The Internet: For Entertainment Purposes Only?

Set off by the kid on his lawn who left this comment:

It’s sad, really. You’re like Alkon, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to understand the culture of the Internet. So you take offense at our customs and violate our most sacred taboos, and when someone comes to educate you, you blow him off as a “narcissi(s)tic idiot.”

Scott Greenfield writes:

My child commenter, the World Ruler, is wrong, yet right.  There is a culture of which I am not a part.  While I may know more about it then most people of a certain age, it moves so quickly and morphs in ways I would never anticipate that it’s impossible to stay on top of it while watching from the outside.  And I have no delusion that I’m not on the outside.

My own theory of this cultural divide: as we get farther and farther from the Great Depression, America’s young become more and more comfortable that their basic needs will be met without a struggle. This leaves them free to focus on entertaining themselves with anonymous comments and practical jokes.

There are no “sacred taboos” in such a world. Lying is okay in the context of a prank, so the Amazon-bombing of Amy Alkon (who may very well be a repugnant human being) seems to them a perfectly appropriate response. In this new online world, perceived transgressors are not entitled to common decency.

Add to this the failure of U.S. public schools in the last century to teach rhetoric and logic, and it becomes obvious that those who call out the new generation for lying will be seen as racist neocons like Alkon.

The culture clash is between those who have character in the real world, and expect others to behave with character online; and those who don’t; between those who view near-universal online anonymity as a detriment, and those who view it as a benefit.

Oddly, the same clash could be described as being between those who treat the internet as a serious extension of meatspace, and those who don’t. Everything anonymously written on the internet suddenly makes sense if it’s labeled “for entertainment purposes only.”

That’s why we need have no fear that Scott’s World Ruler and his ilk will ever actually rule the world. No matter how carefully they craft their pseudonymous online personas, those personas will not (except in rare pathological instances) help the people in the real world get elected, hired, or even laid. Should the actual people accidentally reproduce, those personas will not help them feed or protect their offspring or themselves.

Despite cyberpunk dreams, human beings still exist in the real world, and in the real world, people can tell you’re a dog.

Social Media Narcissism Etc.

While Avvo was having a conference in Seattle last week (at which they and I were invited to speak, billed as “Three Angry Lawyers,” but only if we paid our own way), Scott Greenfield and Brian Tannebaum twitted using the #avvo hashtag. For example:

This #avvo used car salesman conference is deeply disturbing.

and

Remember something you avvocating maniacs, if you’re not a good lawyer, people will find out, despite your blogs and online garbage #avvo

Avvo was displaying the #avvo twitter timeline on the podium.

One of the attendees, Sonny Cohen, wrote a blog post, When Flames Erupt in the Twitter-enabled Conference Backchannel (no, seriously, that’s the title). Conceding that Scott and Brian “had some great points about abuse of social media, thoughtless blogging and even the alleged ‘social media gurus’ (SMG) who industrialize the process of building real human networks,” he nonetheless called them “harassers,” “flamers,” and “jackass” (half a jackass each, apparently).

Cohen’s post, and his Twitter response to Scott, were overwrought and self-important to the point of narcissism. It’s Twitter; if someone says something you don’t want to hear, you can block it. Brian and Scott didn’t even know that Avvo was displaying the timeline on the podium. (Had they known, they would have had a lot more fun with it.)

Saving for another day modern Homo Internetus’s tendency to throw around heavy words like “harassment” in response to the slightest criticism: are narcissism and hysteria prerequisites for a job as an internet marketer?

I posted a comment to the blog post, to the effect of “‘Harassers’? Really, Sonny? Credibility fail.” Or rather, I tried to post a comment, but Cohen did not publish it.

Add intellectual cowardice to the list of character traits that Cohen is displaying in this episode.

Twitter Strategy

A colleague followed me on twitter four times in a month. To do that, he would have had to unfollow me three times in a month. I asked him what was up with that. His reply:

I’ve found I don’t like to “follow” without being “followed” back.  Seems a one way conversation – not fun for me.

Why the Legal Profession Needs Us

There has been some omphaloskepsis lately among legal bloggers about the propriety of calling public attention to the lawyers who are responsible for the ethical and aesthetic mess created by online marketers.

Jamison Koehler writes:

Policing the blawgosphere and calling out specific lawyers on what are still debatable ethical issues seems to me, as I wrote on Greenfield’s site, paternalistic and futile.

And Carolyn Elefant (who is clear that ghost blogging is unethical) writes:

I don’t criticize Mark or Scott  for outing the ghostblogging lawyers, since Buchanan’s clients willingly provided testimonials and in doing so, put themselves out there.  Nor do I take issue with Brian Tannebaum’s decision to disclose lawyer marketers with tainted ethics records (in fact I interviewed him about it here) because frankly, that information is public record (even Avvo lists ethics violations).Nevertheless, I’m far less comfortable with criticisms like this one about the lawyers embroiled in the Total Attorneys ethics mess [Never mind that their names are also public record. MB.] or “naming names” of lawyers who advertise [Link missing from original] on what Eric Turkewitz has termed dreck blogs.

Carolyn’s reasoning is that

the lawyers who subscribed to services offered by Findlaw and Total Attorneys, both of which are ABA sponsors,  most likely believed that the ABA had vetted these companies’ practices before accepting their sponsorship dollars.

