I have always liked the internet.
I know that, at least among my friends, that’s a bad thing to admit. We’re supposed to be bored with the banality of Facebook exchanges and taxed by the enforced connectedness of our wireless phones. We’re supposed to be nostalgic for simpler days when we needed to keep a small reference library in our houses, when we wrote thank-you notes in cursive, when we interacted with folks in real time and space. We are supposed to feel cheapened and unsatisfied by the illusory connections that the internet offers, we are supposed to long for the sort of enriched relationships we imagine our parents or our grandparents enjoyed.
I understand all that, and I’m not saying that everything about the internet is wonderful. Misinformation goes viral at least as often as helpful intelligence, and some people perceive authority in everything that’s posted and liked. It used to be that you could get away with an insensitive remark-maybe someone would call you on it and you’d feel ashamed and want to do better in the future. Now, get a little too loose on Twitter and you might just burn down your career. It’s scary to think there’s always an electronic mob out there just waiting for something to become incensed about. Phil Robertson, Paula Deen and Justine Sacco all said (or tweeted) horrible things, but I can’t help but shudder at the gleeful vitriol of the folks that came after them. Seems we can be tolerant of almost anything but intolerance.
And I can’t help but wonder at the people who seem to publicly agree with these horrible statements. I’m not shocked that there are bigots and homophobes in the world, I’m only curious why people would announce these opinions to the world. People will type the ugliest things, and to the extent that the internet gives them license to do so, it contributes to rising levels of social anomie. One of the problems of the internet is that it has given every voice, no matter how hateful or deranged, an opportunity to broadcast.
Everything that is broadcast is inevitably heard by someone, somewhere, and those seeking affirming, consonant opinions will find the proper frequencies. Where once they were isolated in their communities, miles and miles from their more thoughtful neighbors, the internet allows the nuts talk to each other.
Part of what the internet does is make it easy for people to get upset about asinine things, and at times the levels of ignorance on display there is alarming. I’m not inclined to care much one way or the other about what some fake redneck on some “reality” show I’m not going to watch thinks about anything, and it doesn’t speak well of our kind that so much energy is spent on something so trifling. But we are what we are, and we have always been susceptible to whatever presents as brash and crude and unbeholden to conventional politeness (what they call “political correctness”). Phil Robertson is Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones, pushing back against all that is sensible and ordered. That his ideas fly in the face or logic and science is the point-his supporters resent being oppressed by facts, they prefer the homey myths of happy black and sinful gay folks.
But not every marginalized community is nutty, and I tend to believe that despite all the trash and nonsense that clutters our feed, the world is better now than it has ever been. We take scant notice of the little miracles that occur every day, at how we can casually converse with someone in Iceland or Taiwan, and we complain bitterly when Facebook or Google does something that irritates us even as we avail ourselves of the services they provide “for free.”
While I’m not so naive as to believe those services are genuinely free-we provide Facebook and Google with a lot of information about ourselves that they can sell and otherwise use for commercial purposes-I am happy to accept the bargain. I know people over share on Facebook, I have seen it, but the sensible way to approach it is to treat the internet as public space. There are things you might say in the privacy of your own home that you would not scream in the street. Well, think of the internet as a very busy street, buzzing with rabbit-eared folks hunting for something to be offended about. You should always understand that the worst people in the world are on the internet (anyone who’s ever read any uncurated comments section ought to know that), but you should also know that they can’t get to you unless you somehow make yourself available to them. Just as in the real world, some neighborhoods are safe while others are sad and desperate.
There is always some risk that must be assumed. The idea is to not do anything stupid.
I use Facebook in a way that some people might consider cynical: as a tool for my work. I post what I consider provocative or especially well-written articles from time to time, and I engage in my share of self-promotion. Every time a new item goes up on my blood, dirt & angels blog I post it to Facebook (I tweet it as well, though I don’t attend to my Twitter account the way I should). I put up a lot of photographs and sometimes paintings or demo versions of songs I’m working on. All my newspaper work gets posted to Facebook, and a lot of the other stuff I do makes it there as well. But I’m careful; everything I put on the internet is considered and calculated.
I learn a lot from my Facebook “friends,” but I understand a lot of them, maybe even most of them, are using Facebook in about the same way I do. I will accept almost anyone who isn’t obviously a trolling prostitute as a “friend,” but if they turn out to be boorish or unhelpful, I will quickly hide them. (But I generally do not “unfriend” them, lest they take it as an aggressive act.)
Yet I genuinely appreciate most of my internet buddies, even though I’ll never meet most of them in person. Although I long ago figured out how to function in social situations, I’m still reluctant to engage people I don’t know well. The internet affords me an opportunity to hold real conversations with all sorts of people I might not otherwise know. That the connections we make online are qualitatively different than the ones we make offline does not mean they are worthless.
I kind of cherish them myself. But it’s good to know I can unplug them whenever I choose.
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Perspective, Pages 72 on 12/29/2013