First came cave painting (inside), then graffiti (outside), now the Internet (the cloud).
Several days ago I became annoyed at one of the announcements that Steve Jobs made at the MacWorld conference, so I promptly left a small, yet public trail of dissatisfaction along some of the pathways I frequent on the web. Essentially, I was experiencing a form of "post-decisional dissonance," which I recently heard Michael Britt talking about in an older issue of his podcast, The Psych Files. Britt was discussing the rapid sharing of opinions which I've commented on previously. In my case, I became frustrated with a purchasing decision I'd made, and disappointed by a large corporation's decisions, and I felt compelled to share my dissatisfaction. When we talk about sharing via high-tech methodologies, we possibly forget that quite often the sharing is the result of a much more primitive machine - namely the fear-driven, knee-jerking reptilian legacy of our brains that like to occasionally brim with negativity and anger.
So why is it that negative opinion spreads so quickly in our online worlds, and why is there so much of it? At first it might seem like this is just a reflection of mainstream media, where 'bad news' is the norm, but it may also be due to the fact that so much online interaction is about problem solving (eg. making a purchasing decision, finding a hotel, filling in information, fixing a dysfunctional product). The fact that corporations are now employing people to scour the web for these kinds of comments is a reflection of their own form of problem solving. We, the consumers, are very vocal about products and their problems when we encounter them, and we sometimes resort to searching for parallel instances of our problem, in the hope that we'll find a solution.
However, not all negative expression seems like it's about problem solving, and much of it can (or can't) be understood as something much more primal. On networks such as YouTube, there are thousands of examples of non-constructive, negative comments on people's videos. Those who are frequently negative are sometimes called, "haters." Is their commenting one of the newer forms of public graffiti? I wonder whether we see more of these comments made because there's a psychological distance between the offender and those they affect, or whether there's something deeper at work - emotions and ideas that have been with us long before technology gave us the means to "hate" from a distance. A message left on a forum or as a comment on a video is like a marking on a cave, or even like a territorial pissing. So in an indirect way, sometimes seemingly meaningless angst online may be an attempt to solve a problem - the right to exist, to be acknowledged, and to be recognized.
As the population swells, both physically and digitally, everyone needs to feel like they're not being swallowed up into insignificance. In some cases, seemingly destructive acts might actually be poorly-conceived attempts at expression. For some, being a member of a virtual 'tribe' will suffice (eg. an advocate of one operating system vs. the others), as this sense of belonging-meets-rivalry meets the needs of some. Isn't this the same kind of instinct that plays into team sports? Others may be seeking acknowledgement as individual worth, but essentially we're all looking for acceptance as both an individual and a group member.
Pamela Livingston recently made her own 'painting' on the wall of this cave-blog (ie. she left a comment) that sums up all of these ideas quite neatly:
Sometimes a little ego here and there but we all have egos.
The next time you see someone expressing an idea that's mediated through 'high technology,' maybe it'll be worth wondering whether the message is actually a manifestation of basic emotions and needs. Maybe a hateful comment is an expression of self-loathing; maybe an angry comment is really an expression of regret; maybe a critical comment was meant to be constructive. A little bit of empathy never went astray, but of course it's difficult to think of everyone as a bag of biology when we're connected via silicone and plastic.
Sometimes it's not all about the technology. The medium is not the message.
