Or an innocent child, or a grandparent with old-fashioned standards. (If you somehow missed that famous cartoon, you can see it here.)
Most people see the cartoon and think that it shows how anonymous individuals can post something on the Internet, and not be judged by their background — or even their species.
But there is another way to interpret the cartoon that makes just as much sense.
People — or even, in principle, a very smart dog — can read (or see) material on the Internet that they might not be able to read or see elsewhere.
It is easy to forget that, as Natalie Solent found out one day. She was writing a post and her youngest wandered by.
Yesterday Sprog Minor started reading this blog over my shoulder. I had to click the minimise button fast because the last two posts had bad words in them. Sternly, determinedly, joyously, I made a resolution to clean up this blog!
Solent did not want her own child to read posts with bad words in them. But she had forgotten that by putting up posts she was making them available to children everywhere. (And even, in principle, very smart dogs.) We almost always write our posts and comments in private, but when we put them on the Internet, we make them wholly public. Our private experience of writing them makes us forget just how public we actually are.
Since our posts and comments are wholly public, we should follow commonly accepted standards for public discourse when we write them. Most people — most sane people, anyway — do not shout obscenities in a public square, so we should eliminate obscenities, in all except a few cases, from our posts and comments. Similar, though weaker, arguments tell us that we should avoid scatological words in most circumstances.
How do we know what standards to use? By bringing in the audience that we often forget is there. Here's my rule of thumb: If you wouldn't say it in front of your ten-year-old niece, or your seventy-year-old grandmother, then don't write it in a post or comment. Those two may not read what you write — but others just like them will.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at November 08, 2009 06:44 AM | Email This