Internet Hostility

If you're reading this, you're using the Internet. Also, if you read any news stories which allow registered members to post comments, you may have seen various sorts of hostile and often idiotic comments which some people make. If you've ever participated in an IRC chatroom, a help forum, or some other place where people can say what they like with some degree of freedom, you may have seen similar things.

I started using the web (i.e. the World Wide Web) back in the mid-1990s. During that time I've been called "gay" (I think in the 4th-grade sense of the term, not referring to actual homosexuality) on very many occasions, an idiot, a liar, a loser, and so on. I've been told to get a different kind of computer from the type I was using. On a number of other occasions, I've been told to (WARNING: If seeing the "f-bomb" in print bothers you, don't click the following link) RTFM.

At other times I've had my grammar or spelling corrected in a hostile way. Sometimes my grammar or spelling was faulty, sometimes not. On one occasion I told someone that in my opinion Communism was not, as he had stated, a religion, but was a non-religious ideology. This person held to his opinion. I then gave him some examples of what I thought were religions, and some other examples of what I thought were ideologies. This person (male or female, who knows) then proceeded to call into question my intelligence, my sexual orientation, my education, my parentage, along with all sorts of things which were not germane to the discussion at hand.

Such hostility has a long history on the Internet. It was there even before the web. There's actually a rule of thumb (called Godwin's Law if you want to look it up) that in any discussion of any length on the Internet, sooner or later somebody will call someone else a Nazi.

Some people become hostile in various circumstances on the Internet, very many others don't. For those who do, the following formula seems to apply: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Complete Jerk. I didn't think this up on my own. I borrowed it from the web comic Penny Arcade and sanitized the language which the comic strip used.

I've often wondered why this combination seems to bring out the worst in some people, while other people seem to be perfectly polite on the Internet.

I don't have any real answers, but I can speculate a little.

I suspect that some of the people who are hostile on the Internet are also hostile in real life, though perhaps not to the same degree. If these people were as hostile away from the net as they are on it, most likely they would be beaten bloody very often, probably enough to teach them not to behave in such an obnoxious fashion.

I also suspect that other people who are hostile in the Internet are not at all hostile in real life. It seems likely to me that these people go through their lives behaving politely or perhaps even meekly. Underneath the surface, though, they are boiling with rage and hate. The anonymity of various outlets on the Internet gives them a chance to release some of their anger, rage, hatred, belligerence, and so on, without facing any real-life consequences.

Those who behave in a polite and civilized manner on the Internet probably behave the same way in real life.

Perhaps at some point in the future we will develop some real form of Internet etiquette. I don't have any idea how this might come about, so I don't have any suggestions.

In the mean time, I imagine many people will continue to subscribe to (WARNING AGAIN: More possibly offensive language) this publication.

Hans Bricker