The online world (or at least that corner of it where I hang out) has recently seen several incidents in which tempers flared rather quickly. I’m starting to think that we’re reaching a tipping point where our means of rapid communication have completely outstripped the social conventions that grew up in a slower time. If that’s true, it could be especially troubling for web workers, who by our nature tend to live out on the cutting edge.
The particular incidents that I’m thinking of don’t matter all that much except as examples. In one, well-known blogger Kathy Sierra went public about threats she’d received, and a substantial chunk of blogdom was plunged into war. In the second, an employee of Twitter remarked about scaling issues they were having with Rails, and some people seized on this as an opportunity to attack the framework in general and to play “let’s you and him fight” when David Heinemeier Hansson responded. In the third, Edelman PR guy Steve Rubel twittered an off-the-cuff remark about throwing copies of PC Magazine in the trash, and had to do some quick backpedaling when the editorial staff at PC Magazine noticed and threatened to cut off his clients from coverage.
What we’re seeing here, I think, is a combination of two things. First, our ability to throw information out there quickly continues to accelerate. From e-mail to blogs to Twitter, even our least-considered off-the-cuff remarks can be pushed out to a global audience with almost zero effort. Second, the delivery of that information to readers is more frictionless than ever. RSS readers pull our feeds constantly, the Googlebot hovers over our sites ready to scrape them at the hint of any change, and there’s always someone awake and reading at any hour of the day.
The net effect: you can’t take anything back any more. In the old days, when business was conducted on paper (really!), you could go down to the mailroom and yank a letter back from the outbox. Even in the early days of e-mail, you could intercept something before it left your server. Now, you press the button on a Web 2.0 site and hundreds of readers devour, consider, and react to your words. If there’s any controversy to be found, any argument to be made, any anger to be provoked, you can be sure that it will happen.
Where does this leave the web worker? In the unenviable position of holding a live hand grenade with the pin out and thinking that it’s a softball. Many of us play around with Flickr and Twitter and blogs and Tumblr and all the rest, pushing information and opinions out into the world as fast as we can because it’s an interesting thing to do and because the technology is neat, never thinking that some day this might backfire on us. But what happens when more customers and personnel departments and business partners start swimming in this deep pool of information? Are we really prepared to have this stuff shared with everyone?
Many years ago, in science fiction fandom, I was introduced to Markstein’s Law: “Never put anything in print that you do not want your worst enemy to use against you some day.” If the recent convulsions of unpleasantness in the blogosphere are anything to judge by, the time is approaching when sensible people will start living by that maxim on the web as well. The question is, do you value your safety and security or your freewheeling web expressiveness more? I don’t have any easy answers, but I do know that people who don’t think about these issues ignore them at their peril.
One thing will never change about the way we communicate, no matter the degree of technology available, and that is that we are still human. And Humans are prone to bouts of bitterness, second-guessing, jealousy, and more. There will always be flame wars, as sad as that is to say. As web workers, we just have to make sure to not be assholes, to use as much grammatically correct and polite language as we can, and set the good example.
You missed one. PC Magazine, reacting to an off-the-cuff Twitter comment that few would have known about otherwise, questioned its own journalistic integrity by implying it would make editorial decisions based on the reading habits of individual PR professionals.
I’m just amazed at the surprise people are showing at the behaviors being displayed. I’m from the old GOPHER days, and my husband is pre-GOPHER in his adoption of network technology. We’ve been much slower to adopt Web2.0 – but we know a lot of the early adopters and no small number of pundits.
Flame Wars happen. Shoot, an old-school email list I’m on just had the moderator moderate for the first time in almost 3 years. Even when folks thought I was a man, I got death threats in chat rooms and on Usenet. I rarely took it seriously. If I did take it seriously I contacted the sysadmin, and, if necessary, the appropriate authorities.
It is part and parcel of human nature. People have always gossiped, caroused, accused, and even fought with threats. It is the group as a whole that decides whether that is going to be tolerated. Now, the level of response this time is just encouraging those who want the attention. My perception – and I’m not alone – is that this all comes across as a publicity stunt, even the Kathy Sierra thing.
I have many friends who are reporters and other public figures. They think the idea of never getting a threat rather novel. If you put yourself out there, you will attract the loonier fringe of society eventually. It is an unfortunate side effect of being a public figure. Creating a blog makes you a public figure.
Pax,
MLO
I think it comes down to what my parents used to tell me, and the rest of the family: “Think before you speak” If you think before your twitter/blog/whatever, you’ll both look smarter and end up in a lot less hot water.
Yes, I agree – flame wars have been with us for ages (literally – I think one can make an argument for some of the Greek classics falling into that category). What’s changing, I believe, is the speed with which the feedback loops that bring about the flame wars can be set up, and the reach that those loops have. A thousand bloggers reading a casual statement within ten minutes can have quicker consequences than a hundred people seeing the same statement on a listserve overnight.
we are getting more efficient and we need to get used to faster information flow.