Thursday, May 15, 2014

Extremism and the Internet

For those with long memories, it's almost impossible not to be surprised by how extreme people's comments have become on some things.  Or on many things, for that matter.  Fairly obviously, something operated to generally moderate opinion.  Perhaps it was simply the lack of an easy vehicle to transmit extreme views.

To give an odd example, there's a video that's been on the news and which is uploaded to YouTube, which was compiled from a series of security cameras.  It shows a little boy out riding a little bicycle.  He gets attacked by a neighbor's mid sized dog.  The remarkable thing about the video is that the family cat rushes out and attacks the dog, and chases it off.  It's a neat video.

It'd be hard to imagine anyone exhibiting their extremism based on that, but if you read the comments, some sure do.

For one thing, one poster is opinionated about the homeowner having so many security cameras. Well, miffed person, stuff it.  If a person wants security cameras, so be it.

Beyond that, however, one person comes in and voices an opinion that all dog ownership should be banned. All of it, save for working dogs.

Seriously?  I've heard of people exhibit this extreme view about firearms, which is also way out there in my view, but ban dogs?  Come on.

Another person pronounces cats as "evil" and then goes on about how they carry some disease.  That's equally absurd. No doubt cats carry some diseases.  Mammals carry disease. For that matter, reptiles and birds carry diseases.  If this view meant anything, pretty much all things on land ought to be banned, assuming that we can't get diseases from fish (which I don't know if we can or not).  This person needs to relax.

In a prior era, I suppose people with these types of views would have still held them. But they probably wouldn't have voiced them out of fear that they'd get eye rolling.  In this fashion, the Internet has done us no favors.

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