The Internet As A Digital Side Show

Welcome to the digital freak show! Feeling uncomfortable yet?

Untitled Shahn, Ben, 1898-1969, photographer. 

Recently I was reading back through some old posts I made on various message boards and I came across a thread from 2007 in which people where mocking the public behavior of a rising "internet star" who self described as being a highly functioning autistic. The person was using the internet to make a spectacle of themselves by posting videos of outrageous and potentially dangerous antics and people were eating it up and at the same time showing very little understanding or compassion for the underlying problems that could be leading to his admittedly unusual and potentially threatening behavior. The whole thing reminded me of something... and then it dawned on me, it's the new equivalent of the circus side show! And we thought we were soooo evolved... pft! We are doing the same crap. Voyeuristically watching others who are somehow different so that we can mock them or at best pity them, but with this new version, we are sparred the "indignity" of paying money to create this artificial chasm between "us" and "them", it is mostly free, and the best thing about it is that we can be as brutal as we want because we feel anonymous. We never have to look them or anyone else in the eye while doing it. So we are spared the shame and guilt we used to feel when we had to gather in public to try desperately to feel better about ourselves. Its all so private... and clean... and digital.

Ah, the magic of the internet.

Here is what I wrote back in 2007 that effectively ended the original thread dead cold...

"*Disclaimer: Doc is not an expert on brain disorders... he just has a few personal theories about them.* 

Assuming we take the information given at face value, the bottom line for me is that the person seems to have problems... possibly both physiological and psychological. For that reason, I don't know if I want to participate in mocking him publicly. 

He IS putting himself out there to be mocked for sure... but if we choose not to take the bait, then other people will be less likely to seek fame from encouraging ridicule of their shortcomings. And to be honest, I am not so sure he "gets" the underlying tone of his "popularity", he seems to be not entirely able to successfully interact socially after all. I wonder if any attention he receives satisfies a need in him, even if it is negative and can only add to his issues down the road. Will making him "famous" stop him from acting badly in public and getting arrested in places he goes to look for girls? I don't think it will. 

To me his "star status" just seems like a digital equivalent to an old circus side show. Something we as a culture thought we were beyond but in fact we are still starring at the people who are different from what is considered average because it helps us each individually feel more "normal". 

As far as him having psychological issues that go beyond being autistic, who is to say how much being autistic screws with your self esteem and general mental health? Aspects of your brain function may be normal or even superior to average but I think that could be a serious detriment to being otherwise balanced because you may have the ability to comprehend just how your autism effects your life and limits what you can accomplish. I think thats gotta mess with ya. 

Brain dysfunction has a wide range of effects on people and we are nowhere near being able to understand it fully. I think at some point in the future we will have a better grasp of just how unique and different each persons "mind" is and we look back on the idea of thinking that people are either "normal" or "abnormal" as very naive."

And Thus The Identity Crackdown Begins...

FaceBook has launched a new service that ties commenting on other sites to your FaceBook account. So if a website turns it on, (and I think many will make it the default) most commenters will no longer be able to post with anything but their ACTUAL identity.

I have encouraged people to be themselves online for years. I knew that everyone running around pretending to be 20 different people and acting in a range of bad behavior from impolite to horrid, would not be tolerated for long. People were just loading up corporate cannons with reasons for a siege on anonymity. I also knew that when it DID start to change it would probably be at the hands of a big powerful entity. Back in the 90's I would have thought MS would be the one, then maybe Google... but of course the big winner of all our data now looks like it will be FaceBook, Google only WISHES you were building such a detailed profile into their database compared to what you shovel into FB each day.

I am of two minds, I look forward to a day when there is two thirds less crap polluting the web, but of course I don't want to tie all my opinions, thoughts, hopes and dreams back to a single (clearly untrustworthy) corporation. I just wish more people had decided to act civilized and not made such a service an easy sell.

The internet is the MOST public place you will ever make your voice heard. I believe that anything you post may someday be attached to your actual identity and viewed by anyone. I am a firm believer that de-anonymization tools will largely remove the illusion of anonymity in the near future. So its best to act the way you would in any very public place. Your home, work, or even a bar, all seem to be much more private places than any place you post online... but strangely, others seem to imagine the internet as the most private of places and assume everything they post under a pseudo identity would never be tracked back to them... even long before all the successful de-anonymization research, I just could not see that lasting.

In real life we feel pained and sometimes shamed for the stupid things we do and say, I causes us to examine ourselves and hopefully grow, mature, and respect others. Being held accountable for what you say is a fundamental part of being a person that exists in society. Bringing that accountability to the internet is long over due. We can't have a more meaningful dialog without looking each other in the eye.