Blog #0001: On Pride and (a Bit on) Prejudice
“Ego”. In the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s defined as “a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance”. It was a word that had an explicit and implicit presence in a large portion of this week’s assigned reading.
The text described computers as “extremely egocentric devices” (94). I found this to be an almost foreshadowing statement. Inventions tend to share characteristics with their inventors, much like how a child will inevitably pick up some of his or her mother’s idiosyncrasies or father’s philosophies. So even as Crocker’s RFCs did foster a sense of collaboration over ego, it did not surprise me that there were multiple incidences of self-involvedness uprooting communities.
In my experience, egos do not usually manifest themselves in a blatant, “screaming-from-the-rooftops” manner. Rather, they subtly embed themselves into small, unintentional actions; for example, the UC Santa Barbara incident mentioned in the text. The Santa Barbara students who began fiddling with their IMP were so focused on their research that they did not consider that what they did would have implications at other universities. Self-importance was inherent in their inconsideration. The same can be said regarding the “header wars” and the treatment of the Tenex and non-Tenex compatibility issues.
The unfolding of a more open networking culture with Adventure and room for personal opinions to be expressed most likely exacerbated this presence of ego. “Flaming” was a byproduct, and in my opinion, this is the worst exhibition of ego, pride, and bias that I encounter today. I play a variety of online games, one of which is infamous for its “toxic” players. The game assembles teams of five players, each who typically fill a role, and then puts teams with similar levels of players against each other. However, from the process of choosing characters and abilities at the very start of the game to mid-game when fighting the opposing team, it’s rare that the other players and I are really a team. Sometimes, I find that there’s more battling going on in the group chat than in the actual game. Language can become derogatory and abusive, resulting in hurtful verbal sparring rather than productive strategizing. “AFK-ing” (being away from the keyboard for extended amounts of time) is common when someone is overwhelmed by the other teammates.
So where does this leave us? I’d hate to see rampant flaming become an accepted part of Internet culture. But we don’t live in a time where it’s logistically possible to have a Stefferud-like moderator watch over every bit of user input. In the particular game I mentioned, the creators have put a filter that will censor out any particularly awful language, but it’s not nearly sufficient; people can always come up with misspellings of a swear or new ways of cursing. I read some articles on flaming in hopes of finding some potential solutions, but there seem to be flaws in every attempted fix so far (I did find some interesting perspectives on flaming such as what actually qualifies as flaming, though; they can be found here and here). In our upcoming seminar, I’d love if we could take some time to discuss flaming and what measures are plausible to be taken to mitigate it. I look forward to the seminar next week! 🙂