Death by Moron

Here is my strange confession: I miss my hate mail.

It's an odd thing to admit, but in a perverse sort of way, I
actually miss the wretched river, the rancid flow of puerile, nasty,
sickeningly homophobic email I used to receive on a regular basis from
the ultra-right and the Christian right and the Mormon right and the
Bush-impaired whenever I would post a friendly, pointed column full of
tangy liberal attitude. Which is, of course, all of them.

Oh, I miss all the lovely and positive email too, which
outpaced the nasty stuff by a huge margin. But the hate mail was (and
still is, what dribble I now get) very special indeed, great fodder for
live readings, for the reaction of horrified disbelief of anyone who
saw it, for the charming reminder of just how ugly and violent and
grammatically challenged the human animal can be.

(FYI: the best of the worst of my hate mail -- about 50 truly
stunning examples -- will be published in my upcoming mega-compendium
of a book, "The Daring Spectacle." Get on my personal newsletter to find out more).

So, what happened? Where has all the hate gone? One easy
explanation: the merciful EoB, the End of Bush. The extraordinary
failure of the neocon mindset means that the most troglodytic of the
haters have now retreated to the Caves of Ignorance to lick their
wounds and fellate each other in assorted airport restrooms. Good news
all around.

But that's only a small part of it. Something else is afoot,
something more nefarious and curious and, well, downright sad. Fact is,
despite the steadily increasing traffic to my column over the years, I
now get far less email overall than I used to, either positive or
negative.

You already know the reason: Anonymous commenting. Those
semi-public forums like the one you see right down there, at the bottom
of this very column, those "community" discussion areas borne of the
blogosphere and spread to every media site imaginable, from SFGate to
the New York Times to YouTube to Knitting World. Indeed, they're one of
the most popular, widely used innovations of the Web 2.0 revolution,
and they've dramatically transformed public communication and
conversation.

For the worse. Oh, for the far, far worse.

I didn't always think so. I was, for years, an enthusiastic
advocate of the egalitarian, free-for-all, let's-level-the-playing
field aspect of the Web. More voices! More feedback! More
participation! Bring it on!

Not anymore. As I've mentioned before, I now tend to agree
with "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin, who said, "Nothing has done more
to make us dumber or meaner than the anonymity of the Internet."
Hyperbole? Not by much.

But let's spin backwards for just a moment, to a time before
blogs and Facebook and the Web 2.0 socialgasm. There was this wonderful
killer app called email. There was a concomitant killer innovation,
called HTML links. As every newspaper hastily rushed its content
online, suddenly reporters and columnists and hardcore news jockeys
alike began seeing their bylines turned into a sweet, baffling little
"mailto" link.

And lo, a revolution was born.

For the first time in more than a century, a fundamental shift
occurred in the sacred -- but formerly quite cold and detached --
writer/reader relationship. Suddenly, readers could respond instantly
to a newspaper piece, to the journalist in question, and authors could
instantly know the effect and accuracy of their words. No more
hand-written, snail-mailed Letters to the Editor that might (but
probably won't) get published two or three weeks later. The feedback
loop was made instant, and enormously compelling. It was lauded as a
new era, one that would change the newspaper biz forever.

Or maybe not. Because now, that once-revolutionary connection,
all those vibrant reader interactions I once cherished, have changed
again. Or more accurately, have devolved dramatically.

That sacred relationship is no longer the slightest bit
sacred. If you've ever spent much time in the comment boards of this or
any major media site (or, of course, any popular blog), you already
know: Anonymity tends to bring out the absolute worst in people, the
meanest and nastiest and least considerate. Something about not having
to reveal who you really are caters to the basest, most unkind
instincts of the human animal. Go figure.

Thoughtful discourse? Humorous insight? Sometimes. But mostly it's a tactless spectator sport. It's about being seen,
about out-snarking the previous poster, about trying to top one another
in the quest for... I'm not sure what. A tiny shot of notoriety? The
feeling of being "published" on a major media site? Or is it the thrill
that can only come from hurling a verbal Molotov at the Great Satan of
"corporate media," and then running away like a snorting 8-year-old?
All of the above?

Do not misunderstand: It is far from all bad, and many
intelligent, eloquent, hilarious people still add their voices to
comment boards across the Interwebs, including ours. Hell, I still get
terrific pleasure from reading some of the comments on a few of my
favorite blogs, along with rich information, morbid humor, even new
column ideas and unusual angles I never thought of. What's more, some
of the larger media sites still have enough resources (read:
overworked, as-of-yet-not-laid-off staffers) to moderate their forums
and keep the verbal chyme to a minimum.

But the coherent voices are, by and large, increasingly drowned
out by the nasty, the puerile, the inane, to the point where, unless
you're in the mood to have your positive mood ruined and your belief in
the inherent goodness of humanity stomped like a rainbow flag in the
Mormon church, there's almost no point in trying to sift through it
anymore. The relentless nastiness is, quite literally, sickening.

Solutions? That's easy.

One is to block it all out. Install and employ something like the fabulously named StupidFilter (which I wrote about last year),
an elaborate algorithm that scans through and removes all insidiously
childish, dumb, or otherwise moronic language from a given chat forum.
Hey, it could work. The StupidFilter Project is, apparently, still quite real, though I've no idea if it will ever catch on. We can only hope.

There is, of course, another solution, and it's far simpler and more elegant and it would fix the entire problem in an instant.

It is this: Reveal yourself. Anyone who wishes to post a public
comment must also post his/her real name, an actual email address,
maybe even a nice little headshot. You want to participate and add to
the conversation, criticize and parry and thrust? Great. Let's see who
you are, honest and true. Fire it up. Debate. Engage. Let's create a
real community.

No more hiding. No more anonymous cowardice. No more
hit-and-run verbal spitwads and avoiding responsibility for what you
say. Hey, writers and journalists have been doing it for years, posting
our names and email addresses and even photos for the entire world to
see. If Web 2.0 means we're now all in this public sphere together,
shouldn't I know exactly who you are, too? Shouldn't everyone?

Will it happen? Not a chance. Truth is, anonymous forums still
drive a ton of desperately needed traffic to every media joint that
offers them, including this one. Until the novelty of anon posting dies
out -- which I'm fairly convinced it will, relatively soon -- commerce
wins. In a land where click-throughs are king, quantity still trumps quality, every time. Don't you just hate that? I look forward to your emails.