I disagree with nearly everything in this article, except this bit I quote here...

Joan Smith goes on a righteous feminist rant against misogynists on the Internet, and while I treasure a good feminist rant as much as the next person, I have to say that her rant is mis-targeted; her aim is bad.

Yes, there are misogynist nutjobs online, racist bigots online, fully-armed right-wing militia supporters online, Brown Shirts and goose-steppers galore. Without a doubt.

And hey, the tendency to flame, for rhetoric to escalate into polemic, to reach for higher or lower extremes in online contexts was actually the impetus that started me reading the scholarship that led to my dissertation ethnography of a politically-active online community. So of course I can relate to the issues she raises.

But blaming the Internet for the nutjobs, that seems off-course. I do argue in the conclusion of my diss that there are elements online that do allow like-minded nutjobs to find each other and be bolstered in their nut-jobbiness, more than they might otherwise. But I also point out that the ease of interactivity, the quick hit of the return key, also fosters the interactive challenge to too much preaching to the choir, with just as many flames challenging any choir's status quo as there are flames in favor of its party line.

And I argue that also escalates the rhetorical extremism, in what I called "the paradox of insularity and interactivity."

But EVEN WITH THAT, I won't go as far as the author below in blaming the Internets for the nutjobs who live there. Yes, death threats are bad, and people tend to go off the deep end. But blame that on the Blogosphere? Give me a break. The Blogosphere is the one thing that may single-handedly save us from a descent into authoritarian corporatism and fascism, and Joan Smith wants to blame the bloggers because somebody got a death threat? Like people never get death threats from nutters in real life?

OK, so aside from that, there's a bit in this article that I think is just spot on, so much so that I feel compelled to quote it in its entirety below, to remember when I may need it again. So here it is, the bit about the Internet's effects on writing intended to stand the test of time.

Link: Joan Smith: Stand up to the bullies and stop this online abuse - Independent Online Edition > Joan Smith.

Joan Smith: Stand up to the bullies and stop this online abuse

Misogyny, while not obligatory, is one of the most persistent themes of the blogger

Published: 29 March 2007

[...]

If anyone can write, and much of what they produce is either information or complete rubbish, it's no wonder that the public is losing respect for writers who spend literally years finding the right form of words for a poem or a novel. The act of writing is being de-skilled to a point where it is no longer regarded as work, and what follows is a demand that all written material should be available to anyone who wants it without charge.

In this pseudo-democratic universe, the novel that has just taken me nearly five years to finish has no more value than a blog that someone dashed off in 10 minutes. The sheer quantity of words available on the internet has prompted a false analogy with the enclosures of common land in the 18th century, in which novelists, poets and historians are cast in the role of wicked landlords.

People who argue that the written word should be freely available on the net, regardless of its origin, behave as though the world is littered with glittering sentences and paragraphs, occurring as naturally as semi-precious stones. But what they are demanding, in reality, is the right to roam in my brain and my bank account.

[...]

I dunno. I mean, there are always voices threatened by any increase in populist or democratized art/literature, from Sir Philip Sidney, poet in the 1500s who refused to see his work in print because somehow that new printing press technology diminished poetry (and wasn't nearly aristocratic and elitist enough for poetry, not something a "real" gentleman would do) to those who reacted against the Romantics, with all their attention to idealized pastorals and rustics or chimney sweeps, to those who reacted against the Enlightenment and Renaissance, against Modernism, against any new movement that appears to cheapen anything some group in society holds dear.

I mean, which is better? The explosion of artwork that grew out of the great societal transformation and strife of the Renaissance and Enlightenment? Or the hermetically-sealed closed worlds of artistic and literary elites, with plenty of money and time to lavish on art and its production?

I've shared Smith's lament, as a photojournalist, knowing I was busting my ass every day for a throwaway front page photo, a clip that would yellow in my file, the anachronistic daily fishwrap. Nobody likes their best work to be cheapened. But should it be hidden in vaults, or should it circulate among greater and greater masses? I vote for the distributive model, and with greater democratization.

I'd also ask Smith which is worth more in the long run, the super-dooper powerful mainframe computer that nobody gets to touch, or learn how to code or use except a handful of people, or a bunch of weak, underpowered personal computers, sitting on every desktop?

Oh, and for what it's worth dept? This bit below, from the top of Smith's article, about the dramatic event of a popular blogger announcing that the abuse had gone too far and that she pulling out of the game and "never going to post a word online again!" appears over and over in my data, from the Xenaverse, from chat rooms, and yes, even back in the early 1990s, from studies on the life cycle of listservs that survive listserv flame wars.

In other words, it's a tired and overworn trope, the first resort of the Internet newbie who hits his or her first flame war and isn't up to flaming back. Anybody with any experience online has heard that expression over and over, usually with much dramatic flouncing, the removal of popular web pages, all manner of attention-getting behavior that ranks right up there with a teenager burning all his or her rock-n-roll records after a sudden religious conversion, because it is the "devil's music."

And then a few weeks after the conversion experience wears off, they have to go back out and repurchase all those records all over again. Just classic. The dramatic exits in the throes of flame wars, with equally dramatic returns, happened at least a dozen times in the Xenaverse alone.

[...]

Three days ago, a well-known American blogger launched an unprecedented attack on the forum she helped to create. Revealing that she had been the target of vicious personal remarks and death threats for the past four weeks, Kathy Sierra said she had cancelled an appearance at a conference in San Diego and was staying at home, terrified, with the doors locked.

"I do not want to be part of a culture - the Blogosphere - where this is considered acceptable," she wrote, adding that she wasn't certain whether she would ever post again.

What finally drove Ms Sierra over the edge was a picture of a noose, posted anonymously by a blogger who wrote that all he wanted to know about her was her neck size. Someone else posted a photograph of Ms Sierra, her nose and mouth obscured by a device which transformed her into "nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice".

[...]