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.

Anonymous Commenting, 1872

People often seek to justify leaving anonymous comments on blogs by explaining that they are employed by governmental agencies or companies that would frown on them using their names in connection with their opinions.

It is true that having a regular job with a paycheck and benefits can have some costs; one of these costs can be that your employer might punish you for saying the wrong thing in public.

But it has always been thus. So I wondered to myself, “what did these people do before the internet when they wanted to express their opinions but were afraid it would harm them at work?”

Then I realized:

(Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi, 1872, in the public domain from Harper’s Weekly via Wikimedia.)