The Internet's Age of Rage

RackNine sends this excerpt from an editorial at the Guardian: "The worldwide web has made critics of us all. But with commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile. ... The psychologists call it 'deindividuation.' It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. The classic deindividuation experiment concerned American children at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters were invited to take sweets left in the hall of a house on a table on which there was also a sum of money. When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%. The combination of a faceless crowd and personal anonymity provoked individuals into breaking rules that under 'normal' circumstances they would not have considered. ... One simple antidote to this seems to rest in the very old-fashioned idea of standing by your good name. Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Put your name to something and your words are freighted with responsibility."

Comments

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

[0101000001001010]

I believe the technical term is Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

Fuck you

[BadAnalogyGuy]

This story sucks. Your all idiots.

FOAD, assholes.

Body Language

[Wolfling1]

Whilst deindividuation is a recognised problem, I also believe the absence of non-verbal cues is a huge issue as well.

When we queue for a teller at the bank, there is a natural interaction between us that is completely non-verbal. We can see the woman who is stressed by an obnoxious child. We can see the fragile old man who needs extra time. On the Internet (and in traffic), these signals are not present. We often gauge each other's behaviour and responses in the context of our own lives and emotional state.

And this all occurs in the overarching context of our progressively deteriorating grasp on the English language. Smileys, and more recently Lol-speak, are an attempt to flesh out our inability to express our emotions in the written word. Lol-speak, or meme-speak is starting to help, but its had the whole of about 10 years to evolve - compared to a few hundred thousand years of the evolution of our non-verbal communication.

Is it any wonder that tolerance is lacking?

Thankfully, we're not completely stupid, and we're starting to adapt to the problem. Hence my personal favourite phrase on the Internet: Don't feed the trolls.

Re:Body Language

[epyT-R]

'deindividualization' is actually 'REindividualization.' IE bypassing today's increasing pressures to conform, individuals are saying what they really think, and, according to this article anyway, that's a bad thing. I disagree completely. Feelings, consensus, and politeness should never outweigh rationality, truth, and objectivity. If they do, then we've lost the whole point of communications in the first place.

I grasp your concept about cues, but it's also supposed to be understood that those on the internet are unaware and (usually) don't care about any particular user's personal problems. The user is supposed to understand this by default. This isn't a rule I made up, it's just part of the deal. There just aren't any other cues other than the language used by the user and the peers he is communicating with. I remember a time when this was considered a good thing because irrelevant attributes were not used to judge.

Whose tolerance? If anything, the tolerance of the overly sensitive, emotional types that make up the majority of society is what's lacking. This was always true, but, like the anonymous users they whine about, systems like the internet allow them to hit critical groupthink mass as well, forcing their censorious expectations on ever growing amounts of communication between individuals. No matter what they say, their feelings do not justify censoring uncomfortable truth, which is the real reason they would like to stamp out anonymity whereever they find it.

Rage is good

[Anonymous Coward]

If it takes anonymity for people to say what they really think, then we need more anonymity. Many injustices happen because people in power can count on people being trapped in responsibilities and dependencies. If nobody can say what they think, then nobody can know that they're not alone with their rage. The internet is not a place where you can expect to be treated nicely. It's very honest, and that can be frightening at times, but it's necessary. You shouldn't equate rage to criminal behavior (stealing money).

The obvious point that no one ever talks about

[cstec]

This article like many others before it continues to miss the blatantly obvious - that once anonymous, people are finally saying what they actually think

Re:Eternal September

[interkin3tic]

I thought eternal september referred more to ignorance: "noobs" who didn't know what they were doing or how to behave on the internet. This is a more general "People wearing masks act worse" applied specifically to online. The general principle was noticed -long- before 1993, and was probably noticed before 1993 in online interactions too.

"You are using ARPANET chat room. The current time is 23:30, October 29, 1969.

Anonymous user: "HOW IS BABBY FORMED1!"
You: "Dr. Kleinrock? What are you doing?"
Anonymous user: "I'M NOT Kleinrock! I am anonymous!!! TROLOLOLOLOL!"
You: "Yes you are, there's only two computers on the internet at this time."
-Anonymous user has disconnected-"

Real ID as a muzzle: the other side of the coin

[fyngyrz]

There's another important issue here: Anonymity can be a worthy tool for social reaction and revolution when the individual expresses a minority or otherwise unpopular opinion; some of the other nasty habits of society include ostracization; limiting availability of jobs; sabotaging retirement; false accusations, false imprisonment, inappropriate listing on the no-fly, no-buy, and the sexual/violent offender (AKA as the you're-fucked) lists; singling out for "attention" from the local (or not local) cops; vandalism; burning crosses on the lawn; DOS, etc.

While true free speech cloaked in anonymity definitely opens the door for the proverbial "Internet Superturd", suppressing it isn't something that uniformly does good. For instance, Google+'s recent insistence on "real id" effectively eliminates any viewpoint that is sufficiently off-center to present a personal risk at a level unacceptable to the speaker. This in turn means that as the speaker's social load and dependencies increase - family, depending upon keeping one's job, political position, etc. - the more effectively they are muzzled in a "real id" environment.

Another example is Facebook's TOS where they forbid anyone on the s/v offender's list from joining; anyone put on that list is now locked out and locked to the bottom level of society; doesn't matter that they've paid their debt to society by serving time, paying fines, whatever the judge decided: they're permanently locked out, not to mention often having to live under a bridge or in a camp. That kind of ostracism is way too powerful a tool to use against someone who is supposedly free to walk around; they'll never re-integrate, they can't. If you're going to treat someone that badly, you'd better have the sense to put them in jail and keep them there or else you're just grooming a very, very angry person whom someone will unhappily meet on a dark and stormy night. Unfortunately, this only treats the unfairly listed -- kids having sex across age lines, polygamists, pee-ers in bushes, etc. -- even worse. By far the best solution is to treat payment of sentencing debt as 100% presumed rehabilitation unless shown otherwise. The government shows no sign of being responsible here either, nor forcing corporations like facebook to be responsible, which again brings us back to the need for pushback. And given the lynch mob mentality associated with these matters, anonymity is definitely called for.

In general right now, our government is doing a lot of things it shouldn't be doing, and these activities are currently pushing hard against individual rights of free speech, free travel and privacy. IMHO, anything that does away with anonymity under these circumstances is extremely unwise.