The loneliness of the internetwork
While catching up with the rag-tag band of people I follow on Tumblr earlier this evening, I was struck by their apparent loneliness, and couldn't help wondering if the platform itself is not partly to blame. Perhaps not Tumblr itself, but “blogging platforms” as a whole.
At school, most of us experienced the natural divide that occurs between peer groups; stereotypically separating the supposedly cool kids from the nerds. When you're in the middle of it all, you don't realise what's really going onbut as an adult with children, watching it happen from a distance, you finally realise how the world works.
The main thing that separates the cool kids from the nerds is a range of questionable skills; the ability to lie without guilt, to manufacture deceit, to bully, to demean, and to attack intellectual superiority with impunity. The cool kids employ the arsenal easily while taking part in a huge pissing competition.
Here's the thingthey never entirely grow out of it.
The internet was built by nerds. The whole idea of networking computers in the first place was to establish communicationsat first between the machines themselves, and then immediately between the people using them. The first protocols included instant messaging, mail, news, and discussion boards. The entire idea behind the early protocols was to bring groups of people together. An inclusive utopia where all users started equal, perhaps only separated by the quality of their words.
And then something unexpected happened.
The cool kids discovered they could build their own little islands, filled with unchallenged opinions and words. Virtual advertising hoardings for their ego. They called them blogs. They didn't start out that way; they started out as online notepads, built by the geeks for their own ends, but were eventually hijacked as a part of the cool kids pissing competition armoury.
A little further along the line, networks formedthe Tumblrs, Bloggers and WordPresses of this worldwhere users within the walled gardens were forced together by the ever higher walls surrounding them, and the fun started.
Suddenly the playground games worked again. People got hurt, and experienced loneliness, and rejection. It's happening right now. It needs to stop.
The thousands of visionaries that stood on each others shoulders to construct this wonderful internetwork we all use and share almost certainly didn't expect or plan for the emergent behaviours that have proliferated like a disease through their creation.
We are all responsiblewe are all the cause, and we are all the solution. We each have the power to bring peace, good will, and balance to the internetwhether we have the will is another question.