I, troll

Freddie

Freddie deBoer used to blog at lhote.blogspot.com, and may again someday. Now he blogs here.

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10 Responses

  1. raft says:

    points well taken. One possible response: we interact with different kinds of people on the internet that we wouldn’t normally know IRL. I’m not convinced that if this guy met you at a bar and started talking to you about his adventures at Wal-Mart, you wouldn’t call bullshit on him there, too. Another response: it’s true that people behave differently on the internet than in other situations, but that’s a good thing. We should make those social distinctions–it’d be weird if I interacted with my boss, my mom, the President of the United States, that girl I’m hitting on, etc. all in the same way. Similarly our conversations on the internet have their own conversations-on-the-internet-specific norms, which are different from the norms of a face to face chat, or an academic symposium. That doesn’t make your internet persona “fake,” anymore than your work persona or your high-school-buddy persona is fake. It’s just a different social space. Response three: let’s not generalize the internet. I behave totally differently on LOOG than I do on facebook. some of the stuff i write on facebook is incredibly, unbelievably heartfelt, things i’d never say IRL, even to the same people. LOOG is more like an philosophy deathmatch arena–the point is to wrestle with the Big Issues, right?– and i don’t mind being rude if that’s what’s called for.Report

  2. Take the KASH says:

    Freddie, two words – situational ethics.Report

  3. Roque Nuevo says:

    I couldn’t have said it better myself:

    a half-baked ruminator…a simple troll…cold…arrogant…dismissive…a shrill partisan

    Thanks for being so honest!Report

  4. Freddie says:

    And yet here you are, writing about me.Report

  5. Gene says:

    I think the Internet can be/is many things and that it is futile to try to box it into whatever suits one’s fancy. Andrew is right on the money when he writes: It’s a real-time airing of provisional thought, and so, unless I were omniscient, I don’t see how this could be otherwise. Some can legitimately see this as a weakness of blogging; I prefer to think of it as a strength, if it is seen for what it is. [my emphasis]

    Personally, I blog mainly to share information that I have gleaned on the Internet from bloggers, researchers, book reviews, whatever, around themes that interest me. And as they say, because it’s there (the Internet, I mean). Just that.Report

  6. Gene, I would tend to agree with you. Alan might be correct in saying that blogging doesn’t currently do long form, in depth discussion well, but there’s nothing saying that a conscious effort to change that wouldn’t prove successful.

    I suppose the question that confronts us is: how likely is it that a critical mass of people are going to start working for that change?Report

  7. Roque Nuevo says:

    Scott: Are you working on the article I suggested to you? That would be one way to get people to start working for that change. Just saying…Report

  8. Hmmm, I’m not sure the two are as clearly linked as that. Alan’s point, such as I took it, had less to do with conduct on the Internet and more to do with the structure/architecture of blogging. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive either.Report

  9. Gene says:

    Scott, I think that what Alan has in mind when he writes about ‘blogging’ is not what I have in mind. Isn’t what Greenwald does ‘blogging’ or Walt or Clemons and so many others? I would say ‘yes’. Some of their postings are rather thick indeed, in the good sense.

    Secondly, it is not proven that in depth, long form discussion has more impact than short tit-for-tat exchanges on blogs. Indeed, I would think that change is more likely to come about through a combination of both long form discussion & short exchanges AROUND those long form postings.

    You ask more specifically: how likely is it that a critical mass of people are going to start working for that change? As far as “critical mass” is concerned, I would think that Daily Kos has shown that critical mass can been attained when there is an issue that grabs the public’s attention, to wit Obama vs Clinton during the primaries. As for change itself, according to Press Think‘s Jay Rosen, there has been some already.

    Finally regarding tone, I would refer to Sullivan’s posting today on ants where the question asked is this: Is it possible […] that the invention of the Internet is leading to a similar social evolution of our own species? , which together with Freddie’s posting above got me thinking not about a social evolution similar as that of the ants, in terms of boundaries and so forth although that is quite valid, but also in terms of human interaction. We do, as Freddie explains above, get to experience new feelings about ourselves. Is that such a bad thing?Report

  10. James says:

    Jesus Freddie, if you on the internet is a pale shadow of you IRL then you must be fucking jaw-dropping.Report