Here’s a long and thoughtful article by Gary Kamiya on Salon, titled “The Readers Strike Back [1].” The article is as long as it is thoughtful.
Kamiay brings out the many ways in which unedited, immediate and intense reader feedback (especially at newspapers & e-zines) affects writers and their craft. Here’s the before and after snapshot:
[T]he newly vocal masses contain not only thoughtful and respectful readers but also large numbers of fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts. Moreover — and this is a crucial point — the percentage of letter writers who are fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts has exponentially increased. In the old stamped-letter days, the difficulty of writing in weeded out more of these types; letters tended to be somewhat more thoughtful, and letter writers usually adhered to certain conventions of etiquette and decorum governing communications between reader and writer. Not forelock-tugging subservience to their betters, but simple courtesy. There was a tacit acknowledgment of the implicit contract between writer and reader, one characterized by at least a modicum of idealization and respect on both sides. I don’t want to exaggerate this — certainly there were plenty of ad hominem and intemperate letters back then. But having edited several magazines in the print-only era, I can say that there were far, far fewer. Perhaps the unseen presence of an editor, the slightly formal nature of writing a “letter to the editor,” led readers to be on their better behavior.
Now, in the glorious days of “disintermediation,” when writing a letter or posting a blog is as easy as banging away on a keyboard for a few seconds and clicking “Send,” that contract has been trashed. Formality? The context of online communication is more like being in your car in a traffic jam than sitting across a table from someone and having a talk — and it’s easy to flip somebody off through a rolled-up window. As a result, the kind of people who are prone to flipping others off, braying obscenities and ranting pointlessly are disproportionately represented in online letters sections and reader blogs.
The article makes the point that the “worst online abuse is directed at writers who make themselves vulnerable by revealing intimate things about their lives.” Kamiya quotes Salon writer Laura Miller: “If you write something revealing, people mob up and become predatory.” This tendency toward abuse illustrates that online writing is (like so many other important things) subject to the “the tragedy of the commons [2].”
The benefits of all of the writer feedback are many, but these benefits need to be weighed against the greatest danger: creative paralysis experienced by the writers.
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