John,
I must respectfully disagree with much of your analysis here, and would echo some of the preceding comments regarding pornography, etc. If anything the Internet has acted in some ways as an amplifier for behaviors and attitudes that have existed for, well, millennia. I believe anyone who was a very active CompuServe user, before the Internet became mainstream, would see this.
I was developing internet-centric software as far back as 1994 (SOCKS servers, CGI-BIN libraries, commercial web sites, etc.) and actively engaged in chat and forum technology / activity on a daily basis back when the only web browsers available were Mosaic and IBM’s WebExplorer. I might be deemed one of the many ‘founding members’ of the netizen community and I’ve been observing and lamenting this lack-of-civility phenomenon for over a decade. Based on that experience, I don’t believe the sources of behaviors and resulting fallout you’ve described are so simple.
Also, those behaviors are not quite so evenly distributed as your indictment of “American society as a whole” would suggest. The coarseness, vitriol, rudeness, crudeness and paranoia is far more highly concentrated among certain groups than others.
Anonymity plays an important role in the phenomenon you’re lamenting, but it goes deeper, I think, than a lack of tangible accountability for one’s behavior – although that is certainly a factor for many on-line. I’ll explain.
With the Internet we have been suddenly, almost magically, connected to everyone else who has access. As such, our sphere of human interaction has been increased by orders of magnitude almost instantaneously. That has forced us to learn to communicate in a whole new way. We’re still feeling our way through that and, in some areas, not with a lot of success – yet.
B.W. (Before Web), we lived in a relatively insular world. In that world we interacted directly and indirectly within a familiar milieu. More often than not we had at least some small knowledge of the character of those in that milieu – a familiarity that extended, at least, beyond words on a screen, even if it was only the ability to look them in the eye, note their gender, check the cut of their clothes, measure the length of their hair or determine whether or not they were a german shepherd.
But that has all changed. Now, lacking any tangible framework of familiarity with the person(s) we’re addressing in our on-line communications, we settle on a surrogate. And in that, many of us rely on stereotypes. This is particularly true in the realm of political intercourse, where identity politics have become the defining factor for certain social groups. In this context a lot of folks tend, more often than not, to shout past the individual they’re actually addressing and, instead, address the stereotype that individual appears to fit based on an exchange or two.
I’ve been the target of this sort of ‘mistaken identity’ on more than one occasion. For instance, years ago I commented that the 1993 Assault Weapons Ban was ‘bad legislation’ because it purposely confused the difference between semi-automatic and automatic weapons. When asked how, before I could respond, another individual in the group stated that it was because I had my “lips planted firmly on Charlton Heston’s ass”. It was then necessary for me to point out that I never cared much for the guy, or his rhetoric, and was not an NRA member, which left the interloper somewhat speechless. This was while sitting at lunch with co-workers, not while at a computer. The one interrupting was my boss who, incidentally, had been a combat officer in Viet Nam and was, therefore, rather intimately familiar with the difference between a semi-auto and a true assault rifle. He knew better, yet his knee-jerk reflex kicked in and forced his foot into his mouth. So I know that this behavior exists both on-line and in person. Its effect is amplified on-line.
For some, who rely on identity politics as their guide, this sort of thing also tends to cross issue boundaries on-line, to where one’s view on one issue is used to extrapolate views on all issues – at least those important to one’s audience. This is why one’s views on abortion or gay marriage, for instance, can result in one being labeled a “neo-con” despite the fact that one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. As such, many people respond to on-line comments based on a completely inaccurate mental image of the person they’re addressing. The underlying assumption absolutely does “make an ASS out of U and ME” because one or both sides typically spend more time clarifying their own position – or erroneously attacking that which is NOT someone else’s – than they do actually communicating. This process is both emotionally frustrating and, ultimately, psychologically threatening – we actively resist acknowledging what Roger Kimball recently noted as “anagnorisis“, because it would reveal the lack of depth and patience we’ve allowed to define our communication.
IMHO, whatever its various effects, this reliance on defining others through stereotypes, and the willingness to be defined by identity politics is the cause of what you perceive as hyper-partisan behavior. It’s not the Internet that is the primary driver behind that, it’s willful ignorance.
In terms of whence the vitriol, rudeness and crudeness emanates most reliably, that is absolutely the domain of the moral adolescents who subscribe to leftist ideology, as referenced up above. That crudeness takes its toll, unfortunately. I recall back in Army Basic Combat Training, how I – a mild-mannered geek who rarely uttered a curse word – was transformed into someone whose every sentence included a minimum of 5 F-bombs (even if the sentence contained only four other words). In short: it’s contagious. When one realizes that the adolescent one is addressing has not yet learned a civil dialect, one reverts to their dialect or is simply not heard. When one detects that “11″ is the only volume level capable of drowning out the unhinged, irrational rage of the respondent, one must at times crank the volume that high or be dismissed, ignored or simply lost in the noise.
So, sorry John, I can’t accept the P.C. conclusion that “everyone” is responsible for the lack of civility on the web, or that it’s solely caused by a lack of accountability stemming from anonymity. It starts with one group, primarily, and spreads from there. The fact is that – both on-line and in person – a crude, rude, profane manner of comportment has become increasingly tolerated in our society. The reason is simple: adolescents simply don’t care to be civil. And presently there’s no longer any motivation for it. There are no longer any tangible negative social consequences attached to being a creep. Simple and almost as benign as it seems, this may just be the one indicator that signals the decline of our culture – even more than our collective ignorance, apathy or willingness to accept the utterly irrational as valid.
While this doesn’t absolve everyone of their responsibility, the conversation is getting more shrill for a reason. What we’re learning is that when we DON’T shout back, when we DON’T get in their faces and when we DON’T try to stop them in their tracks with a few well-placed profanities, we allow the moral adolescents of the left to control the national political discourse and, with it, the media narrative that ultimately controls our real-life future. That’s how we got the inexperienced empty-suit we have in the White House today – and all the pestilence that will follow tomorrow.
