The Brightest Jerks on the Planet
acutejam
Posts: 1,433
I'm not saying "Moving Train" is anywhere close to Slashdot, but I found this old article in my collection and had a flash....
Please Die2: Raising Creative Jerks
Posted by JonKatz on Wednesday January 19, @10:00AM (slashdot.org)
from the Hostile-Environments dept.
Online, hostile environments are driving almost every social group other than techno-savvy young white men away from coherent public discussion of technology. These men are invariably smart and skilled, but almost unable to communicate civilly or tolerate disagreement or difference. Are we breeding communities of impulsive and creative jerks?
Part Two
This issue of a hostile communications style, an assaultive online environment, transcends any particularly website or Net sub-culture, having its roots in the earliest days of the Net. Hostility tends to go hand-in-hand with online media - a fact of life, like noise near an airport. There's always been an angry streak in the subculture of geeks, hackers, nerds, teenagers and academics who patched together computers and computer networks and built the first bulletin boards, mailing lists and conferencing systems.
In fact, hostility is closely tied to computing communications, the Net and the Web, to many high-tech industries. There's not a great deal of mystery about the source: it's generated largely by young men, the branch of the species that has the highest testosterone levels.
Older people abandon websites like this with almost visceral disgust: "I'm a retired engineer," Jim wrote me several weeks ago, "and I would never post a message on your website. It's complicated and it's just too hostile. I don't have an appetite for that."
Perhaps more than any other single group, women report endemic problems posting on sites like this (check the Natalie Portman postings on almost any Thread), an extension of the trouble some have encountered working in computing and technology companies.
For the second time in four months, Juno Online Services is facing a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former employee, a Harvard-educated software engineer who claims she was pressured to date a company executive, was paid less than her male colleagues, and worked in an environment where sexism and locker-room behavior were rampant.
In recent years, countless numbers of women have complained about the techno-workplace and the probably-related problems they face participating in sites like this one.
While the Net and the Web were conceived and constructed by men -- who dominated the technical, defense, academic and engineering professions of the 1950's and 1960's -- that's starting to change. Industry surveys show that as many women as men are buying computers now, and women are working in almost every element of the computing industry. But it's unusual to see one posting on sites like this - a surprising reality given that half of the people online are now female. Men start most topics, dominate most conversations.
And identity - perhaps the single most elemental ingredient of community - is almost eroded when anonymous posters dominate all discussions. Women seeking community often turn to all-female mailing lists, conferences and websites, a sad evolution of a medium with so much promise to be free and open. At its geeky core, the Net still feels like a clubhouse - male, white, narrow.
E-mail is convenient, visceral and democratic, but it, along with anonymous public postings, can breed hostility and raise unresolved questions. There's little tradition of taking responsibility for one's words, which can be instantly hurled all over the world in seconds.
Yet this idea of taking responsibility, of being held accountable for what one says, is also closely linked to the quality and value of communication.
The nature of e-mail and posts has evolved tremendously in the past decade, according to scholars studying e-communities. "When e-mail took root in organizations in the late l970's and early 1980's two things occurred regularly and predictably," writes Mark Stefik of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in "Internet Dreams," published in 1996.
"One was that e-mail users spontaneously organized their own discussion groups on topics of interest: the second was a kind of organizational flattening as people developed e-mail cross-links that did not necessarily follow hierarchical lines of management."
The trend in e-mail, writes Stefik, has been towards greater connectivity, and e-mail has soared past company, university, and other boundaries. Now, says Stefik, the original rationale for e-mail has disappeared, and people largely use it for social purposes, not functionality.
And sadly, public posting areas haven't evolved much at all, apart from the fact that most websites forbid anonymity and restrict the nature of personal messages.
The evolution of e-mail and the growth of the Web has brought distinctive e-communities into increasing contact with outsiders. "From the perspective of veterans," writes Stefik, "hordes of new users have invaded their discussions over the past few years, using bad etiquette and asking dumb questions. The social problem is analogous to the problem of assimilation when natural disasters or wars lead to mass movements of people to new lands. When the rate of immigration exceeds a certain amount, the resulting chaos and need for adjustment in the host country can evoke resentment and backlash from the resident population."
In my own experience, Stefik's observations ring especially true. As a non-geek who usually (for a variety of work reasons) writes in Microsoft Word, some members of this community have been trying to drive me off the site ever since I arrived. Often, their attacks have little to do with what I think or write, mostly to do with the fact that I'm different, an outsider, a non-programmer who made different technology choices.
I've gotten plenty of praise and support too, but my own experience underscores the moral challenge facing people who run websites like this: people who attack others are celebrated. Only certain groups are really free; everybody else has the appearance of freedom but if their views diverge from the norm they are assaulted, harassed, driven off.
