David Emery OnlinePeople
28 March 2007
What’s going on at the moment?
The internet, and the tech bit of it specifically, seem to be in a real funk at the moment.
Witness both Kathy Sierra’s post, which created a huge amount of hubbub and activity – including being featured on the BBC website – and also Molly’s post.
I’ll be honest, both of these posts rub me up the wrong way slightly.
That’s not to say I don’t think both aren’t really bad (especially in Kathy’s case) situations, I’d really hope that that almost doesn’t need to be said. I guess what it boils down to is that I’m a realist.
People suck.
They do mean things.
It’s a pretty universal truth.
So whenever someone, or a group of people, do something shit it really doesn’t surprise me that much; everyone does it sometimes, whether they mean to or not. Even if you didn’t mean to be mean, and someone misinterpreted what you said, it takes a lot to be able to say “whoops, sorry – I didn’t mean it like that”.
The other thing that gets to me is the “mob” that things like this encourage. It’s exactly the same state of affairs as when someone is accused as being a pedophile; that’s it, your career and life is over. The mob, which leaps into action and the least provocation, is quite often as bad as the original behaviour that caused the problem in the first place; basing their actions on rumour and suspicion, and ruining people’s lives on purpose as a consequence.
Naming and shaming is never a sensible course of action, in my humble opinion, as on the internet you can never take back what you say, which means you really, really have to think through what you’re saying and who may read it – their family, your family, friends, employers etc.
Once you say something, it’s out in the wild for good.