Wayne D's Blog

The genesis of this post was Lisa Bettany's appearance on TWIT 177 (video link) on January 11th. Video of TWIT is live streamed as the program is recorded and Lisa was in the studio and on video with Leo Laporte. Leo streams on Stickam which means that the video stream comes with a chat room. Lisa was dressed nicely and a few people in the Stickam chat room decided to make crude comments about her because she is a beautiful woman and decided to dress up a bit to come on the show.

Jason Calacanis gave up blogging because he didn't want to have to deal with the "haters". He moved to an email list hoping to get rid of the people who think posting something like "You suck" is valid commentary. One of Calacanis' recent post to his email list in response to Micheal Arrington's vacation from blogging for a month after being spit on refers to what Jason calls Internet Asperger's Syndrome (IAS). He goes on to describe, "In this syndrome, the afflicted stops seeing the humanity in other people. They view individuals as objects, not individuals. The focus on repetitive behaviors--checking email, blogging, twittering and retiring andys--combines with an inability to feel empathy and connect with people." you can read the full text of the post at calacanis.com/2009/01/29/we-live-in-public-and-the-end-of-empathy/. This same lack of empathy for other people was demonstrated in spades when Yahoo Live was still operating. Chat rooms would be quickly filled with groups of people who's only contribution was to make rude and crude comments to the person on video. Services like Facebook and Twitter already help people to create a controlled online environment where the bores can be excluded, the equivalent of an online gated community. As we continue to move to a point where our lives are conducted more online than off what does this mean?

What if this tendency to treat people as objects starts to spill out in to the wider community? I correct myself, it already has as witnessed by the recent global economic meltdown which has its' roots in a quest for personal gain irrespective of the effect on the larger community. Perhaps the question should be what happens if this becomes the norm. Empathy makes good evolutionary sense and we ignore it at our peril. Do you want to live in a world where no one cares what effect their actions online or otherwise have on other people? That would be a scary place and may not be as far away as you think. Now it makes the news when the neighbours don't call police when shots and screaming are heard but what if it didn't?

(updated with video link, changed the spelling of anonymity)