I don’t know what to say or how to say it. You won’t believe me. You’ll think I’m exaggerating. The things I’ve found out these past couple of days, So many dangerous games. It seems that the very nature of this medium, which is essentially inhumane, makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do, things that are harmful to others, and that ultimately boomerang back on ourselves. Things that aren’t really us, or maybe things that are most us. But we become dangerous people playing very dangerous games.
I was nvolved in these recent games. They were the most dangerous ones I’d ever seen. I became a dangerous person, other people did too.I wonder why we’re here at all.
This is a technology. It’s a new and very imperfect one. It’s not really good for human communication. You type black letters into lines in white boxes with black outlines,. The writer Alan Watts once pointed out that in nature there are no straight lines. This medium is not natural and it’s very easy when you’re in it to become inhumane. And people are unwilling to transcend the limits of the medium, to make the commitment, to have the will to humanize it’ when necessary to go beyond it.
Why is it practically taboo to ask for someone’s phone number to resolve differences? Misunderstandings could be resolved over the phone in five minutes that take forever or never to get resolved here. No visual cues, no tone of voice, no ability to stop someone and say excuse me, what did you just mean, before the post is finished, and then you’re already angry. Why is it taboo to ask for mediation from a trusted neutral party when things are starting to get ugly?. Looks like a video game, feels like a video game, but don’t forget, the atom bomb is a technology too.
This has been the pattern here since I came at the beginning of it all, almost two years ago. It never changed. I think maybe now it’s changing a little because of the compulsory registration. These new registrants came into an environment far more structured than the chaos of the early days. The old timers, the diehards, I think the chaos of the beginning is still ingrained in us and so we keep falling back into these dangerous habits.
I hope we old timers grow up. I hope if we don’t, the newcomers are smart enough not to fall into these games. They should understand that you can let yourself become a dangerous person without even realizing it, and sometimes when the bodies fall they fall harder than you might think.
The Internet was supposed to bring out the best in us but almost fifteen years later, it so often brings out the worst. I wonder if it will ever become what it should be, achieve its potential.
I used to think so. I still hope so but right now I feel like I just don’t know.
