Out Of Hand

I think the Internet community is getting out of hand. More and more people are making insensitive, crude and lewd remarks on forums and tag boxes of blog sites. It's almost certain that these people do not behave like that in the real lives, but on the Internet world where they can create a virtual identity, they think they can simply be wild and inhibited.

This is quite serious to growing adolescents, who might be easily affected by these remarks. Others who have grown strong to ignore these criticisms could also become insensitive themselves and apply this attitude in the real world.

We get influenced easily by the things and people we encounter. We imitate TV culture, we look up to role models. Today, we spend more time over the Internet, where everyone talks in a bold and thoughtless manner. People then pick up all these communication styles and use it habitually in real life. They might think that it is 'cool' to talk back and be rude, a show of power and control.

Blogs and forums are mostly unmoderated for grammar and content, except expletive phrases. It is like allowing anyone to publish a badly-written book and sell it at bookstores. When people read these personal sites, they got misled by either the grammatical errors or the incorrect facts. Worse, these posts will stay online forever unless the website implements archival policies. Bloggers these days will do anything to increase traffic to their websites in order to entice advertisers to pay for ad space.

With the proliferation of personal content sites, it takes a lot of caution when searching for information, to identify the facts from the fictions, the truth from the fallacies. Young bloggers use their blogs to voice their complaints, only to demonstrate their lack of maturity in handling life's issues. Curry-favourers easily show their support by leaving positive remarks, whether they mean it or not. Provokers can easily sabotage the site by leaving negative comments, perhaps just for the fun of it. The question is: who do you believe?

Then there is the computer virus that lurks out there. Now, even legitimate sites could be infected, so there is no way to claim 100% safe. The irony is that, if hackers and spammers succeed in destroying the Internet, these people would have nothing to live for. They have killed the hand that feeds them. Now that computers are getting so cheap, it probably makes sense to buy a dirt-cheap computer for Internet surfing, and a powerful computer for serious work.

And perhaps one day, when every single human being needs to register a virtual international identity profile to validate his or her authenticity, we will behave ourselves better on the Internet.