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• Minorities--pick the shade of your choosing--are lazy, stupid, and otherwise entirely useless.
• Rat liberals are simply fink traitors in drag.
Thugs and dimwits pop up everywhere in society, and it's no surprise to find them polluting the Internet. But either they've found a better way to draw attention, or they're multiplying in numbers. I fear that it may be the latter, though admittedly, it's only my impression.
Still, when I bounced some of the quotes I found off friends, they were mildly amused that I thought this was worthy of note. "C'mon, what did I expect? After all, it's the Internet."
Yes, it is the Internet--and how depressing to realize that we've become numb and accepting--even though nowadays, you should first don flak jacket and helmet before wading into most online forums.
I came across the above-quoted pearls of wisdom on Yahoo Finance, a site that has become a watering hole for cyberbullies and nitwits--who usually turn out to be one and the same--to vent their spleen.
I'm not sure how to explain motivation. Maybe it's the subject matter. When money's involved, people easily lose their cool.
Anyway, the lack of civility is not limited to Yahoo Finance. If you use the Internet regularly, the odds are high that you'll encounter unpleasant points of view. The libertarians among you will protest how this is preferable to any bogus alternative, where Big Brother rigs what you can read and free speech exists in name only.
I suppose that's true. To be fair, anyone who watches too much television or spends too much time at the corner bar is bound to encounter disagreeable blowhards who display appalling ignorance. That's true in spades about the Internet.
Still, I remember a time when Yahoo Finance was a useful tool. Anyone interested in learning about business and stocks could browse the site and pick up valuable pointers. When the Internet craze began in the late 1990s, I benefited enormously from reading posts about the dozens of new companies popping up across Silicon Valley.
Former San Jose Mercury News computer columnist Dan Gillmor was earlier than most of his peers to acknowledge the superior collective wisdom of his audience. And so it was that informed investors eager to trade ideas and challenge convention helped the Yahoo Finance community attain a certain collective wisdom.
That's ancient history.
On the Alcoa boards, one latter-day solon regularly baits liberals by questioning their patriotism, let alone their loyalty to this country. In this, he succeeds with nearly each post. Over at the Goldman Sachs forum, the goose-stepping acolytes of the Third Reich are on parade every day. And that's just for starters. (Sorry, but I'm not going to give these clowns any extra recognition by naming names or providing URL links.)
It would be too cynical to attribute Yahoo's corporate indifference to the fact that, well, page views are page views. Besides, as a card-carrying member of the Fourth Estate, who am I to tut-tut about others when everyone understands that controversy turns pages?
Yahoo and Google, and any other service, can hide behind the fact that their boards are too big to individually monitor and allocate personnel to manually investigate each complaint. That puts the onus on the rest of us to behave like mensches, as we're left to our own devices.
For better--or in this case, increasingly--for worse.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
Don't rip & replace. VoIP as you are
limitation on total freedom that it is well worth accepting.
wondering if you take notice of those from your own side of the
political spectrum as well.
1. Negative hype amplifies with more strength than positive hype. Possibly this is the effect of fight or flight evolutionary pressures.
2. Some like the ecosystem metaphors. Others like chaotic attractors. The difference is the expectation the former "feels" effects. The latter are studying 'affective' systems. However, both achieve the same end: redirecting signal to by taking energy from another system until the signal source is disminished past recovery. Think 'brand assasination'. See OOXML vs ODF.
It is a good idea to sort the trendy metaphors. The difference is 'bermuda and fescue' over 'black holes and near star systems'. The reason to understand these is to understand that proof of intent is easy. Identifying intent reliably is hard. Fescue replaces bermuda because it is aggressive in its intent to reproduce. Black holes cause near systems to light up and speed up, but then they disappear. See Google redirects for information access and strategies for investing against customers. Most pure service play companies have that affect on their partners over time even though the kumbayah is one of 'we'll grow the market through standards' when the service company actually has no products.
