Throwing Rocks...

Throwing Rocks


I am going to make a departure for a while and we will see how this goes. I am going to try and veer away from the commentary blogs that I am so famous for and take off in another direction. My normal blog is mirrored on myspace.com. I have been reading, writing and commenting on some friends blogs in myspace.com ( http://www.myspace.com/lotus07 ) and some of the other stuff that my fellow bloggers have written has got me thinking. There is a bit more to life than pointing out the failings of society and the hypocrisy of the world. Mind you, I won't stop doing that all together, but expect the unexpected in the coming weeks.

But before I go, there is one little blog idea that has been rattling around my head for the past couple of months that I might as well spit out into cyberspace.

I suppose that it could be termed the loss of etiquette as a result of the mask of the internet, but I am wondering if it isn't a bit more than that. As though it were like shining a bright light into the darkened subconscious of society and finding things that we really don't want to admit to.

I will tell you how this all started. I have a bunch of bookmarks on my homepage.

http://homepage.mac.com/lotus07/Link_Page.html

I sort of use these bookmarks as my morning newspaper. I go in here and check out various news items, entertainment stories, my bank accounts, my ebay listings, stuff like that. One of these links is called Hedonistica (http://www.hedonistica.com ). This is a site that posts daily clips of the odd and bizarre. It is worth checking out if you like that sort of thing. The reason I keep looking in on it isn't necessarily for the content, but for the comments that are posted for each of the clips. There is a whole cast of characters that comment and leave opinions on these various articles and video clips, and the comments are not necessarily high brow or intelligent. Quite often they degenerate into shouting matches with a lot of finger pointing regarding politics, race relations, gender bashing and what have you.

In leaving comments for some of these clips, I have been slammed to the wall and flamed repeatedly by various folks that have a hair trigger regarding certain issues. Not that this bothers me much, since I have to assume that quite a few of these commentators still ride a school bus every morning. I still jokingly refer to myself as the 'racist' on this site since I have been accused of being such on more than one occasion. Which I suppose is better than the never ending accusations of being 'gay' that everyone else seems to get.

However, here is my concern. It is exactly this type of mud slinging that I see time and time again in many a forum or public discussion on the internet. It would appear that when someone can get the attention of others, but not fear immediate repercussions from them, the base nature of their personality comes out and in those base natures there is a lot of anger, bigotry, hate and fear that we don't see in regular 'face to face' society. So when the mask is off and we are in a large dark room, we can shout out whatever we want, because who ever else hears it won't know who is talking. When we turn the lights back on, we all smile, wave and say "good morning" and "thank you very much".

So basically, the internet can be a closet where the lesser angels of our nature take flight and become these little demons with pitchforks. A free-for-all where no rights are respected and no repercussions are likely.

Just like the unforeseen affect that television had on society in the 50s and 60s, there is an affect at work here with the internet and the compression of global time and space. I am not sure where it is taking us, but I have a bad feeling about this.