Any lawyer who holds that particular belief should be barred from the internet until she develops some sense. The ABA is a self-important voluntary tea-and-argument society. That it has any authority is a myth apparently popular among non-lawyers; its endorsement of a particular product (even if accepting advertising dollars constituted an endorsement), though, bears no weight. The ABA knows no more about social media than the average lawyer. It doesn’t vet its advertisers in a meaningful way—as we’ve seen—and shouldn’t be expected to.

Jamison calls the ethics of using ghostblawgers “debatable.” It may well be debatable (on the “people will argue about anything” principle) but, as I’ve commented elsewhere, I’ve yet to see the argument in favor that takes into account lawyers’ unique product and position in society. Ghostblogger Jenni Buchanan makes an effort at Blog for Profit but conveniently glosses over her own prime selling point, which happens also to be the prime argument for the unethicalness of ghostblogging: that lawyers blog to “give themselves credibility.”

There are those who are more comfortable trusting governing bodies to decide what is ethical, and are perhaps not comfortable enough with their own judgment or authority to tell others when they are wrong. Those people should certainly not be calling out others. Let’s take it as a given that those lawyers who are calling out people on ethical and aesthetic issues (beauty is truth, truth beauty) are themselves certain that those issues are not debatable. Either that, or they are willing to be publicly called out for being wrong. Or both.

Also, let’s take it as a given that those lawyers doing so care (not everyone cares about these issues, and that’s okay, Norm Pattis).

Jamison thinks that “policing the blawgosphere and calling out specific lawyers” is paternalistic and futile. I’ll take the adjectives in order.

As to paternalism, nobody is trying to act like the daddy of the blawgosphere. The cheaters are not chastised for their own good, but for the good of the community. So “Sheriff” is probably a more apt metaphor. The internet is largely lawless, a virtual wild west, and there’s nothing wrong with exercising your authority to try to impose a little order on your little corner of it to make it more agreeable to you. If that involves hurting a few feelings, well, you can’t make omelets without breaking eggs.

Maybe Jamison’s “paternalism” objection is that nobody elected Scott or Brian or me Sheriff (or “Top Cop“) of the blawgosphere. That’s true enough. But lots of people read Simple Justice (PR6), and it’s not because Scott Greenfield’s afraid of hurting people’s feelings. Fewer people read Defending People (PR5) and Criminal Defense (PR4), but the numbers are not inconsiderable. Bloggers have authority in proportion to how many people read them (and link to them) and people read and link to those three blogs, none of which is shy about publicly calling a fraud a fraud.

As to futility, consider the numbers. There are over a million lawyers in the U.S. 80% of them (according to a possibly-reliable source, the ABA) are solos or in small firms. Most of them are looking for a way to make more money. Most of them aren’t highly social-media-savvy. Call it at least 200,000 (most of most of 800,000) lawyers who are looking (some desperately) for a way to make more money and are not highly social-media-savvy.

There is a growing industry of people, not all of them disbarred lawyers, pouring poison in the ears of those 200,000 lawyers, trying to sell them on the next great way to find “leads” on the internet: comment spam, ghostblogging, splogging, dreckblogging to name just four.

If I run into a lawyer—one of the 200,000—who is funding comment spam, and I send him a gentle email, one of two things will happen: he will stop funding comment spam, or he will not. The latter outcome is more likely: since he doesn’t know that he will be named, he has little incentive to stop (the Bradley Johnson Rule)—comment spamming is probably not a violation of the DRs, and even if it were the State Bar wouldn’t do anything about it.

If he stops, that’s great: one down, 199,999 to go. (Woo hoo!) If he doesn’t, and if calling out the cheaters is wrong on principle, then I’ve done all I can. Talk about futility!

On the other hand, if I am willing to put the cheater’s name up in lights, he will eventually get the message:

[L]aw bloggers can do something about the law field spammers. Because unlike the other sites, these folks generally have very little Google juice and should actually care about their reputations. So if a few blogs decide to out the spammers, this could have a pretty big effect on the firms. When their names are Googled by potential clients, the potential clients will see that they are spammers. And it will no doubt cause them to stop.

Eric Turkewitz, New Spam Comment Policy for Law Firms (You Will Be Exposed)

That’s specific deterrence at work.

Not only will the specific cheater get the message, but some other lawyers in his position will get the message as well. That’s general deterrence.

People market themselves online to manipulate their reputations. One way or another—whether they pay FindLaw or Total Attorneys, hire a disgraced-former-lawyer “social media expert,” or do it themselves, they are putting themselves (as Carolyn might say) out there. The guys financing FindLaw to post dreckbloggen (Goldberg Sager & Associates; Arye Lustig & Sassower; Kahn, Gordon, Timko & Rodriquez to name but three) are reaping whatever (probably slight) benefit the dreck accumulates. They pay (lots of money) for their names to be publicly associated with the dreck; it’s appropriate for their names to be publicly associated with the opprobrium that dreck generates. As Scott writes:

There’s no right to enjoy the benefits of public self-promotion, assuming there are any, with impunity.  When you put yourself out there, you invite scrutiny.  If you can’t take it, then you’ve come to the wrong place.  Your peers may adore you or think you’re dumb as dirt, not to mention unethical, deceptive and scummy.  That’s the risk of going public.

Finally: I, for one, would just as soon not see more attempts by the state bars to regulate the internet: they will screw it up.

Our only hope of having rational rules for lawyer marketing online is to make and enforce them ourselves. And the only tool we have in any effort to enforce rational rules for lawyer marketing online is the credible threat of reputational harm resulting from misconduct. So even if you would never ever call out a lawyer who is (directly or indirectly) lying, cheating, or polluting, you should be glad that there are those of us who will.