This lengthy Vanity Fair piece by Jim Windolf, "You've Got (Hate) Mail: The Curious Case of Keith Gessen and Emily Gould," is an extremely entertaining and disturbing read that sums up the perils of the Internet very well:
http://www.vanityfair.com/
I learned about the piece from Glenn Kenny's blog, Some Came Running, and indeed Glenn is a supporting player in the story-line; he comes off none too well. But I've contributed to/been the target of (almost impossible to separate these) that sort of online toxicity myself. The danger of getting caught up in that -- because you have got an ego; because you think you are right; because you want to have the last word; because you want to settle scores; and so on -- is acute for many participants (certainly so for me) every time they blog, tweet, post, comment, reply, or socially network anywhere in the electronic jungle. Windolf could be right that this is a style that will pass, but I somehow don't think so; it goes back to Usenet and has obvious antecedents before that -- the film critic wars of the Sixties and Seventies, British literary feuds earlier in the century, the Grub Street cultures of England and France in the 18th century, etc. The speed, semi-anonymity, and echo-chamber quality of the Internet obviously facilitate this sort of discourse (which has also expanded its reach into reality TV, talk radio, sports trash talk, and so on), and I wouldn't bet on its lessening any time soon.
It struck me on reading Windolf's piece that I'm probably only two degrees of electronic separation from most of the people mentioned, even though they are of a different generation and geography. Cyberspace is both big and small. What's described in the article makes most of the little tempests I've been around seem pretty mild, even though some of them have been upsetting enough at the time. It's an exceptionally cautionary article that makes me want to pull back even farther than I have already from this "we live in public" culture.
So far, in this effort to pull back: I've stopped blogging. I try not to comment on the blogs of others, although sometimes I succumb. I'm busily eliminating blogs from my RSS feed to get the number down to a useful minimum; for a while there I was adding blogs too promiscuously. I've removed myself from all but a couple of the bulletin boards I used to belong to -- I think there are only two or three I post at anymore. I try not to even look at most boards -- film boards, book boards, menswear boards, political boards, it doesn't matter what the subject is, they are all equally contentious. I won't go on Facebook or MySpace. I won't go on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn and Classmates, but try to keep my activity minimal. When I visit websites now, I determine whether they meet a high standard of usefulness, and if they do not, I try not to go back. I've tried to reduce my diddling time on the Internet and re-invest that time in book reading and DVD watching; that strategy has been pretty successful.
It's all very much like getting off a drug, with the important difference that it is almost impossible to function nowadays without being in cyberspace to some extent. So the addict is always being re-exposed to the drug. Perhaps it's even more like an over-eater trying to lose weight, since the over-eater still has to eat a little something. It's kind of too bad that participating in the electronic polis should have to be monitored like an addiction, because I like writing and I'm decent at it. But oh, where that can lead.
My level of sadness about human interaction is a little better than when I was suffering from major depression two years ago, but otherwise still the worst it has been in my adult life. Observing interactions in cyberspace can go an awfully long way toward completely destroying one's faith in the human future. The most depressing books I have ever read or films I have ever seen have, by contrast, never done that. The Internet is a brave new crappy world.
POSTSCRIPT: Yes, I know I'm being self-contradictory, indicating that I'm not blogging, and then posting this email at my long-dormant blog. More to follow on that issue.
UPDATE (5/11/2009): To underline a point: Whatever the intrinsic perils of cyberspace, I am not good at all at handling them. I misbehave. Then I'm unhappy about misbehaving. Then I'm angry at the context in which I misbehaved...not because the context "made me" misbehave, but because I dislike situations that [insert most neutral verb possible -- "bring out"?] my less admirable self. And on it goes...I just want it to be clear that I'm not trying to deflect my misbehavior. I own it; I want to understand it. But I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to re-educate myself to behave like a saint in the electronic polis, and frankly the citizenry probably wouldn't respond well to that, either, as Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (what a great name for a newspaper!) columnist Michael Duff pointed out in a comment on the same Keith Gessen mess memorialized in the Vanity Fair article cited above:
There is a powerful subculture on the Internet that is repulsed, even angered, by displays of weakness and earnestness, particularly if they think earnestness is being used to deflect criticism.
Most people attacked by this subculture respond with more of the sincere, vulnerable dialog that set things off in the first place - or they lose their minds and start screaming at people.
So the only real alternative is avoidance. As it turns out, though, this very diatribe of mine complaining about the Internet proved determinative in relaunching PMD, because the paradox of avoidance seemed to require that I in fact be on the Internet -- just in a walled-off corner of it. And it's working pretty well. I look at other sites, boards, and blogs much less, and have reduced my posting to zero everywhere except Confabulation (a happy special case) and The Blackboard (where I've really cut down). As part of my job search, I did post a query on a couple of boards hoping for some helpful input, and within hours, very much regretted doing so -- except that in another way, I was glad of the experience, because it reminded me of the dangers that lay in that direction.It's like twelve-step: It's never over. Victory is never won.
UPDATE (6/7/2009): I had to drop The Blackboard, too (although I'll still read it). I posted this in explanation:
[A member] had noted that my posting had come to a halt, and that is deliberate, I'm afraid. I need to constantly remind myself...that I truly do not enjoy exchanges of opinion on the Internet. In person I have no such problem, because there is a natural give-and-take in conversation. When reading opinions I disagree with in books or periodicals where I have no opportunity of anything other than a mental response, I make that mental response and I'm fine; I don't discount the author entirely unless I really agree with them on nothing.
But on the Web, no offense to anyone intended, opinions I disagree with absolutely infuriate me. Probably it is the possibility of electronic response, which I often successfully resist using, that contributes to these elevated feelings. Also, the fact that I almost invariably have not met the people I'm interacting with weirds me out, I think; the Web is so disembodied. Interestingly, the one small private board where I know everyone in person is the one board I have no problems on whatsoever.
In any case, I don't find it to be a healthy situation, and I can't imagine I'm alone in having a different set of reactions and behaviors around Web communications than I do around other sorts of communication. I learned the hard way that I had to disable the "comments" function at my own blog in order to be able to post at all.
After leaving that up on the board for half an hour, I thought better of leaving it there, where it might provoke debate or remonstrance, and edited the post. But it helped me to write these thoughts down, and they have a more proper home here on PMD.
UPDATE (6/17/2009): I came to feel better about posting at The Blackboard, which truly is one of the most civilized Web fora I've come across. I ultimately mentioned the blog in passing, was asked about it (which I kind of anticipated), and posted this:
"Patrick Murtha," like "Wisconsin Mark," is an Internet nom de plume, by way of my matrilineage. While I'm putting my cards on the table, I'll 'fess to also posting on some boards as "topbroker," a reference to my days in commercial real estate.
The blog had an initial run from May to September 2008, then went on hiatus until last month, when I revived it after thinking some issues through. It covers all my interests -- film, literature, history, and so on. It is also very autobiographical and personally revealing -- I decided early on not to hold much back. Nothing is intended to offend, but I try not to be coy or squeamish (including about my own faults and foibles, which I ponder a bit).
Patrick Murtha's Diary is deliberately somewhat anti-bloggish -- there's no blogroll; I don't participate in the "blog community' (although I occasionally give shout-outs to blogs I really like); it's heavy on text and light on bells and whistles; commenting is disabled; I do almost nothing to promote the blog. Lately I've lightened up a bit and let a few more folks know about it; I do have a certain pride in the product.
I also, as part of this lightening up, posted the PMD link in my profile at Library Thing, where I'm also "Patrick Murtha."
