Sites such as the controversial (as far as I've been told) JuicyCampus.com1 that depend upon user-generated content always seem to fall victim to a very brief media hysteria about their real-world effects. The idea that I think most people fail to consider is that nothing on the Internet guarantees the validity of anything posted on it2. Anyone is able to lie whenever they'd like to, similarly to in what's called real life3. That said, nobody without some superhuman critical skills is going to discount 100% of what they read on the Internet as fabrication. There's a sort of honor system that exists when people are able to create their own content without much intervention from an authority4 (like there's no reason to be cynical or something; there's nothing to be cynical about).
So since people are motivated to tell the truth and everything, all the ethical concerns that arise when college kids discover that they can say bad stuff on the Internet are just souped-up versions of ethical concerns that arise when college kids discover that they can say bad stuff on the walls of bathroom stalls5.
1 Aside: URLs aren't case-sensitive, so why are they always spelled with capitalized letters? Is it just a company name with ".com" at the end? If so, shouldn't a website that I imagine came about recently be created with the dot-com bubble in mind and have the good taste not to stick on a ".com?"
2Yes, I realize the irony. No, I will not mention it.
3 The Internet actually is a part of real life. Real life hereafter colloquially refers to life separate from the Internet*.
*I mean for all posts in the future, since I don't use it again in this particular post.
4...especially when the authority isn't even that much older than them, which is the case for most social networking websites (or at least the ones that are popular).So since people are motivated to tell the truth and everything, all the ethical concerns that arise when college kids discover that they can say bad stuff on the Internet are just souped-up versions of ethical concerns that arise when college kids discover that they can say bad stuff on the walls of bathroom stalls5.
1 Aside: URLs aren't case-sensitive, so why are they always spelled with capitalized letters? Is it just a company name with ".com" at the end? If so, shouldn't a website that I imagine came about recently be created with the dot-com bubble in mind and have the good taste not to stick on a ".com?"
2Yes, I realize the irony. No, I will not mention it.
3 The Internet actually is a part of real life. Real life hereafter colloquially refers to life separate from the Internet*.
*I mean for all posts in the future, since I don't use it again in this particular post.
5 I did not mean for this to rhyme. There was no immediately evident way to avoid it.
