For heaven's sake, woman, will you get off the computer before your retinas melt
Normally I wouldn't read an inch of Paul Sheehan, but his column on the Ascham cyberbullying scandal does have a ripping quote from "the editor of a heavily trafficked beauty site for young women", who told him: "Women seem to find the anonymity and forums of the internet a thrilling way to be their nastiest, bitchiest, most insincere self, without any form of repercussion or damage to their reputation. It's vicious and disturbing the way they cluster to attack the blogger, or each other." Sheehan connects this to the use of sites like Twitter to create what I think of as virtual flash crowds - which can turn, in seconds, into a dogpile involving millions.
A while back, I mentioned teh net.stupid, and I want to explain exactly what I mean by that. Not people being idiots online, but the specific ways in which the Internet impedes our thinking and our interaction. The confusion between public and private, formal and informal, casual and serious, trustworthy and flaky; the quick, shallow reading and the hasty, un-thought-through responses; the loss of almost all the information communicated IRL; and the terrible power of the thing, its ability to flood us with noise, with falsehoods and trivia and gossip.
There aren't many defences against teh net.stupid. The assumption that everything we put online is for public consumption helps, as does a firm, healthy scepticism, and - this is the one I'm trying to learn - being a forgiving online conversationalist. These may help avoid being dogpiled on, but IMHO, more importantly, we need to watch out we don't turn into dogs ourselves: gullible, careless, easily led, snotty, and mean.
A while back, I mentioned teh net.stupid, and I want to explain exactly what I mean by that. Not people being idiots online, but the specific ways in which the Internet impedes our thinking and our interaction. The confusion between public and private, formal and informal, casual and serious, trustworthy and flaky; the quick, shallow reading and the hasty, un-thought-through responses; the loss of almost all the information communicated IRL; and the terrible power of the thing, its ability to flood us with noise, with falsehoods and trivia and gossip.
There aren't many defences against teh net.stupid. The assumption that everything we put online is for public consumption helps, as does a firm, healthy scepticism, and - this is the one I'm trying to learn - being a forgiving online conversationalist. These may help avoid being dogpiled on, but IMHO, more importantly, we need to watch out we don't turn into dogs ourselves: gullible, careless, easily led, snotty, and mean.