The Paradigm Shift of the Electronic Age

When I was younger and new to the internet (which, admittedly, wasn’t that long ago), I was continually being overwhelmed by its vastness and its anonymity. The World Wide Web was an international machine that reached into every corner of the globe and allowed people to speak their mind without worrying about the consequences. How well I remember my first experience with that horror of all constructions, the ‘chat room’. It was vulgar, obscene, and completely unregulated, and it left me shocked and traumatized for weeks to come. After all, ten-year-old girls living in retirement communities are not usually well versed in online come-on lingo.

The internet was always considered ‘free’. Not in the sense of expense — since wireless usage (and thus, wireless theft) didn’t become common practice until recently — but in the sense of obligations. You never had to answer for anything you said or did in the online world. Like some sort of worldwide masquerade ball, you could conceal your identity and cause havoc amongst the ranks of similarly-disguised attendees. And if your ill-guided comments deeply offended an eighty-five year old grandma from Costa Rica, what did you care? They didn’t know who you were. There were no real-world repercussions.

If you wanted to write a story about violent murder and claim it was true, you could do so. If you felt like insulting people for no apparent reason, more power to you. If you had an inclination to lie about who you were and take advantage of the feelings of others, why not? There were no boundaries, no lines that couldn’t be crossed, no one with the power to prevent you from doing exactly what you liked, when you liked. On the internet, the individual was unstoppable.

It’s been eight years since I was first integrated with the net, and it is almost unbelievable how much has changed. Beginning as an impersonal, anonymous, floating web of lies and insults, the WWW has become a mass of online ‘communities’. Human beings are forming real ties with others through keyboard and computer screen. Innumerable relationships have been born and blossomed on the internet, and then expanded in real life. Chat rooms and forums have rules and ‘moderators’ to enforce them. Your IP address is logged on every site you visit. Geoblocking (denying access to certain sites based on where you’re accessing it from) is now common practice. Webcams and Google Image Searches have made it more and more difficult for people to disguise their identity. It’s still possible to lie, of course, but you need to take extra care to not be found out, because internet crimes are now considered actual criminal offences in many places.

These are all big, important changes to the ever-shifting online society. But perhaps the biggest shift in internet etiquette is the rise in “voting down” buttons. It began on YouTube and has now become a veritable epidemic on sites where public commentary is allowed. If a comment is made that is less than polite, users can click the “vote down” button. If the button is clicked a certain number of times, the offensive post will be hidden from public view and eventually deleted. The practice of random insulting (commonly called ‘trolling’) has gone from something to be admired to something to be scorned.

The internet as a big, anonymous construct has vanished, and in its place is the new, personal, smaller web that ties humans beings together across thousands of kilometres with mutual respect. As an adult, I am now far more comfortable in chat rooms and forums. I am no longer afraid, no longer offended, and if someone does try to insult me, I am shielded by a vast group of online moderators, protectors, and friends.