and ban opposing opinions until only their own can be heard.
I’m not a fan. The only way to grow as a person is through conflict. Conflict must be respected, and the only viewpoints that deserve to be acknowledged as remotely valid are the viewpoints that can intelligently stand up for themselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean quantifiable or 100% provable, or really even provable at all. It just means it has to be reasonable, and it needs to be capable of surviving against tough opposition. Survival of the fittest is really the best way, and honestly it’s the only way.
Unfortunately, it seems to be the least popular way. I am a member of only one forum these days, a quaint little place known as Frameshift, where many smart people get together to discuss anything under the sun. Its tagline is “bare knuckle intelligentsia cagefighting,” which basically sums up my sentiments from the past two paragraphs in about four words (being succinct has never been one of my strong suits). It’s got a lot of people who I really respect on there, but unfortunately that forum is all but completely dead these days. I think there’ve been about 30 posts in the past month, and about half of them were in a discussion on whether or not we should even bother continuing, or if we should just close up the forum and move on.
I’m not terribly certain that I want to find a new forum, but I don’t feel like the internet is challenging me anymore. I don’t feel like there’s much to do on it, which I know is retarded but I’m not much of an idle surfer, I tend to just go to the same dozen sites or so, but none of them are really engaging me anymore. Maybe this is a good thing, as it means less downtime spent reading stuff that doesn’t really matter, but I don’t know, there’s a certain charm in discussing ideas and things with people, and I’d like to be able to step back into the intellectual arena and box.