Tell me about it!
And not unnoticeably rubbed off on politicians too . . .especially Democrats
Their level of discourse has proven anything but “civil”
To add to this, I think “online behavior” translates into face-to-face behavior, with people being increasingly more rude to one another. Simple phrases like “please” and “thank you” can sound like a foreign language these days.
There is a lot of crap out here on the internet. I once came across a site which included gruesome pictures of a murdered family. The visitors were mocking the deaths of the man, his wife, and their four year old daughter simply because the deceased man was a pastor. What a horrible thing to do to the deceased, putting their pictures on a site full of leftist sociopaths.
Free speech? A myth?
What an insulting little rant. The writer should just shut up and tend to his chores.
Right, lets turn the internet over to the PC police too.
The beauty of the internet is that you are not in physical proximity with those you are discussing or debating? No one can intimidate you with their size. The good looking dont get more attention. No one knows if you are handicapped, your race, your sex etc.
The internet is all about ideas. We can individually decide to feed trolls or not as it amuses us. We don’t need PC police saying what is ok, because we know how that story ends. It ends with liberal ideas, like say global warming, getting the stamp of approval and conservative ideas, like individual responsibility, being labeled racist or sexist or something.
I think the internet was primarily created by and for zit faced nerds that spent their formative years not getting laid and being pushed around by football players. The internet gives them the power to say and do things to people that they would never be able to say or do otherwise. at least that’s how I explain the over abundance of mean spirited key boardists out there.
Mr Wales is the founder of Wikipedia? and he is lecturing on civil discourse?
Oh, but MSNBC and the rest of the state run fringe media are exempt on rudeness, eh?
During the 1960s and before there were laws enforced against disturbing someone’s peace. In at least some states, the offended could punch insulting offenders in their mouths. We had a more civil society. Then during the last year or two of the 1960s, anti-social individuals—members of SDS, for one (commie hippies), spread a malignant plague of policies for enforcing the offensive behaviors of ugly, little people.
I was going to say SMN!
But I thought better of it.
www.democraticunderground.com
LMAO
WTH? If it's not tolerable (albeit stupid), then expression isn't free, is it?
If you want free speech, you have to take the good with the bad. If you want to regulate it so your finer sensibilities are not offended, you might be a Democrat.
We can plead for polite discourse, but we can’t enforce it without loss of liberty.
I always think of Future Shock when I think of the way we (mis)use the Internet. What it reminds me of is the CB radio craze of the 60’s and 70’s. Here was a tool that had been around for a long time and then seemingly overnight it exploded in popularity.
Suddenly everybody and their idiot son had one and was talking smack on the damned thing. There were rules and an established etiquette but all that was largely ignored by the great unwashed masses.
It’s own popularity was its (almost) undoing. The channels became so unusable due to the pimply-faced morons that legitimate users largely gave up. All that was left was a virtual wasteland of immature idiots swearing at one another at the top of their lungs.
I see a lot of similarities here. We have an excellent set of tools at our disposal and too many of us figuratively use them to prop up the door.
It’s the anonymity IMO. People say stuff on the boards that they would never have the brass to do in person.
I don’t know if we will ever grow into our technology. When I read stuff like what they publish over at DU or KOS I really tend to doubt it...