Shostie:I don't know. People know each other on Facebook, yet they still act like cocks. I don't think it anonymity on the internet matters.

As long as we're not face to face, we're still going to be bastards.

Bingo. It isn't the anonymity, it's the lack of immediate consequences. People will continue to be f*ckwads on the internet at least until someone invents a way to punch people in the dick over an internet connection.

I like the anonymity. I don't like the mob rule. And I don't like the 4chan and Anonymous vigilante mob justice.

I also like free information. Though I probably fall on the side of artists when it comes to music, etc...

I see what he's getting at but I'm not sure we are going to get some kind of pogroms like he fears. Not the Fascist version or Commie version. More of a "lets get the weird person" kind. Not like, let's get all the Jews.

skinink:I'm sorry but I really do need the Cliff Notes version of that article.

Very much this. After page one I still don't know what his reasons are or why I should continue reading.

For aspiring writers: give me the info up top and then tell me why I should care about the person espousing the information. I don't need to hear the life story of a guy (as written in roughly 800 words) before I know why I should care about his life story.

Shostie:I don't know. People know each other on Facebook, yet they still act like cocks. I don't think it anonymity on the internet matters.

It's not. It's about zero negative consequences

People will always try to do what they feel they can get away. Doesn't matter if its social, sexual, financial, legal or political, whatever deviancy they covet, if they can act upon it with some degree of discretion and no consequences, they will usually do it.

/so Gabe's Greater Internet farkwad Theory is inaccurate. but the basis is sound.

If one defines civilization as learning to get along with neighbors, then the internet society is the opposite of that. In the past, if someone was a radical, militant worshiper of the Great Death God Borgox they'd be the only one in within five hundred miles. Eventually they'd have to leave the house, be around normal people, and eventually succumb to the pressure to at least pretend to be a normal person to the extent of not disrupting the whole of society.

But now, thanks to the internet, that same nutcase can go online and instantly link-up with every other whacko Borgox worshiper in the world. They'll create a Twitter feed, no a forum, no a website, no a movement. They'll rally together into a little online clump, isolate themselves from society and spend all day reaffirming their madness to each other & patting themselves on the back. And then one day one of them comes up with a plan, sends it to another five others, and those five go out and buy a bunch of fertilizer & a van.

There is the danger of an online society: It allows these cancerous elements to grow & fester through letting them create their own little bubbles, islands of selective evolution, that can & do indeed eventually grow large enough to become a threat to the rest of civilization. Look at Stormfront, or the Westboro Baptist Church, or even the Taliban. Gate groups love the internet because it lets them concentrate their otherwise hopelessly diffused numbers into a focal point. It lets them avoid the normalizing effects of being part of the larger society beyond their front doors and instead live on a diet of hate & narcissism. Eventually, bad things happen because of them.Again, this is old news. All these groups - and their online presence - have been around for a long time. And frankly Mr.Lanier seems a little too wrapped up in his own little world himself to articulate this obvious issue clearly or succinctly. And he apparently suffers from this problem himself: "It explains, I think, why his father, a delightfully eccentric student of human nature, brought up his son in the New Mexico desert-far from civilization and its lynch mob potential." Isolating people from civilization isn't the solution, it's the problem. His own little bubble of "netziens" (is that even a real thing?) & musicians that has become his monkeysphere is no more in touch with the rest of reality than the hate groups, but fortunately they're generally non-violent types so we tend to just overlook them.

Ishkur:Shostie: I don't know. People know each other on Facebook, yet they still act like cocks. I don't think it anonymity on the internet matters.

It's not. It's about zero negative consequences

People will always try to do what they feel they can get away. Doesn't matter if its social, sexual, financial, legal or political, whatever deviancy they covet, if they can act upon it with some degree of discretion and no consequences, they will usually do it.

gingerjet:Met this guy in the 80s at the height of the silly virtual reality fad. Never wondered what happened to him.

/and now I know

Yah, was gonna answer all the "who?" posts that I've made my living online for over 20 years and I'd heard of him before that, but remembered that he was melodramatic then and apparently hasn't changed.

When the assholes on the intertubes can make an actual pogrom happen, let me know. Until then, I'm fine with anonymity.

If the people who run a website want people to be able to say whatever the fark they want with no repercussions, fine, then the rest of us will know who to stay away from. I sure as fark have no desire to visit 4chan.

Most people with websites that a large number of people want to visit will moderate them. Which is also fine.

It's kind of like inviting people to your house. If you don't care if people shiat on your carpet, well, then you'll probably get a lot of carpet shiatters visiting, and not a lot of anybody else. But if you keep the carpet shiatters out, you'll get pleasant visitors. No need to demand that people show their papers.

I_C_Weener:I like the anonymity. I don't like the mob rule. And I don't like the 4chan and Anonymous vigilante mob justice.

I also like free information. Though I probably fall on the side of artists when it comes to music, etc...

I see what he's getting at but I'm not sure we are going to get some kind of pogroms like he fears. Not the Fascist version or Commie version. More of a "lets get the weird person" kind. Not like, let's get all the Jews.

Weren't the Jews, the original "weird" people./tragic consequences always follow when people don't understand - we're ALL weird to someone.