The wild woolly web is a cornucopia of forums
that appeal to the gamut of human interests.
By William Wetherall
Internet bulletin boards existed long before the high-powered servers, terminals, and software that now link everyone with a personal computer or mobile phone -- at speeds imaginable only to sci fi fanatics in the dial-up modem days.
In the good ol' days, the boards may have been tamer -- if only because so much emotional energy was expended just typing the commands it took to get on line, stay there, and say your two-bits worth in as few costly metered seconds as possible.
All manner of forums, mild and vulgar, thrive today -- despite the spread of social networking and messaging sites like Facebook and Twitter. Not a few people continue to be interested in -- or obsessed with -- the themes they define in a thread in a string in a rope in a choking hawser. Some bulletin boards are labyrinths in which a casual visitor will quickly get lost in the tangle of twine.
Older, colder threads get bumped to make more memory and bandwidth available to newer, hotter threads. Search site archives are stuffed with dated and even deleted threads.
Some boards permit total anonymity in order to encourage virtually risk-less participation. This may invite abuse, but it also allows some people to get downer and dirtier than they would if they thought a reader might know who they were.
Communities formed around such virtual anonymity nonetheless constitute actual social entities which gather the mass and velocity that define the vectors of one or another version of truth, urban legend, conspiracy theory, or defamation movement. Strategically directed, the collective momentum can have considerable impact.
Stalking game
Bulletin boarders with hunting instincts, on the same or different boards, are known to pack like wolves and coyotes when going after a bison or deer. The self-appointed hunters do not carry, much less fire, their own rifles with laser scopes. They get others -- politicians and corporations -- to do the wet work.
Internet hunters work like a team in the Combat Information Center of a warship. They spot other vessels and aircraft with their search radars and sonars and identify them as friend or foe. If an enemy they will decide its threat and whether it should be killed.
If the enemy is to be killed, its coordinates and movements will be fed to a weapons system. When the target has been engaged, someone will order others to push the buttons that fire the rounds, torpedoes, or missiles that destroy it.
Internet hunters stalk their prey in Google, track down every bit and byte of information they can find, the more damaging the better, and publicize it, with their allegations, on the highest profile boards. Covering their digital footprints every step of the way, they will send the data to organizations and individuals they think will have both the motivation and power to kill the prey in their stead.
Having put the wolves on the scent of their prey, the hunters will wait, listen, and watch. They will hear media reports of the wolves howling. On the news one night, they will catch a clip showing the wolves chase, tire, and strike the prey.
The scandal will precipitate an apology, a firing, a resignation, a divorce, a suicide.
As their main object was to see their prey destroyed, most Internet hunters will abandon its carcass and spend the rest of their life telling tales of the great hunt on the boards and to their grandkids. A few will download and save files of their postings as trophies of their bravery.
Boards are generally just soapboxes. Some are stages for flaming or outing. Others are venues for postings that blatantly overstep the line between fair criticism and libelous ad hominem slander.
Victims are lining up to file lawsuits. More attorneys are specializing in claims against Internet service providers. Some courts have awarded plaintiffs damages and ordered offensive content deleted.
Public square
Internet forums are tantamount to bulletin boards in laundromats. What you post can get you negative attention from law enforcement officers.
Advocating that someone should be assassinated -- or expressing "hate" against any group, even in the form of, say, denying or doubting the German "Holocaust" of Jews in Europe or the Japanese "Rape" of Nanjing in China -- are causes, in some jurisdictions, for investigation, arrest, prosecution, and punishment if found guilty.
Many website administrators now monitor, or filter, content that might invite unwanted public outcry or legal action. Mostly, though, the World Wide Web has become an unmonitored, unfiltered forum for free speech, like or not what others say.
The Internet facilitated the mass contribution of funds and other forms of support that brought Barack Obama to the White House. It will undoubtedly also foil China's attempt to protect itself behind a Bamboo Firewall.
24 July 2009