It's an inverted kind of tyranny in which the most hostile people are truly the freest. Most people who aren't paid columnists will go elsewhere.
As an e-community grows, so does the small group of people likely to send or post hostile or bizarre messages. The flamers are never required to take responsibility for any of the things they say, nor are there any consequences. They aren't embarrassed to be vicious or inaccurate, since they don't ever meet the people reading their messages. One might even argue they're rewarded for shutting down free speech.
Behavioral psychologists like Robert Coles and James Wilson describe the evolution of human behavior and conscience this way: the young are praised for good behavior, punished for bad. In this way, through a complex system of cues, rewards and signals, they learn to differentiate acceptable from unacceptable behavior. If you insult a kid down the block, he belts you. If you slug your sister, you get sent to your room. If you taunt your teacher, you stay after school.
But online, this process of learning how to behave is oddly inverted. You might be rewarded for being creative and technologically-skilled, but not for being civil or tolerant. Perhaps more significantly, you never suffer for being hostile. Frequently -- through your ability to post public messages, to attack others and disrupt conversations --- you are actually rewarded.
In the real world, people learn to hold or moderate speech. If you're smart, you don't yell at the cop who's pulled you over, and you resist the urge to tell your boss he's a jerk. Online, there is no moderating impulse. Some websites are actually installing "reply delay" software to force posters to mull their words for a minute or two.
In virtual communities, especially those that guarantee anonymity, there aren't even such mild social pressures as disapproving glances or cold stares. The targets can't simply walk away, although that's increasingly the goal of some moderated systems. Even though electronic communities have demonstrated many of the same traits as real-world communities, older, veteran or more experienced members have no tradition of coaching or mentoring their aberrant peers. The result is a curious new kind of sub-culture in which a small group can experience unbounded freedom and creativity, yet never have to develop empathetic or communal social skills. The results are on display every day: the Net is breeding some of the brightest jerks on the planet.
The result is that flaming and hostile environments become a political as well as technological question, especially for those who are assaulted or excluded. Hard-core geeks embrace as a political ideology the idea that all communications should be free. Yet hostility and cultural bigotry to outsiders and newcomers usually only ends when it becomes a consensus political issue - in this case, when website leaders, lurkers, veterans and other people with influence move to challenge hostility, and to curb non-productive and personal verbal abuse.
As e-communities evolve, so do their politics. Although it makes perfect sense that websites will find ways to preserve even the most raucous freedom, the preservation of hostile environments make no sense at all - technologically, politically or commercially.
Please Die2: Raising Creative Jerks
Posted by JonKatz on Wednesday January 19, @10:00AM (slashdot.org)
from the Hostile-Environments dept.
Online, hostile environments are driving almost every social group other than techno-savvy young white men away from coherent public discussion of technology. These men are invariably smart and skilled, but almost unable to communicate civilly or tolerate disagreement or difference. Are we breeding communities of impulsive and creative jerks?
Part Two
This issue of a hostile communications style, an assaultive online environment, transcends any particularly website or Net sub-culture, having its roots in the earliest days of the Net. Hostility tends to go hand-in-hand with online media - a fact of life, like noise near an airport. There's always been an angry streak in the subculture of geeks, hackers, nerds, teenagers and academics who patched together computers and computer networks and built the first bulletin boards, mailing lists and conferencing systems.
In fact, hostility is closely tied to computing communications, the Net and the Web, to many high-tech industries. There's not a great deal of mystery about the source: it's generated largely by young men, the branch of the species that has the highest testosterone levels.
Older people abandon websites like this with almost visceral disgust: "I'm a retired engineer," Jim wrote me several weeks ago, "and I would never post a message on your website. It's complicated and it's just too hostile. I don't have an appetite for that."
Perhaps more than any other single group, women report endemic problems posting on sites like this (check the Natalie Portman postings on almost any Thread), an extension of the trouble some have encountered working in computing and technology companies.
For the second time in four months, Juno Online Services is facing a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former employee, a Harvard-educated software engineer who claims she was pressured to date a company executive, was paid less than her male colleagues, and worked in an environment where sexism and locker-room behavior were rampant.
In recent years, countless numbers of women have complained about the techno-workplace and the probably-related problems they face participating in sites like this one.
While the Net and the Web were conceived and constructed by men -- who dominated the technical, defense, academic and engineering professions of the 1950's and 1960's -- that's starting to change. Industry surveys show that as many women as men are buying computers now, and women are working in almost every element of the computing industry. But it's unusual to see one posting on sites like this - a surprising reality given that half of the people online are now female. Men start most topics, dominate most conversations.
And identity - perhaps the single most elemental ingredient of community - is almost eroded when anonymous posters dominate all discussions. Women seeking community often turn to all-female mailing lists, conferences and websites, a sad evolution of a medium with so much promise to be free and open. At its geeky core, the Net still feels like a clubhouse - male, white, narrow.
