Is the Internet Getting Too Out of Hand?

I don’t normally write much here, but I have to get this off my chest…I’ve been seeing a ton of noise and downright stupid things lately. This is what happens when people cross a marketplace/business center with their personal lives.

Over at Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra has posted some information about the nightmare of a situation that she’s going through. It’s insane. For someone to think that it’s anywhere near acceptable to threaten or even joke in this manner is stupid. If you wouldn’t say or do something when looking a person face to face, it shouldn’t be said to them online. Rob Scoble is taking the week off from blogging as a method of protesting what is going on with Kathy. He’s even boycotting Digg over the abusive comments that are happening over there. It’s good to see some high profile people starting to see a problem and standing up against it.

Social sites such as Digg are becoming a big, open sore. On one side, there’s the “Digg Mob” – a bunch of opinionated people with nothing better in their life to do than bury stories that don’t match their political or moral beliefs. Then, you have the people who, in my opinion, abuse Digg by posting any and every story that they create in hopes to land a few readers and/or links. I’m not saying that either side is necessarily wrong or right to be doing what they’re doing. The problem I have with it is that the whole environment there is becoming worthless. There are thousands of “10 things” and “How To” articles written by people that just reword what they’ve read on other blogs and/or forums. A large majority of those are written to be link bait. Are people becoming so lazy and dumb that they think those pages are really valuable? I admit, some of them are good, but most are junk. Right now, this page is #1 in the “Top 10 in All Topics”. What value is there in that? That blog is probably someone who has figured out how to either game Digg or is a part of the Digg Mob. Check out the comments on there. It’s completely out of control. This kind of crap is happening all over the place online right now.

People get behind a keyboard and automatically feel like they’re entitled to start flaming people, talking dirty, and causing trouble. If they are on a forum or somewhere that a little humor and trash talking is acceptable, that’s fine. When the immaturity carries over to sites conducting business, whether directly or indirectly, the quality of everything goes downhill. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I still believe that business is business and there is no place in business for people who can’t play nice with others and stay neutral. You don’t talk politics, sex, or attack others in an office environment. It shouldn’t happen online. The environment of the internet has become way too laid back IMO. People send business correspondence with all kinds of grammar and spelling errors. Is it out of control? Are people becoming careless, lazy, and disrespectful?