The Quintessential Outsider

Ok, so I am back after another month-long hiatus. And I guess this will remain the frequency of my blog posts for a few more months. But for my enthusiastic readers (if there are any), I shall put a link on my Orkut profile and YM status whenever I update my blog.

Anyway, so coming to the point… I was talking to this friend yesterday about how I dislike debates or arguments on e-groups (Yahoo, Google, whatever). I do like to chat and debate a lot, through IM, though. I also like to read blogs (and the comments on them), and write on my own once in a while. On the other hand, I dislike (and usually ignore) the comments section on any ‘popular’ and otherwise ‘respectable’ site, e.g. IMDb, Youtube, any of the news sites, or any topic-based Orkut community for that matter. So, I thought… Is there a pattern to my likes and dislikes?

Well, what I basically dislike in the first and last examples is the usual lack of civility in discussion, and the inability of those responsible to even acknowledge it. And I like blogs and IM conversations for the same civility which I, and I think a lot of people, attach importance to. And I think these differences in the nature of discussions have something to do with the intrinsic nature of each of these online media.

The simplest to see is of course, IM. If you cannot have a healthy discussion, you probably will not have one at all, because both persons have the choice to just close the window, sign out, or ignore and block the other one. So, it is the joint responsibility of both the sides to maintain order.

On an e-group, it is not so simple. Even though you might be responding to a statement by a particular person, you actually write for everyone in the group to read. You can ‘reply’ to a person you might otherwise not talk to, or see eye-to-eye with, with oblique or sarcastic comments for ‘public consumption’. If there are even a few people who agree with you, you cannot be banned and your posts cannot be censored or moderated. Or you can be really loud and arrogant, if that threat does not exist at all.

The same goes for any ‘popular’ site where you are allowed to post comments. While downright abuses might not be approved, a lot of ’snide remarks’ and ‘offensive comments’ make the cut, and appear in any discussion, often distracting attention from the main issue. Firstly, the site owners/moderators have little time to read and understand all of them, and secondly, they cannot afford to lose ‘objectivity’ by ‘taking action’ against any particular ‘views’, however twisted they might be. (If you don’t have any views and just use ‘f**k’ a hundred times in a sentence, then it is a different matter altogether)

So how are blogs different? Well, the space is ‘owned’ by one particular person, who has the final say on what to do with the comments. You can afford to be a complete dictator in this regard and get away with it (unless you have Google Ads on your page and are worried about the readership ). If someone does not agree with you, they can just go set up their own blog where they can flame you all they like. If you are right and they are wrong, people will ignore them anyway, so why worry?

This can also be used to explain why some people act the way they do on news-channel debates, for example. If they are given a platform to provide soundbytes for ‘public consumption’, and that platform actually ‘needs’ them for its own sake, then they can afford to misbehave all they want. On the other hand, if they are standing in a court, which has been given the authority to ‘throw them out’ if need be, they will behave better.

Blogs are slightly different, though, because those who are thrown out also have the option of founding their own private kingdom, and indulging themselves, so it is not as authoritarian as the real-world analogue.

But wait… don’t we have a problem here? Doesn’t that mean that all (or most) blogs just have a cluster of like-minded readership? In the real world, if these clusters choose not to interact with each other because they dislike the ‘flaming’, then they can just sit in their own cocoons, harden their ideas and act on them, until the point that conflict becomes inevitable. So, the prevention of chaos and a preference for ‘order’ eventually leads to a violent eruption.

So, in the end, do you prefer constant chaos, but with a plurality of ideas, and freedom for everyone, or a semblance of order and civility, with dissent growing underneath? The first option might now seem the better one, but a question remains: What to do with the ‘loud’ and ‘arrogant’ ones? The answer: Just ignore them. For anyone who talks like Hitler or Mussolini all the time, there is no greater fear than being ignored and rendered irrelevant, not even the fear of being martyred (it attracts them all the more, if anything).

Random thoughts, and the analogues are stretched, but worth thinking about once in a while, isn’t it?