»Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the the universe.«
Albert Einstein
A couple of days ago various media could tell the story about two robbers being arrested after bragging about their newly achieved money on Facebook. The story is, though pretty entertaining, not very surprising compared to what other stupid human Internet behavior the new media has documented during the last couple of years. The new media gave us new possibilities to make fools of ourselves and news ways to destroy our careers, relationships and remaining dignity. With Web 2.0 came Human stupidity 2.0.
The expansion of the public sphere
Human stupidity has without any doubt existed for just as long as human beings on earth. Through thousands of years humans have thought, said and done stupid things and even though some of it has been kept for further generations to experience, most historical stupidity will remain undocumented.
With the arrival of the new media came new possibilities for storing stupidity. During the last couple of decades the borders between private and public spheres have gradually moved in the western world. One of the first indications of this trend was the emergence of TV reality shows that recorded and broadcasted human interaction and behavior of non-media trained humans in a way that only fiction could previously have predicted.
The big difference between these reality shows and the later development was the presence of media cooperations editing and angling the material before publication. With the arrival of the new media this was taken to a new level. Now people could record and post videos of themselves doing and saying stupid things on YouTube or post stupid pictures or status updates on Facebook. And the only thing keeping these stupidities from being published was the creators themselves or the regulations of the new media platforms.
Human stupidity as material for new media produsage
With Web 2.0 the users became producers. People around the world shared material for others to use, respond to and further develop through YouTube, Flickr, Ourband etc. and with Wikipedia this developed into more structural cooperation build on collective intelligence. Along with this development came also produsage build on critical approaches to the new media and the way people are using them. One of the best examples of users sharing experiences of human stupidity on the Internet is Lamebook.com.
The concept of the page is pretty simple. It relies on user participation in shape of people capturing and sending screen shots of Facebook members posting stupid pictures, status updates or comments which are then anonymized and published on the blog for other users to share and comment. The typical examples of the captured human stupidity on Lamebook are people posting private informations on their walls which are usually followed by consequences in form of reactions from other Facebook members. Among these kinds of stupidities is public fighting on private matters, people dissing their employers (with whom they of course share Facebook friendship) or people revealing extremely private informations or pictures without any awareness of the possible consequences.
With about 400 million native English speaking world citizens, of which a great part with a profile on Facebook, the material of the blog is being constantly produced and prodused and in such an amount that there´s material for everyday publication.
YouTube: Not a playground for (stupid) kids
One of the new media that gave users the possibility to create, share and recreate material is YouTube. The website is stuffed with videos of people spreading stupid statements or doing stupid (and sometimes dangerous) things. Some of these videos becomes viral Internet phenomena that quickly spreads and leads to new produsaged material in shape of responses and different kinds of remixes.
When I was kid I had a great time recording stupid conversations, ideas and even songs with my friends on my tape recorder. Even though this was surely pretty harmless I would never want any of these recordings to be published today. Luckily we had no possibilities for publishing our recordings at the time and our play with the medium therefore stayed as entertaining and educational experiences for only us to know about.
Today it´s different. An example of this is The Food Reviewer; a welfed child posting videos of himself eating and reviewing varous types of candy and fastfood on his Youtube channel. These harmless videos did not only lead to responding videos and parodies, but also inappropriate comments, suggestions and even threads which shows that the new media are not just innocent playgrounds of creative produsers sharing and developing material in constructive ways.
Another example is the story of an 11 years old girl who became an Internet phenomenon after her (pretty stupid) reply to the negative reactions on her YouTube videos. During 4 days the girl fought a viral video battle against her YouTube enemies which escalated with a video of the crying girl assisted by her angry father threatening with Cyber police.
Who is responsible for the new media stupidity
Even though these examples can be seen as priceless entertainment even better than the most well produced TV reality shows on the market they still leave some unanswered questions. Were people really ready for the new media and all the possibilities they gave for exposing stupid behavior? Is it fair that children are being humiliated on the Internet for just exploring and playing with the new technologies? And who is responsible for educating people in proper ways of dealing with the potential consequences of inappropriate behavior on the new media platforms?
And how will future generations look at these years and the emergence of Web 2.0? Will people in 100 years see it as an example of technology developing faster than human beings being able to fully understand and adapt to them in comprehensive ways. Or will it just be seen as the first natural step of the total dissolve of private spheres; an old fashion way of dividing human behavior and interaction that modern technology had to destroy?
No matter what human stupidity will most likely continue to exist for just as long as human beings on earth. Whether it will transform into 3.0, 8.0 or 120.0.
Interesting, but I find stuff like lamebook a little disturbing. It's basically people with more technological capital/knowledge making fun of the less lucky ones...
ReplyDeleteHilarious, yet scary too. Definitely something to think about!
ReplyDeleteJust to clear up any potential misunderstandings, my blog post was not meant as a celebration of Lamebook or webpages that expose inappropriate internet behavior. I used it as a starting point of a debate about how it seems that some people are less ready for the possibilities and potential consequences of the new media.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your concern about well-educated people making fun of “the less lucky ones”, you will also find lots of examples of well-articulated people fighting about matters that would have been private just 5 – 10 years ago. A lot of these examples are pretty scary as well.
In defense of the Lamebook page it should be mentioned that all names and pictures fortunately are anonymized. There are other pages that publish Facebook communication and other kinds of inappropriate internet behavior that don´t do this. This is problematic as people then are being even more exposed and may have to face even more consequences than they already did.
Peter