You know you must be
getting old when you're bothered by incivility in online forums. But it does bother me, damn it, and not just out of some reflexive dislike of confrontation. I'm worried it reflects something
fundamentally wrong with modern society, or at least some of the individuals who compose it. And I'm also wondering whether individuals who are uncivil online may be doing themselves professional
damage they're not even aware of.
I was inspired to write this by a survey of comments left by visitors to a number of Web sites, including this one. To be clear, I have no problem at all
with negative, critical comments (of which I have received my share): they let you know there are other viewpoints out there, and sometimes they can be quite informative. Journalists can be mistaken
or misinformed; meanwhile opinion pieces are pretty much begging for contrarian comment. All's fair in blogs and war, and anyone who writes something to post it online better have pretty thick
skin.
That said, I've been amazed and appalled by the things people are willing to say online. And I'm not talking about some 13-year-old boy posting "Justin Bieber is gay"
on some teen chat site -- these are comments ostensibly left by adult professionals, with their name signed to them and everything.
Recently, one of my colleagues here at MediaPost, Laurie
Sullivan, wrote a post about finding the U.S. Census questions intrusive, noting the irony that for
some reason she doesn't mind the idea of behavioral targeting gathering more personal information. This elicited several dozen responses -- most of which were civil enough -- presenting
counterpoints to the effect that it's really not that intrusive, we should fill it out so the government can provide services, the data is useful for marketing, it's in the Constitution, etc.
However, two people also came up with the oh-so-original suggestion (paraphrasing) that "if you don't like America, you should leave." Shocked, I scrolled back up to the original
blog post and re-read it, looking for the part where she said she doesn't like America: nada. In fact, there's nothing even vaguely critical about America or the U.S. government, just some of
the Census questions.
Several people called her a "moron" and one told her to "pull her head out of her ***." All I will say here is, a quick piece of advice: If
you're going to call someone you don't even know a "moron" in a public forum ... use spell-check. Moving on.
One comment (which left me wondering if it was even on the
right Web site) accused her of being a racist fear-monger. Huh? Parsing this misspelled, ungrammatical and potentially libelous comment, the argument seems to be this: Laurie has a problem with the
Census. The Census is distributed by the Federal government. The Federal government is headed by Barack Obama. Barack Obama is African-American. Ergo, Laurie has a problem with Barack Obama because he
is African-American. The only issue I have with this analysis is that after "Laurie has a problem with the Census," none of the statements are supported by what she wrote in the article --
no mention of Barack Obama or anything relating to him (not that it matters, but I'd give pretty good odds she voted for Obama).
This comment, like the comments suggesting she leave
America if she doesn't like it, touch on the deeper, underlying dysfunctions I mentioned at the outset. Basically, in addition to being hateful these comments make it clear that the person leaving
the comment is reacting more to a pre-conceived image of a thing than the actual thing itself. All these "extra details" are provided by their imagination: clearly, if she has a problem with
the Census, she is a shotgun-toting America-hating libertarian racist freak. Recently I wrote a post where I mentioned that I was trying to get excused from jury duty; without caring to inquire about
my reasons, one person left a comment informing me that "you are part of the problem with this country."
Basically, these people have constructed their own private echo chamber,
and it seems clear from the volume of such comments all over the Web that the Internet -- for all its supposed "interactivity" -- is just an exercise in solipsistic psychological venting for
people who are, for some reason, just angry all the time. The easy, almost random hostility of comments on the Web strikes me as evidence of widespread, ambient feelings of frustration and
dissatisfaction which simply have no other outlet in contemporary American society.
Or maybe I'm just a moron? I guess I should start packing my bags for Cuba.