This post should be called "1995 Internet Idology tested in 2006". It's true. It's what happened here.
An overview: Some dude (Fortuny) posed as a girl on a risque board on Craigslist, some dude collected the "bounty", some dude posted the bounty, publically and unaltered (supposedly) to the internet.
Once upon a time the internet was full of what many would consider "sociopaths", the people over at wired.com who first used this term in their post slamming the guy who did this little experiment, anyway... so these sociopaths.. before amazon.com, monster.com, ebay, and all that... The internet itself was an open forum, and less structured than it is today. Some mediums still exist today but are still not as mainstream as their HTTP-based couterparts (Craigslist, Myspace). I'm talking specifically about usenet (NNTP) and IRC. Before the mainstream attention there were rules.
The list of rules follows. Feel free to modify them, I by no means intend for this list to be 100% accurate or definitive for any other purposes than this post.
THERE ARE NO RULES ON THE INTERNET SO:
- Cover Your Ass
- Understand the underlying technology
- This is extremely important, obviously
- Understand who's in charge
- Read before you speak
- Don't get too personal
- Your information is bound to be found out, but the more you post the faster it's found out
- And the hypocritical rule: don't take your confidentiality seriously.. because being on the internet pretty much means you have no privacy
- Know your enemies
- If you're going to be an "Internet Tough Guy", have a plan for dealing with the enimies you're bound to create.
- It's a Jungle Out There
- From the "facts of IRC" 03/1999 (search the page for "Corrupt_", im a contributing author)
- #321: anyone can be an 18/female/ca if they have pics --sockie
- #22: girls aren't really girls. --corrupt
- #36: don't try to be intelligent.. it doesn't matter. --corrupt
- Credit Card Fraud, lists traded freely for porn and warez
- Information flows freely and quickly
- Attacks are emotionally satisfying for social misfits
- There are no laws. The internet is an international "place".
- There is no way to police the internet (yet)
There are more rules. I'm just spending too much time on this post, perhaps I'll expand that list. At least post your additions to the list in the comments. I want to get back to my point.
It seems like these rules are the kind of basic, common sense social structure that emerge from a situation where no other more evolved and mature ruleset exists. It is the primordial ooze of social structure, and fittingly so. There was nothing there before these rules. This works great when it's just you and the other savages. Let the savages kill each other right? Except mainstream america (and other countries) .. well they "need the land" so they move in. Manifest destiny, right? And a few heads roll.. and a few scalps are found.. and whose fault was it again? I think the root idea here might be, if you hold the rules above to be the rules of the internet (and those rules that might logically follow), then its the whole "if you can't stand the heat" defense.
Unfortunately for Fortuny and other people who think these still are the rules, you've got it all wrong. The (somewhat beautiful) anarchy that once existed is now gone. It's been replaced by a corporate logo with a nice shiny gradient look to it. Web 2.0 isn't about new technologies as much as it's about new idologies (may as well obfuscate the definition further). The more mainstream society inhabits the internet, the more mainstream moral structure and law permeate and begin to count. Sort of like an uninhabited land suddenly having a governing body just based on a population being there that adheres to said governing body. Now the old inhabitors who long for the days of scroll and bountiful wares (heh) are the minority, relegated to small "reservations" scattered throughout the network.
--_-
P.S. Sorry for the native american analogy, it seemed accurate enough.. so I went with it. I mean no offense to the real native americans who really did get slaughtered.