While the inane spats of YouTube commencers may not be representative, the internet has certainly sharpened the tone of debate. The most raucous sections of the blogworld seem incapable of accepting sincerely held differences of opinion; all opponents must have “agendas”.
Whether or not you agree with the above comment isn’t the point. It’s how we express ourselves while on the Internet that displays our humanity, or rather our in-humanity. We see this well displayed in recent commercials targeted at our children. Ya know the cyber-bullying commercials. “If you wouldn’t say it in person…”. I think we can all agree that if we have commercials on this topic, a problem must exist.
10 years ago, when the Internet was still young, many of us joked that WWW didn’t stand for “World-Wide Web”, it stood for “Wild, Wild West”. Anonymity seems to bring-out the worst in people. Back then, being “flamed” by another user was insulting, but common. The fear of reprisal was non-existent. Many people “shot from the hip”.
Like so many things in life, we learned to adapt and even tolerate. Adaptation and tolerance was fine until our children started getting on-line. History now shows that such behavior has led to depression and suicide. It’s remarkable how rudeness can have such a major impact on some individuals. Hence, the “Cyber-bullying” commercials. Somewhere along the line, at least while on-line, we seem to have forgotten socially acceptable things like “please” and “thank you”, not to mention respect for others on most levels. No more “Golden Rule”!
Direct impact aside, we’re now seeing a new set of social blunders take place on the Internet. Here’s an example;
John and Jane get engaged. John tweets about it and posts a note on his Facebook page. Marget, Jane’s mother, reads John’s Facebook page shortly after his posting, before Jane has had a chance to call her mother and share the good news. Marget goes ballistic because she wasn’t told “in-person”. Jane feels bad and scolds John for not waiting to post the news. John feels no remorse at all because he was just sharing the good news with his friends. Needless to say John and Jane had a big fight!
In hindsight, it seems a relatively simple thing to avoid. Tell the people closest to you first, before posting. Yet, social sites perpetuate questions we’ve never been asked before, never had to ask ourselves before and couldn’t possibly foresee as a problem. As such, social blunders will occur.
“Ubuntu” is a word of African origin (and a great Linux distribution too!) that roughly means “Humanity to others.” If we use Ubuntu as a starting point, put the “Golden Rule” back in-place and learn from our blunders, I think we can all move forward and keep the Internet a safe place for our kids and a place where we can all learn and grow.
IMHO: The “Cyber-bullying” commercials are a necessary response to an on-line social problem. At the same time I’m appalled that we need ‘em.
