What is fair game and what’s dirty pool in the world of online
comments or blogging? Dirty pool comments are unfair or unethical;
they are often called personal attacks. Although the definition is
simple, applying any objective measure is difficult, perhaps
impossible
– the devil is in the details and the details are often in the
eye of the beholder.
What is fair game and what’s dirty pool in the world of online comments or blogging? Dirty pool comments are unfair or unethical; they are often called personal attacks. Although the definition is simple, applying any objective measure is difficult, perhaps impossible – the devil is in the details and the details are often in the eye of the beholder.
When I blog with a group of friends I sometimes stoop to personal attacks. Naturally, they just attack me right back – after all, we are friends. It makes no difference who starts it. The next day or even the next hour, we are over it. Now that I’ve established that I’m no saint, I can discuss the topic; just don’t expect it to work that way with strangers, political opponents or people who don’t like each other. In those cases, the more people are attacked the angrier they get and they usually retaliate in kind.
Even among friends, we consider attacks on family, race, religion and ethnicity off limits, and so should you. It’s just common decency and it’s logical. We are only responsible for our own actions. No one gets to pick their parents or siblings; how your kids turn out always involves elements of chance and mystery. The same applies to the other innate or group attributes.
The catalyst for this commentary is the sustained online battle between the supporters of the two candidates for San Benito County sheriff. Neither camp can be held responsible for what’s posted by independent bloggers, many of whom have no sense of restraint. Since this happens everywhere, I believe it’s the nature of the medium. It’s much easier to ridicule or insult someone when you’re not face-to-face, especially if you can do it anonymously.
In the political arena, almost anything directly related to a candidate is fair game because that’s how many people make their voting decisions. A candidate’s wardrobe might not be the best way to select a representative; however, it’s important to some people. Still, there is a fundamental difference between writing, “I could never vote for someone who dresses so poorly” and “He looks like a drunken slob.” How you say something often differentiates a reasonable comment from a personal attack.
Belittling someone’s name is just childish and it’s self-defeating. Your own good arguments are diminished when the opening line contains some juvenile slaughtering of the subject’s name.
Humans are natural gossips, always have been and always will be – running someone else down makes us feel better about ourselves. The Internet is the new backyard fence, afternoon tea and general store all rolled into one and it’s available 24/7. In America’s old structure the men worked during the day, the women communicated and took the information home to share with their husbands. In the new structure more women have migrated into the workplace, more men are taking on roles at home and simply everyone from pre-teens to senor citizens is establishing individual pipelines of information from social networking to dating services. The information age is universal.
It was perfectly predictable that our bad instincts would move into the electronic world with our good instincts, and since our national character is to overdo everything, there was never any doubt that we would overdo this, too. If you’re participating online think about what you post, be as hard-hitting as you want without being obnoxious. If you’re the subject of a nasty post try to ignore the insults, but don’t pass over the legitimate criticisms just because you don’t like the critic.
Now if I can just follow my own advice, I’ll be doing ok. Being only human, it’s tough.
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
