The Medium is the Message

For about a decade, I've been a member of a prominent national writers' organization. Its site features a members-only forum where exchanges sometimes get a little heated, especially in a non-writing-related web area called "water cooler," where things like politics and religion may be discussed. Some participants bemoan the fact that not all posts are, let's say, a model of civility. Their argument is that saucy language, excessive snippiness, and verbal "attacks" (or what they perceive as such) wouldn't be tolerated at a company's actual water cooler, so there's no reason to tolerate them online.

A corollary to this is the mid-nineties saw, still popular, that people say things to one another on the Internet that they would never say in real life (usually followed by much tsk-tsk-ing).

Those sentiments have always baffled me. Oh, they strike me as true enough, but I find the comparisons unconvincing, even irrelevant. It's like going to a steakhouse and sending back your medium-rare filet mignon because it doesn't taste like the papaya dish you enjoyed at your cousin's wedding. Though there are similarities between the two situations — eating nice food in public — they still involve different venues, and different occasions, and they ought to generate different expectations.

Or, put differently, if you disagreed with the tone or the message of a speaker at Hyde Park's Speaker's Corner, would you go up to him and sniff that with that kind of attitude, he'd fail to fit in at your company picnic?

The medium matters. So does the social environment.

It's fine to call a web hangout a 'virtual water cooler,' but literal comparisons to a real-life office water cooler or a real-life bulletin board (the one with pushpins) aren't helpful. They prevent us from appreciating what these digital spaces really are: media that pose their own challenges and that, over time, establish their own unique mores and rules.

Comments

[Steve Ely]

You're right that the medium of discourse should influence our expectations of the nature of that discourse and that we shouldn't argue that our apples must be oranges just because they're both fruits. However, while I'm not familiar with the specific arguments occurring in the online forum you mention, I trust you don't mean to suggest that respect and civility don't have a lot of value in online discussions.

[Rogier]

In principle, I agree wholeheartedly. In practice, one person's spirited debate is another person's intolerable slugathon. I ultimately come down against cracking down on incivility because the word is impossible to fairly and realistically define; and because it opens up a censorship can-of-worms that inevitably makes the solution worse than the purported cure.

[Rogier]

I meant to write, "that makes the purported cure worse than the disease."

[Steve Ely]

Yeah, cracking down in something, such as the writers board you mentioned, that's supposed to be such a community venue would have the fairness problem and open the nasty can of worms described here.

Does your view of the enforcement of a given behavior change if it's not really a community site such as that but a site clearly belonging to or managed by one person? Blog comments as an example, especially. If in the midst of some otherwise interesting and substantive dialogue on one of your posts here, I said something that another visitor disagreed with, and then that person and I quickly degenerated into "You're a jackass," "No, YOU'RE a jackass!" back and forth for a while, would you put a limit on that stuff so as to maintain what was otherwise a quality discussion, given that it's understood the relevant standards here are ultimately yours?

Really, I think it just reflects additional dimensions of your original analogies. We can't expect the speaker in Hyde Park to behave as does someone at a corporate gathering, you note, as they're each examples of verbal communication, but in significantly different settings that affect the way someone in either is obligated to behave. Likewise, as that example implies we can't apply the rules of a given real-life discussion to a given online discussion, it also implies we shouldn't apply the principles of one online discussion venue to all others.

Just as in real life I have no business stopping someone from saying something rude and insulting to people on the sidewalk outside my house but I may draw limits on my tolerance of certain speech inside my house, it's likewise valuable online to have venues public enough that no one has any business censoring anyone else and others private enough that, while the general public is generally permitted and encouraged, the proprietor may choose sometimes to shut someone down who's doing nothing but spewing venom, often incoherently.

As a reader as much or more than an occasional participant in such dialogues, it's nice to have places to turn where discourse is fully free and unfettered and other places where the conversation is prevented from degenerating into the foulest gutter.

This an absurdly long comment. Sorry.

[Phil]

"As a reader as much or more than an occasional participant in such dialogues, it's nice to have places to turn where discourse is fully free and unfettered and other places where the conversation is prevented from degenerating into the foulest gutter."

I don't think I could disagree more. You're always free to leave the 'gutter' places. If the conversations get too much for you, then odds are you don't need to be there anyway.

[Steve Ely]

Too much or too little, Phil? I don't view exchanges consisting principally of profane and personal insults as conversations with too much to them but too little.

Your last sentence could be reframed many ways: "If the conversations get too [whatever] for you,..." but it's still odd. Sometimes I might feel like wading through crap and vitriol to find the substantive points within; sometimes not. Are you suggesting, Phil, that no one has any business hosting any discussions wherein they prevent the dialogue from filling up from crap and vitriol?

John Scalzi, for instance, has a comment policy that he enforces on his blog to ensure the discussion in his often-long comment threads stays at the level of quality he wants. Are you suggesting he's out of line for doing so?

I'm not saying, in case Phil or anyone else would read it as such, that everything unmoderated necessarily goes right into the gutter. What I am saying, beyond the simple idea that the degree of respect and civility Phil and I, for instance, show each other will influence the effectiveness of our communication with each other and to others, is that it's not inconsistent to have certain enforced rules apply in some places and not at all in other places.

[Rogier]

RE: "I said something that another visitor disagreed with, and then that person and I quickly degenerated into "You're a jackass," "No, YOU'RE a jackass!" back and forth for a while, would you put a limit on that stuff so as to maintain what was otherwise a quality discussion, given that it's understood the relevant standards here are ultimately yours?"

It'd have to be particularly egregious or pointlessly repetitive for me to intervene, much less delete comments. I prefer to err on the side of letting people speak their minds, even if their comments were potentially inflammatory. I WOULD probably remove something that was truly vile, threatening, or legally actionable, though -- supposing I caught it.

RE: "It's nice to have places to turn where discourse is fully free and unfettered and other places where the conversation is prevented from degenerating into the foulest gutter."

I have no problem with speech restrictions in people's own spaces, like websites -- just a strong preference that they do as little as possible when moderating / editing / deleting posts. But it's ultimately their property and they can do as they see fit.

RE: "It's not inconsistent to have certain enforced rules apply in some places and not at all in other places."

Agreed. Most religious sites probably have a comment policy that bans smutty language and blasphemy (I'm assuming). I personally couldn't get worked up enough over such comments to remove or edit them, but different strokes for different folks.

[Jeff The Poustman]

I like Rogier's disclaimer on the home page: 'My place, my rules'.