Stress Fracture

…an object lesson in how not to use the Internet.

Mr. Reardon, aka Cole Adams, is a writer with some publications in his portfolio, which would seemingly be to his credit. Sadly, he appears to be fairly sensitive about said publications, as he chose to respond to an off-hand mention by an anthology editor discussing what stories from another anthology he would and would not use by, well, publically encouraging the editor in question to commit suicide, then again to kill his cat while commiting suicide, and eventually allegedly threatening said editor’s life.

So, bad form, that, I think we could all agree.

What is it about the Internet that brings this stuff out? Gabe of Penny Arcade has a theory which I will paraphrase in order to keep the language strictly family friendly. We’ll call it the Greater Internet Idiot Theory, stated as a formula: NORMAL PERSON + ANONYMITY + AUDIENCE = TOTAL IDIOT. (If you want to read the original, and you’ve been warned about the language, Google on “greater internet theory” and you’ll find it.) And what provides anonymity along with audience like Internet access?

While Gabe was making a specific reference to online gaming, there’s clearly ample evidence that this goes for blogging and other online communication. One of the reasons I have all but abandoned anonymity online personally is to keep myself honest about this sort of thing, hoping that perhaps by removing ANONYMITY from the above equation I can stave off, well, TOTAL IDIOCY. What makes Mr. Reardon special is that, when called out for his behavior, he dropped all vestiges of anonymity as well, but only plunged further into the TOTAL IDIOCY. Arguably this is evidence that NORMAL PERSON was never in the equation in the first place, yes?

Anyway. The moral of today’s story is “don’t do this,” or even “don’t do this in particular if you want to stay off of editorial blacklists,” or even “don’t do this if you don’t want Google hits on your name to all become articles about how you threatened an editor’s life” — a wonderful irony, since Reardon’s actual gripe was, in part, that Google directed people to the original offhand editor’s comment. Irony, it’s a wonderful thing.

I hesitate to give people who behave in an undeserving way the notoriety that speaking about them provides (what little-to-none would come from me speaking about someone, anyway), but this kind of thing deserves the light of day on it. I am a strong proponent of online privacy and, if one desires, anonymity, but an old guy in a comic once told me that with great power comes great responsibility. And the Internet has given us all great power to communicate. Use it well.

R