Bill's Notes

Via Harry's blog comes a story about a couple of New Media artists who committed suicide over the summer. The thesis is that they were driven mad by the Internet — something I think that's unproven.

But the article did make a point about the hyper-social and hyper-isolated aspect of Internet communication, and the possibility of real insanity and life damage as a result. It took me a while to see the danger. I've lost at least two friends as a result of this blog, and had trouble with two former workplaces as a result (one while I was getting ready to leave, the second well after I left).

In my last job, people were reading this blog, commenting anonymously, occasionally discussing the blog at meetings (but never telling me about it), complaining to my boss about it, and all this came out just as I was leaving. In one case, I made a serious error in judgment — I spoke about a co-worker, and thought that I'd mitigated any discussion about our conversation by mentioning I thought he was a pearl of an individual. (I still think he's a terrific person.) But upon mature reflection, I recognized that the anonymity of my blog didn't protect me from the fact that I was telling stories out of school. I deleted the entry, and resolved to avoid such, well, betrayal in the future.

I got to thinking about the concept of "off the record" and privacy. I recognized that when you're dealing with a blogger, nothing's really off the record anymore, normal interactions between people can end up on the Internet. That's what I realized had to change. I had to come up with a personal policy about what I would say on this blog, and what I wouldn't -- and it meant real changes.

You see, initially I had thought, anonymous person, anonymous blog, it's OK. But I soon recognized that's not true if people get hurt, and not if people can find out about it, or if other people can identify the people in question. That is, what was supposed to be "slice of life" blogging had real ethical questions -- questions that I initially thought were dealt with by being anonymous, but soon came to realize, it's a lot more complicated than that.

That's one reason I have such an ambiguous attitude about blogging now. That's also the biggest reason for deleted posts. I also recognized that I was getting sucked into cyber-space, even though I recognized the dangers. A year or two ago, I made some changes.

One thing I did to help un-isolate myself from the cyber-space, which can, in fact, lead to a kind of madness, was eliminate Internet access at home. It's normal now. And I'm happier that way.

Another thing I do is comment less on other blogs. Someone has something to say about everything, and inevitably, you'll come into conflict with someone about anything. And there's a kind of culture shock that comes when people fight you on anything -- even things that may seem perfectly obvious.

You see, a lot of our conclusions come from our worldview — different worldview, different conclusions. Comment boxes are not exactly the best spots to challenge someone's worldview, or to have your own challenged.

I've rarely, if ever, seen anyone do anything other than further argue their point in comment boxes. (There are exceptions, of course.) An awful lot of stuff simply involves conflict — conflict that can become masturbatory. The repetition of arguments in comment boxes, over many years, is amazing.

Gay "marriage"? The same arguments come up over and over again. Truth is, it boils down to one side thinks we can change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, and one side thinks you can't/shouldn't. Fair enough.

Abortion? One side thinks women have the only choice; the other side says the fetus should have a choice, too.

God? One side says God exists and is evident by creation; the other side that's a false assumption.

George W. Bush? He he. Not going to touch that one ... let's just say like any leader, he is subject to a myriad of criticisms and defenses. I'm not trying to say that all issues boil down to a binary opposition, only that whatever the argument is, it's repeated a lot.

Anyway, I was talking about my sanity, and how the Internet can lead to madness. I guess the point is everyone should be aware of the dangers (despite the benefits of cyber-space) and come up with a personal policy to preserve their mental health. And bloggers, such as myself, need to come up with personal blogging policies about dealing with others' privacy -- even when we try to do "slice of life" blogging, or memoir-type articles.