Net Generation and Degeneration of Online Forums

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Net Generation and Degeneration of Online Forums

2/15/2006

By Terry Calhoun

A while ago I wrote a column describing what I felt was a Lord of the Flies situation in cyberspace, because young people (early teens) were spending a lot of time online interacting in venues where there was not only very little adult presence, but little or no established culture, and no mature role models.

Now I read about what's been happening in MySpace and other online venues, and it seems as though there now is a developing culture coming out of that, but--surprise--it's not the kind of culture most of us older folks are very comfortable with. Well, whenever was there any youth culture that was comfortable for adults? Actually, the mere existence of a youth culture may be relatively scarce in human history, since it d'es require a certain degree of affluence.

I will admit that I only last week registered at MySpace and have not spent a lot of time there yet, partly because I am too busy (Not a good excuse!) and partly because it seems so voyeuristic to spend time there. So when I refer to MySpace, I am mostly referring to articles I have read about it; not from much personal experience.

I was finally moved to visit MySpace, not because of news stories, but because of a debate going on in the DISCussion forum of the Professional Disc Golf Association(PDGA). What's happening there? Well, the PDGA recently limited posting privileges to dues-paid members only, because a number of nonmembers were using terribly inappropriate language and engaging in personal attacks on others. The PDGA figured that if it limited access to members, at least it would know who each poster was and have the ability to take some disciplinary action.

Unfortunately, even limited to members-only, a huge debate ensued about vulgar language. Quite a few, mostly younger, posters are unable to understand that the forum of a sport, which requires sportsmanlike conduct on the disc golf course, also requires it online. After one very long debate, recently, parsing out the meaning of certain words (I thought for a while I was channeling William Safire.) my statement that "in the forums I am mostly on, no one writes like that" I was told by some of the younger members that in the forums they are in, everyone talks like that.

Then I remembered the one or two times I have ventured to post, rather than just read, on some of the very right-wing, conservative forums online. I discovered very quickly, that expressing my opinions on those forums is met at once with disgust and vile language and accusations, no matter how nicely I write, followed in a remarkably short time, uniformly, with veiled and unveiled death threats. And those are adults.

So, I thought to myself that maybe I was arguing values--on the PDGA forum--with someone whose values about this were not only diametrically opposed to mine, but also based on his real world experiences. From what I have seen on MySpace, online behavior of young adults nowadays d'es not at all preclude regular and vulgar use of language.