Thomas Friedman has a column in today's NYT (sorry, it's Times Select -- fancy!) with more about how the young'uns and how the whole world is diff'rent now, man.
The world is flat! This time, it's because of blogs and MySpace and Facebook and JDate.
Friedman's theory this time is that if you act stupid or nasty on the Internet as a wee nerdling, your stupidity or nastiness could make you famous for stupidity and nastiness. Forevah! -- on account of the bits and bytes persist on the Internet for all time and are available as cached Google pages to any potential date, employer, in-law, landlord, friend, prosecutor, persecutor, or stalker.
According to the fad book he quotes today ("How," by Dov Seidman), "The tapestry of human behavior is so varied, so rich and so global that it presents a rare opportunity, the opportunity to outbehave the competition." (emphasis Friedman's)
Ah, what a rare opportunity the Internet has given us. I can hardly wait to see everyone competing to outbehave me on the Internet.
PWNED, n00b! U call that b3h@vng?!
Now, to be fair, the Friedman article kinda mushes together the effect on businesses (who may in fact be shamed into behaving) with the effect on individuals, but...
...anyone who looks at the Internet, which basically enables numberless opportunities for anonymously acting like a complete jerk, and sees it as an opportunity for outbehaving... hasn't really looked at the Internet.
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