Online Realities
Online Realities
Back in the early days of IRC and Usenet, I used to confront people over racism, bigotry, and general nastiness. The inevitable rejoinder was that I was being a control freak and a Nazi, and that what they said or did didn’t count because it “wasn’t real”, it was “just the internet”. I have never understood this, as I feel the internet is just as “real” as any other abstractions (and more so than most). We established rules for basic social interaction because they allow those interactions to take place; once we abandon civilization, its fruits are useless to us. I always thought that this was evidence of poor moral character, that these were people who did not understand that there were reasons beyond “getting in trouble” to not act like a savage, and so once that threat was gone they saw no purpose in being civil. However, I have seen people with a deep understanding of ethics offline act like total asses online. Their defense, again, was that the internet was not real.
So the question is: is online life subject to the same kind of cares and duties as offline life?
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