The problem of 'tipping point', 'the conversation' and 'information wants to be free', all variants of 'network effect' is to not note that
a) All nodes are not equally powerful/competent.
b) Node amplification relies on timing or proximity of signal to an amplifying node. (See Karl Rove and the concept of addition by division where moving a small percentage at a critical node point causes a mass shift. Facts don't matter in the face of highly emotional content if the listener is greedy for emotional stimulation. Know thyself.
My advice Mr C:
o Know the signal types by intent.
o Turn off or do not surf near any sources where the intent does not match your own.
o Avoid signal for it's own sake. Addiction to information is not a virtue. It is a stimulus-bound behavior.
Self-modification is principally self-moderation. If you don't want to get fat, don't eat more than you need.
The Internet is stuff. The conversation is real. The effects of the conversation may be to convey wisdom but it is more probable it will create 'unreality' where the reaction is quite real and then the superstition is self-promoting.
Learn and understand the laws of cybernetics. Understand first, second and third order systems.
be appropriate to also highlight the 'role models' provided by
political leaders who lie to us and sell their principles to the
highest bidder and then have the effrontery to tell the rest of the
world how to behave.
Can I suggest that if politicians want to tell others how to
behave they should clean up their own houses first and set a
decent example?
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Jackass.
It isn't the case in all arenas and people, but it does hold true
that the ignorant and hateful, whom society would otherwise
keep in check, often find a nice little outlet for their anger and
frustrations, and use it in ways that easily offend others.
But it is often not as simple. Back in the day when USENET was
the major communications venue, some of us decided to use
trolling as an intellectual exercise... not as mere vandalism, but
to do two things:
* challenge others to think, and
* challenge ourselves to think.
This type of troll isn't to get a giggle out of watching angst, but
to present arguments in a clear and logical fashion - even if you
yourself do not hold the beliefs you propose as the troll. This
forces you to analyze and study the argument you presented,
and among intelligent responders, it forces them to examine
their own as well.
In politics, this is an awesome way to check and change (as you
discover the need to) ideologies and philosophies in a
challenging manner, without actually having to do so as
yourself.
If it's done right, both you and those whom you debate with
learn a lot in the process. It can add wisdom and insight you
would otherwise not have when you began.
--
That said? All too often, you find the troll is actually a child
(physically or mentally), though IMHO they're laughably easy to
spot.
Conversely, all too often you find that many of the responders to
a troll are also children (in body or mind), or at least ignorant
and all-too-touchy about certain subjects. Now some subjects
(e.g. racist conspiracy theories) are naturally way out-of-
bounds, and stupid conspiracy theories are far too easy to
ignore... which IMHO is the proper course of action in those
cases. But everything else IMHO can always be used to learn a
few things, either as initiator or responder.
--
Overall, you can use it to learn more about the positions you
hold (by researching them), and over time, you learn to become
a more tolerant person, both on-line and in real life. You also
learn a lot more about how to discuss and debate more
effectively.
Finally, you can use it to overcome a lot of things you otherwise
wouldn't be able to. For instance, my first online experience was
in 1991... and I used it to increase my once-crap typing speed to
something respectable, and at the same time overcome a strong
case of dyslexia. The time-sensitive nature you bring onto
yourself helps with faster recognition and response skills, after
all.
Cheers!
/P
--Bill
you'd often see this same thing happening. A mailing list or new
group would start up. It would be exciting and full of interesting
well informed people. It would grow in popularity and more and
more people would join. Eventually the group would disintegrate
into squabbling, flamewars, and fluff. The people who made the
list interesting would leave and start a new list or group. Lather.
Rinse. Repeat.
Not that I'm any better. I let the bullcrap take hold of me
sometimes and start arguing just to win a point rather than to
inform. Its tough because online we don't have any of the
normal cues that keep many face to face conversations civil.
This went on until I indicated the problem to Elliot Spitzer.