The Internet Is Kind of Weird! Pt.1: Or Is It?

This could end up being a series, because the Internet is kind of weird, yo. I was just thinking about this.

I don't think human beings have changed, you know? Except maybe they have! Because all of this self-surveillance is bound to have some effect. Who ten, twenty years ago would be narcissistic enough to sit in front of a video camera, ramble and mug through twenty minutes of video and then put it out for public viewing? Only a select few involved in local community television, that's who. And what about all these phones? I mean, camera-phones, video-phones, you know? We're living in a state of constant surveillance, from our friends, our selves, our "social network," and we pretty much love it! Is this wrong? Is any of this wrong? Am I complaining? Heck, I'm not complaining. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it does seem kind of weird. Doesn't it?

Like it all just happened, somehow. Technology's not a democracy, folks! Nobody decided we wanted it, but people around us started adopting these little new tools as they came out. Started doing it because they could do it: "Ooh look! New! Cool!" And we all started ending up in these pictures and videos, progressively drawn into all these circles, and what could we say? We couldn't come up with any real objection to it. "Hey, that's rude, quit it!" Was it ever rude before, to be in someone's frame during a candid photo snap? It only seems different now because everyone is equipped to provide full coverage of each others' lives. And without warning, we do!

And of course as a given type of exposure becomes prevalent, some of us holdouts say "Hey, maybe I should try." Vlogging, or homemade porn or whatever - prevalent just comes to seem normal.

Speaking of homemade porn, shifts in attitudes towards sex shame and body shame need to be their own post. That's too hot a topic! But Sex is only one of the areas were it appears the Internet is either weirding human behavioral norms, or normalizing human behavioral weirds, whichever the case may be. People today either are already or seem to be becoming showoffs in all aspects, showoffs of every human behavior, on the internet. Did the internet cause this, or was it simply the lack of easy opportunity that prevented us from naturally being this way all along?

In the old days of messageboards and written-word bloggers (hi there!) the theory was that "the anonymity of the Internet" freed people to be uninhibited. That because people couldn't tell who you really were, you could be who you really were - or experiment with other personae. But does this still wash today? Is it still anonymity when your face is visible? When your face is out there on Friendbook, mouthing off to people at least some of whom know you, uninhibited as you please? Is it still anonymity when you're V-logging on U-tube in your favorite t-shirt, laying out all your most strident political or comic book views? Is it still anonymity with a dick in your mouth? That's not very anonymous. Maybe for the person whose face is out of frame, it is. Perhaps it is the anonymity of "everyone's doing it," or at least, the anonymity of "so many normal-looking people are doing it," that it seems normal.

The anonymity of conformity with perceived norms.

These norm-shifts all happened so fast, we could say. But not really. They all happened in tiny, harmless, incremental steps that just kept coming. Change was slow, each little step probably unnoticeable, or only the tiniest bit jarring, none on its own was cause to sound an alarm. Technology, and the practices it enabled, outdistanced etiquette - not in an eyeblink, but in-between everyone's eyeblinks, over years.

This is not an essay, by the way. It's totally rambling. Who ten, twenty years ago would put something like this up, for others "to read" (ostensibly)?