{"id":197,"date":"2008-11-05T00:01:06","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T08:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=197"},"modified":"2008-11-04T17:44:51","modified_gmt":"2008-11-05T01:44:51","slug":"the-internet-brings-out-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"The Internet Brings Out the Anger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time to relax. Time to get back to life. The blasted U.S. Presidential campaign is past (though as I write this it’s not over). Two years after it began, I hope that every loudmouth partisan jerk on the Internet is finally ready to put it to a rest. Should I get my hopes up?
\n
\nThere’s a popular cartoon on the Internet (I can’t find it), but it puts my feelings well. It goes like this:<\/p>\n

Normal person + Anonymity on the Internet = Flaming jerk.<\/p>\n

Have you ever experienced something similar? Perhaps you’ve visited a local blog or maybe a comments section on a local newspaper. Suddenly, neighbors and friends are transformed. Emboldened by the anonymous shield of some moniker or handle, they start throwing monkey poo. Nasty comments, personal attacks, vindictiveness of the meanest sort, it all comes flying across the computer screen at the speed of anger.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the political table of the 21st Century.<\/p>\n

Of course, our rotting discourse<\/a> isn’t anything new. Washington wasn’t President for two terms before the hate started to fly. Our big advantage is speed of delivery and broadness of audience. A century ago, your letter to the editor or one-page flyer might have gotten some attention and perhaps a rude comment. But reaction took longer back then and, because it was tied to an individual who signed his own name<\/em>, you had to face your critics and stand by your “facts.”<\/p>\n

Nastiness is nothing new on the American political scene. It’s not as bad as it was once, but it may seem so because far more people are involved and the information furiously flies at the speed of a vindictive electron. It will only get worse, but my hope is that for the next few weeks at least, it will lighten up on the political front.<\/p>\n

Then again, I’ve been wrong before \u2014 and told so vociferously in many on-line forums!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time to relax. Time to get back to life. The blasted U.S. Presidential campaign is past (though as I write this it’s not over). Two years after it began, I hope that every loudmouth partisan jerk on the Internet is finally ready to put it to a rest. Should I get my hopes up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}