Joe Wilson, Kanye West, and Serena Williams - what do these three have in common? Well, unless you've been living in a cave, you probably know that they all got in hot water over their recent outbursts.
But are these incidents anomalies or are they part of a trend of rising rudeness and the general collapse of civility? Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times wrote:
In the wake of these high-profile outbursts across disciplines -- politics, entertainment and sports -- many Americans have found themselves asking what is going on. To some, it's not a coincidence but rather the manifestation of a deepening social dysfunction. [...]
Some say it reflects a general collapse of manners, rooted in the anti-authoritarian strains of the late 1960s. Some offer a psychological explanation: that such outbursts reveal the person beneath the mask of a public persona. Some see an element of racial animus at work.
Link (Photo: Jason DeCrow/AP)
On one hand, the Interweb helped people voice their opinions over a wide range of matters very easily. On the other hand, those opinions are often boorish. Comments on blogs, including Neatorama, often degenerate into name-callings. And let's not even talk about YouTube's comments - suffice it to say that friends don't let friends comment on YouTube.
Does this tendency of rudeness on the Net spill over to real life (especially for young people) or is it the other way around? Why are people becoming ruder? What do you think?
But as I read this snip from Chuck Klosterman lately, I thought about the Kanye/Williams/Wilson bomb.
"Nothing can be appreciated in a vacuum. That's what accelerated culture does.; it doesn't speed things up as much as it jams everything into the same wall of sound."
I feel we're speeding along so fast with out tech culture, we fail to realize our olde rulez of civility.