I've been called a ponce, a cretin and a tosser ... anonymous bloggers are the ultimate cowards
I WOULD be an easy person to assassinate, or even just pick a fight with. I follow a fairly rigid routine, walk around Dublin 2 without any security, and socialise in an area covering a few square yards off Stephen's Green. So why is it no one has ever come up to me and called me an absolute twat to my face?
Perhaps I should explain. The Dubliner magazine held a talk last week about the future of print media, specifically how it's supposed to compete with the internet, and attract readers who have grown up with online blogs.
Well, without wishing to get too downbeat, if the bloggers of today are supposed to be the newspaper readers of tomorrow, then the print media really is buggered.
Because unless it can adapt its content to cater for witless, charmless nerds, whose only use for newspapers is to catch the drips coming through the ceiling of their squalid bedsits, as they pour out the contents of their underdeveloped little minds on a blog, while chowing down on reheated slices of pizza, then the days of traditional newspapers and magazines are over.
There was a time that comment from the public took the form of a letter to the editor.
The fact that it would so appear tended to make the commentator focus on their job at hand, as they knew that (a) they had to pass through an element of quality control before being published, and (b) the fact that readers would see their name and address at the end the letter. This put pressure on the person not to make a total tit of themselves.
The internet, however, and specifically blogging, has removed this need.
Which means that commentators have no worries about coming across as ignorant, bigoted, abusive or thick in front of the public. I wrote an article in this paper about Dublin Bikes, and vented my spleen about cyclists.
I made no bones that it was a personal opinion, and hardly expected everyone to agree with me, though I did go to the trouble of lobbing in a couple of widely accepted facts to back up my argument.
A friend then alerted me to the fact that if I Googled my own name (I've hardly ever done it, honestly ... ) I'd find a link to a blogging thread devoted to hurling abuse at my article.
I should probably have ignored it -- after all, most people who post comments on blogs of this type should be avoided, without throwing into the mix that they're cycling enthusiasts as well.
But I did it and, in the process, opened a door to a world I didn't know existed. Multiple streams commenting not just on my piece about cyclists, but on other articles I'd written, and almost all of them critical of me. Did I say "critical"? "Cretin", "retard", "dickhead", "ponce", "tosser"... you get the idea. I wasn't expecting an online love-in, but I honestly hadn't prepared myself for the dark world I'd entered.
One thread, entitled "Who's the biggest gob****e in Ireland?", ranked me at number five. Seriously, I was ranked as a bigger gob****e than Mark Little -- how can that be right?
What caught my eye, however, was not the lazy, barely articulate stream of expletives. What struck me were comments by people who claimed to know me. One blogger said, "I was in school with Michael, and he was a dickhead then". There were only about 200 boys in my school -- Sandford Park -- so I should know him.
Another contributor seemed to feel strongly that I was a chief factor in the disintegration of western civilisation yet, curiously, he hadn't thought of coming up to me in person and telling me this. He's had plenty of opportunity to do so, as he admits he goes to the same gym as me -- it's a small, city centre gym, so again that cuts it down to maybe 20 people. But instead, he's gone home to his rented room and one-bar heater, and expressed his opinion online. Why?
I don't know who either of these people are because, following in the noble tradition of internet bloggers, the men in question don't give their names. Instead, they hide behind an alias and because they do this, they feel brave enough to say what they really think, the irony, of course, being that anonymous blogging is the ultimate form of cowardice.
I can take criticism. Anyone who is fond enough of themselves to put their mug on TV is fair game. I get paid for my opinions, bizarre and extreme though they sometimes are, and like nothing more than an argument with someone who doesn't agree with a word I say. When people come up to me to talk about my brief flirtation with TV or my newspaper columns, they're almost always complimentary.
Not one person has ever come up and hurled the kind of abuse at me that you'd believe I deserved if all you did was trawl the internet. It's not like I'm physically threatening either, so there's no danger of me simply nutting someone I don't agree with. In writing this, of course I'm inviting more bile from the blogosphere. And in a perverse way, I'm looking forward to it, especially to see if I can attract a response from one single blogger who sticks to these three rules that traditional journalists have to abide by: Your comments stand up to some form of scrutiny; You express them in grammatically correct English; And you put your name at the end. My picture's at the top of this page, and a tiny bit of research will reveal where I can be found. So will a single blogger come out of the shadows and put their name, and maybe their face, to their criticism? I'm not holding my breath.
Gotta love the guy for rolling out all the stereotypes underneath the sun related to the Internet. You've been told people, we're all nerds, we all live in bedsits, we don't use gramatically correct English and we all spout off without backing up what we say with facts.
