Keefer Madness

There are a Lot of Jerks on the Internet

// October 1st, 2009 // Internet / Web, Personal Crap

One of the first posts from back in 2001 when I initially started blogging, back when my blog was just a small portion of Keefer Madness (and it was called KeefLog) was about Internet etiquette — people feeling empowered to be complete jackasses when shrouded behind the binary veils of keyboard and monitor. Online, people do and say things they wouldn’t do face-to-face.

It’s nice to see some things never change, even as the connection speeds continue to rise. My most recent example of this comes from one of the many mailing lists I’m on related to cycling. I sent a message Wednesday night telling them 1) why I hadn’t been on any group rides in awhile and 2) that a new cyclist had been born. I then provided a link to the gallery for our new little bundle of joy and future owner of this as his first bike.

A few hours later the listmom sent a generic message about people complaining about off topic messages to the mailing list. The timing made it pretty obvious that my posting was at least partially a catalyst for his scolding post.

So here’s my thing. Yeah, I get a ton of email that isn’t relevant to me — both personal and commercial. I ride with that group on only certain days and use it as group training supplementing close to home with a different group than my teammates in Chapel Hill. Said group has multiple skill levels/speeds of rides, like many group rides. Obviously, I only really have contact with one group — the A group, and this is true for most members of this list. They’re mainly in contact and ride with their own skill level and would have no clue on sight who those in the other groups are. So at any given time, there’s plenty of “noise” on this list from those you don’t know. Like any email, it’s real easy to quickly mentally filter and delete messages that aren’t relevant to you. Really easy.

So obviously, I’m telling the guys I ride with about my new little guy and got back several nice responses, including from the listmom himself. No one complained to me. There was no ill will. Oftentimes, in public Internet forums, comments, etc. people will get really nasty. I didn’t experience that this time. But instead, it was more of a passive aggressive backlash for posting. They complained to the list moderator, rather than me. In general, people are cowards and avoid conflict. This is true in real life, but so it would seem on the Internet as well. Some go to the alternate extreme — name calling, etc. while others revert to more passive means. Both are lame.

In all fairness, after sending a fairly defensive email/apology to the listmom, he replied back saying it wasn’t a problem sending out announcements like mine and thought it was great for the community sharing stuff like this. But the poor guy is stuck in the middle — all because a few whiny and self-important people spent more time composing and complaining than filtering and deleting.