How people think the web made people nasty...

wherin I feel like an old fart.

Started here to see what Scoble was talking about I clicked here, which led to here and that finally led as well to Mena here.

There is a bit of a discussion about people, essentially, not being very nice. Is the "blogosphere" this beutiful place with birds chirping and people dancing or something else? I would argue that the question was answered back in the usenet days. Blogs are just usenet dressed up. You could post whatever you wanted, and people would discuss it with you. Now, by having a blog you get a bit more control in that you can delete peoples comments that you don't like, whereas back then you didn't have pictures and someone was going to eventually call you a nazi.

I have talked before about how people trying to make the "blogosphere" be what they want it to be are a bit misguided and arrogant, and I think this trend continues.

People failed to tame usenet, and I see no reason that Blogs will be any different. People will say what they want. They will phrase it in a way that will be a little misunderstood or is a little dogmatic. Someone will take offense and call them a nazi. Repeate, wring, and rinse as needed. You can hope for something different, and you can defend your own blog, but ultimatly history is just repeating itself.

Holy crap I feel old for saying this. I think most of the people in that conversation that got me thinking this should be old enough to have looked at Usenet, but I could be wrong.