We Are Faceless

Technology vastly increases the reach of our communications (they don't call it the "net" or "web" for nothing--everyone is trapped in it), but at the same time, the more outlets for available have and the further messages can reach, the more dehumanized the recipients become. At best you can live as a video, but most people are just "hits."

At times I laud the usefulness of the text message with its ability to send out the non-obligatory "What're you up to?" message or the potential to have 17 conversations at once on AIM, but other times I can't help but feel the deleterious effects of faceless chatter. You can stay in touch with friends, but what does it allow you to do to strangers?

Without face-to-face interaction, people become braver -- or perhaps just more brazen. At its most harmless, texting or aiming gives you the illusion of truly knowing someone you've never met, when in actual fact you may not get along with that person at all. A suitor can can become much more open in his/her flirtations when the other person's face is hidden behind an icon or name in a phone book. All in all, fairly harmless -- buyer beware.

At its harshest, anonymity allows people to do this:

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back. . . . ” Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they have come to be called, who dwell there...

...Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.

Something about Mitchell Henderson struck the denizens of /b/ as funny. They were especially amused by a reference on his MySpace page to a lost iPod. Mitchell Henderson, /b/ decided, had killed himself over a lost iPod. The “an hero” meme was born. Within hours, the anonymous multitudes were wrapping the tragedy of Mitchell’s death in absurdity.

Someone hacked Henderson’s MySpace page and gave him the face of a zombie. Someone placed an iPod on Henderson’s grave, took a picture and posted it to /b/. Henderson’s face was appended to dancing iPods, spinning iPods, hardcore porn scenes. A dramatic re-enactment of Henderson’s demise appeared on YouTube, complete with shattered iPod. The phone began ringing at Mitchell’s parents’ home. “It sounded like kids,” remembers Mitchell’s father, Mark Henderson, a 44-year-old I.T. executive. “They’d say, ‘Hi, this is Mitchell, I’m at the cemetery.’ ‘Hi, I’ve got Mitchell’s iPod.’ ‘Hi, I’m Mitchell’s ghost, the front door is locked. Can you come down and let me in?’ ” He sighed. “It really got to my wife.” The calls continued for a year and a half.

(Schwartz, Mathias, "The Trolls Among US." NY Times Magazine, 8/3/2008)

The anonymity available on the internet makes this possible -- I can't imagine many people would go up to Mark Henderson and say, "Hi, I've been making fun of your dead son all over the internet." But does that mean technology is to blame? Or is it just giving outlet for people to express feelings/thoughts they never had an open forum to do so in? Are acts like this useful reminders of the fact that world is a remorseless place?

The anonymity may embolden people to fall in love via texts or ravage a stranger's reputation, but is also acts as a powerful equalizer. People -- regardless their wealth, stature or what direction their moral compass points in -- are all put on a level playing field. It's both frightening and empowering. The NY Times and you or I can put content into the same place -- traffic aside, our content and theirs is equally accessible and available to the same people.

On the other hand, a 19 year-old kid in stealing wi-fi from his neighbor in Fredericksburg, VA could hack the NY Times front page, swipe credit card numbers from insecure webstores, wrangle social security numbers and otherwise leaves thousands of people -- or huge corporations -- scared shitless. Would the hacker do it if he had to look those people in the eye?

While there is internet anonymity, that doesn't mean it's not real, so real life rules should apply. Don't take criticism too harshly, you're as vulnerable as anyone else, you don't know someone until you've met their gaze and you should ALWAYS look over your shoulder -- they aren't just "hits" they are people --billions of people...