Dionysos, Apollo and the Blogosphere

I've been following the debate this week over Tim O'Reilly's call for civility in the blogosphere and his suggestions for a code of conduct governing what kinds of behavior will or won't be permitted on individual sites. Included in the program is the elimination of anonymous posts.

Online response has been, overwhelmingly, negative. So I find myself on the minority side of an issue -- certainly not for the first time in my life. I fundamentally agree with O'Reilly and with Tony Long's tongue-in-cheek challenge on Wired to anonymous posters:

If you're going to fire a rocket at someone in a blog post, or anywhere else, at least have the class to use your real name and stand behind your vitriol. Anything less makes you a coward and invalidates whatever bile you've spewed. My name is on this, and I'm calling you gutless if you don't sign yours. What are you going to do about it, blogger boy?

The arguments in defense of anonymous posts, which I admit have some merit, include contentions that anonymity encourages more people to join an open discussion, and that it minimizes the ego battles that interfere with fair debate when the identities of the parties are known.

But I suspect that something more fundamental is at stake here than online manners, or even morality. This is an issue about the fundamental character of the medium, whether it will be Apollonian or Dionysian.

The O'Reilly camp upholds Apollonian ideals of order and reason in the quest for idealized truth. Apollo was the god of cognition, individuation and civilization, core qualities of Western culture. In addition, he was the symbol of "ethical" conduct, in the root sense of that word: the idea that what was permitted to and what was expected of the individual was a product of his or her public character. In the Apollonian view, civic order depends on everyone possessing a known and fixed identity. Anonymity or the possibility of shifting identities leads to chaos.

Dionysos is thought of today as the god of wine, but that's simply a shorthand notation for his true significance, which was the power of intoxication in various forms. Intoxication destabilizes fixed identity, leading to a merging with the "other" and a widening of possible experiences. He was also patron of the Greek theater, where actors publicly presented themselves as characters who they weren't. The Dionysian experience is tribal, mythic and communal. It was, in addition, "ecstatic" (again, in the root meaning of the word). Ecstasy is the state of "standing outside" the self, of temporarily setting aside the burden of your quotidian identity, liberating you from yourself.

If this past week's response to O'Reilly's code of conduct is a reliable indication, it appears the blogosphere has a strong Dionysian current that will resist ethical reform -- not because bloggers support hate speech, but because those ecstatic possibilities are a key feature of the medium.

Free speech, hate and accountability

The shameful treatment that Kathy Sierra has recently suffered in the blogosphere has stimulated debate on topics ranging from misogyny to hate speech, anonymous postings, and censorship. The death threats made against Ms. Sierra for her unforgivable act of being a woman with opinions reminded me of a study about what has happened to human decency online.

Psychologist John Suler speculated in CyberPsychology & Behavior that flaming and other forms of anti-social behavior may be caused by a disconnect of "the brain's social circuitry" in the online environment, resulting in a loss of empathy with the person on the receiving end of the message.

Angela Rozas of the Chicago Tribune laments that "The Internet was supposed to revolutionize the way we communicate: information at our fingertips, global discourse, every man's opinion could be heard. But 12 years after I opened my first e-mail account, I have grown weary of the hate littering our e-world. Perhaps it's time we start policing ourselves. No more hate messages by anonymous posters. Every posting should require a name, address and telephone number. That information could be shielded from public view, and though some people might make up names and phone numbers, the requirement for submitting them might reduce the number of hate-filled messages left online."

It would seem that a code of conduct is sorely needed. Some have been offered already, by BlogHer for example. Now, as reported in the New York Times, Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales have joined the call for greater civility and perhaps "several sets of guidelines for conduct" on different blogs and sites.

The counter argument to this proposal is that limiting visitors to a site in what they may or may not say, or removing comments that violate a site's specific code of conduct, amounts to censorship. Free speech, after all, is the essence of the blogosphere. How do you balance one person's right to express himself or herself, and another person's wish not to become a target of abuse, slander and threats?

Blogs and social networking sites may not be legally responsible for remarks posted on them by visitors. Nevertheless, we're still ethically responsible for safeguarding the rights of everyone who visits our sites. Having grown up at a time and a place where hate speech was all too common -- practically the norm, in many circles -- I can testify that threats and abuse aren't used to stimulate a lively debate or promote the free exchange of opinions. The only purpose of hate speech is to isolate and silence its target.

As a policy for open communication, "Free Speech for Me, but I'm Going to Make You Shut Up" seems questionable. Site owners have a duty to monitor their sites, and people who post comments should be accountable for their words. Abusive anonymous postings are an exercise in cowardice, not free speech.

I'll admit that it's going to be devilishly hard to devise a code that equitably distinguishes hate and abuse from legitimate, reasoned expressions of opinion. But if we're serious about the growth of the blogosphere as an open forum, it's worth the effort to try. I agree with Tim O'Reilly's remark, "one of the mistakes a lot of people make" is "believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech. Free speech is enhanced by civility."