That’s a pretty common posting on many youtube videos. Someone cruising the Internet looking for amusement is … displeased with what they find and rather than moving on or even taking a moment to reflect and digest – they react.
A few years back I posted a video titled “Lighting: The Hand Trick.” Basically a visual lesson in how to see and use natural lighting. As it states in the information:
How to use the palm of your hand to see good light
Category: Film & Animation
Could this be clearer? In the ensuing months I’ve gotten comments ranging from good to…well, refer back to the title of this post.
My reaction was to write back at them:
Gentlemen..
If the initial words out of your mouth (or off your keyboard) are obscenities, you are not thinking, you are reacting. Pause, think, read the explanation and think for a minute or two.
This is a tool for photographers.
The broader truth here is that the Internet allows anonymity, and with that, a sense that good manners are no longer necessary. Too often I see this not only on youtube, but also in comments on newspaper and other media websites. While reading through some of the comments about the ViconRevue in the posting earlier today, I read many that disturbed me because they were unwarranted personal attacks, raw opinion without proof or basis, and worse.
I guess what I’m saying is, just because I can’t see your face or don’t know who you are isn’t any reason to forget everything your parents taught you about kindness and respect and how to behave in public. If you aren’t careful, you may forget and let loose something in real life which will lift that curtain of invisibility so all can see what you really are.
Posted by Cyndy Green
1 Comment
November 2, 2009 at 1:21 am
John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Theory explains this phenomenon quite clearly (you’ll have to Google it).
Though blowing away their anonymity ends that sort of behavior real quick. When I ran Colville School District’s network, kids thought it was real funny to send abusive, profanity filled anonymous emails to their teachers. Not all teachers as you know are Internet-savvy, so they of course flipped out. A phone call to the kid’s ISP to get the name of the account owner and logs faxed over (they didn’t realize I was friends with the owner of the only ISP service in town). Called the kid into my office, asked them point blank, “did you send this?” Answer was a sheepish yes when confronted with logs, IP addresses and timestamps from the ISP. Told them, “you do it again, you are off my network.” And lo and behold, it didn’t.
Shame one can’t do it with YouTube and other places people can comment at will. But than again in rural Northeastern Washington state at the time, it was a very effective threat to pull those privileges – especially after I told a handful of teachers that classroom management is their problem, not mine, which part of my anatomy they can go kiss and I was opening up the Internet all day long (filtered of course) and handing out individual accounts to every single student in the district shortly after I was hired.