E-mail is convenient, visceral and democratic, but it, along with anonymous public postings, can breed hostility and raise unresolved questions. There's little tradition of taking responsibility for one's words, which can be instantly hurled all over the world in seconds.
Yet this idea of taking responsibility, of being held accountable for what one says, is also closely linked to the quality and value of communication.
The nature of e-mail and posts has evolved tremendously in the past decade, according to scholars studying e-communities. "When e-mail took root in organizations in the late l970's and early 1980's two things occurred regularly and predictably," writes Mark Stefik of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in "Internet Dreams," published in 1996.
"One was that e-mail users spontaneously organized their own discussion groups on topics of interest: the second was a kind of organizational flattening as people developed e-mail cross-links that did not necessarily follow hierarchical lines of management."
The trend in e-mail, writes Stefik, has been towards greater connectivity, and e-mail has soared past company, university, and other boundaries. Now, says Stefik, the original rationale for e-mail has disappeared, and people largely use it for social purposes, not functionality.
And sadly, public posting areas haven't evolved much at all, apart from the fact that most websites forbid anonymity and restrict the nature of personal messages.
The evolution of e-mail and the growth of the Web has brought distinctive e-communities into increasing contact with outsiders. "From the perspective of veterans," writes Stefik, "hordes of new users have invaded their discussions over the past few years, using bad etiquette and asking dumb questions. The social problem is analogous to the problem of assimilation when natural disasters or wars lead to mass movements of people to new lands. When the rate of immigration exceeds a certain amount, the resulting chaos and need for adjustment in the host country can evoke resentment and backlash from the resident population."
In my own experience, Stefik's observations ring especially true. As a non-geek who usually (for a variety of work reasons) writes in Microsoft Word, some members of this community have been trying to drive me off the site ever since I arrived. Often, their attacks have little to do with what I think or write, mostly to do with the fact that I'm different, an outsider, a non-programmer who made different technology choices.
I've gotten plenty of praise and support too, but my own experience underscores the moral challenge facing people who run websites like this: people who attack others are celebrated. Only certain groups are really free; everybody else has the appearance of freedom but if their views diverge from the norm they are assaulted, harassed, driven off.
It's an inverted kind of tyranny in which the most hostile people are truly the freest. Most people who aren't paid columnists will go elsewhere.
As an e-community grows, so does the small group of people likely to send or post hostile or bizarre messages. The flamers are never required to take responsibility for any of the things they say, nor are there any consequences. They aren't embarrassed to be vicious or inaccurate, since they don't ever meet the people reading their messages. One might even argue they're rewarded for shutting down free speech.
Behavioral psychologists like Robert Coles and James Wilson describe the evolution of human behavior and conscience this way: the young are praised for good behavior, punished for bad. In this way, through a complex system of cues, rewards and signals, they learn to differentiate acceptable from unacceptable behavior. If you insult a kid down the block, he belts you. If you slug your sister, you get sent to your room. If you taunt your teacher, you stay after school.
But online, this process of learning how to behave is oddly inverted. You might be rewarded for being creative and technologically-skilled, but not for being civil or tolerant. Perhaps more significantly, you never suffer for being hostile. Frequently -- through your ability to post public messages, to attack others and disrupt conversations --- you are actually rewarded.
In the real world, people learn to hold or moderate speech. If you're smart, you don't yell at the cop who's pulled you over, and you resist the urge to tell your boss he's a jerk. Online, there is no moderating impulse. Some websites are actually installing "reply delay" software to force posters to mull their words for a minute or two.
In virtual communities, especially those that guarantee anonymity, there aren't even such mild social pressures as disapproving glances or cold stares. The targets can't simply walk away, although that's increasingly the goal of some moderated systems. Even though electronic communities have demonstrated many of the same traits as real-world communities, older, veteran or more experienced members have no tradition of coaching or mentoring their aberrant peers. The result is a curious new kind of sub-culture in which a small group can experience unbounded freedom and creativity, yet never have to develop empathetic or communal social skills. The results are on display every day: the Net is breeding some of the brightest jerks on the planet.
The result is that flaming and hostile environments become a political as well as technological question, especially for those who are assaulted or excluded. Hard-core geeks embrace as a political ideology the idea that all communications should be free. Yet hostility and cultural bigotry to outsiders and newcomers usually only ends when it becomes a consensus political issue - in this case, when website leaders, lurkers, veterans and other people with influence move to challenge hostility, and to curb non-productive and personal verbal abuse.
As e-communities evolve, so do their politics. Although it makes perfect sense that websites will find ways to preserve even the most raucous freedom, the preservation of hostile environments make no sense at all - technologically, politically or commercially.
[sic] happens
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