The Hatred of Crowds

Previously on Word of Mouth, we've talked about using technology to harness the wisdom of crowds - to solve problems collectively, or to inspire group action against a perceived injustice.

A must-read piece in today's New York Times describes a darker variety of online social activity. Trolls, those Web denizens who seek to push people's buttons and the limits of acceptable behavior (which are, admittedly, far looser on the internet than in real life), create entertainment out of provocation. One message board "reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand."

So what's the problem, you might ask? The Times suggests that this goes beyond freedom of speech and assembly. That as we spend more of our waking hours online and connected to others, the ability for anonymous attacks can spill over into real life - from harassing the parents of a teenage suicide, to destroying jobs and relationships through deliberate misinformation - and that reduced social barriers combined with vicious misanthropy can have very real, and very harmful, outcomes. Moderating or prosecuting such activity is incredibly tricky. And yet, as the article points out, the existence of trolling itself is testament to the Internet's resiliance against those seeking to undermine its radical experiment in civil discourse.

(Photo by Patrick Denker)