It’s one of the saws of the modern age: that it is perfectly possible for anyone to be whomsoever they wish to be online. The anonymity afforded by the internet has been, paradoxically, in part responsible for the extraordinary rise in social networking. Questions that are perfectly acceptable at most social gatherings – “…so what do you do?” “…do you have children?” are generally felt to be inappropriate in an online “conversation” and, in a strange way, both parties seem to benefit from this novel propriety. When we converse (it really should be “correspond”) online, we needs must make assumptions about the other parties involved which can, of course, lead to all kinds of issues from harmless flirting to out-and-out grooming.
Each party has to be complicit in the other’s fantasy life and they must choose to accept one another at their word. No doubt, many of us are cynical enough to believe that much of what is offered in online conversations is, to put it politely, less than honest but as I say, that is a part of the contract into which we all enter once we don our cyberspacesuits and float off into the craposphere.
Several recent threads on the online writer’s website forum, Authonomy, have left a rather nasty taste. The kind of abuse one might expect to hear in a Glasgow pub on a Celtic – Rangers match day has been slung about in spades and over what? Writing; that’s what. Now we’ve all read about how artistic rivalry can sometimes spill over into something more unpleasant but it’s hard to imagine William Makepeace Thackeray telling Charlotte Bronte to go fuck herself with a rusty spike and even Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald - both perfectly able to - didn't plumb such depths.
But to equal the quantity of bile generated over on Authonomy between largely unpublished and equally largely untalented individuals would require a liver the size of Lewisham. But none of these people really know one another. Each is battling mere simulacra – almost genuine avatars of very real people and about whom either party knows...well, nothing.
I can't even summon up that level of animosity for the government front bench. These people must have access to an almost limitless supply of anger; a venom field; their very own vitriol reserves upon which they can draw at any time, to fling over and drench anyone who offers the merest slight.
At least, I suppose, those of us who are mere(?) spectators can savour the delicious irony of witnessing arguments grow and flourish as a result of writers being utterly unable to express themselves using the written word – unless, of course, that word contains no more than four letters - but perhaps, in the end, the anger is just as phony as everything else online.
Let's hope so.
Each party has to be complicit in the other’s fantasy life and they must choose to accept one another at their word. No doubt, many of us are cynical enough to believe that much of what is offered in online conversations is, to put it politely, less than honest but as I say, that is a part of the contract into which we all enter once we don our cyberspacesuits and float off into the craposphere.
Several recent threads on the online writer’s website forum, Authonomy, have left a rather nasty taste. The kind of abuse one might expect to hear in a Glasgow pub on a Celtic – Rangers match day has been slung about in spades and over what? Writing; that’s what. Now we’ve all read about how artistic rivalry can sometimes spill over into something more unpleasant but it’s hard to imagine William Makepeace Thackeray telling Charlotte Bronte to go fuck herself with a rusty spike and even Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald - both perfectly able to - didn't plumb such depths.
But to equal the quantity of bile generated over on Authonomy between largely unpublished and equally largely untalented individuals would require a liver the size of Lewisham. But none of these people really know one another. Each is battling mere simulacra – almost genuine avatars of very real people and about whom either party knows...well, nothing.
I can't even summon up that level of animosity for the government front bench. These people must have access to an almost limitless supply of anger; a venom field; their very own vitriol reserves upon which they can draw at any time, to fling over and drench anyone who offers the merest slight.
At least, I suppose, those of us who are mere(?) spectators can savour the delicious irony of witnessing arguments grow and flourish as a result of writers being utterly unable to express themselves using the written word – unless, of course, that word contains no more than four letters - but perhaps, in the end, the anger is just as phony as everything else online.
Let's hope so.
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