Missed Manners

Cosmo Kramer just barged in on Jerry again. Where does he think he is? That tweet was ALL IN CAPS. Please don’t shout! Some joker hacked my site and inserted “funny pictures” (“Oops, sorry: my mistake”—Rep. Weiner).

Why do otherwise normal people act like savages in cyberspaces? Where do they think they are? Anyway?

The old saying,”When in Rome, do as the Romans do” doesn’t seem to apply when everyone else seems to be roamin’ aimlessly in a nowhere land.

In the early days of programming—say, when someone was Beta testing in Basic--a novice user could drive his curser out of the program and land in a dead space on the screen where no rule seemed to apply, and the only escape was a hard reboot. Some savvy mentor gently had to lead that person back to the land of legitimate keystrokes and commands—help to put his mouse back into the running.

People who travel to foreign lands act like that lost cursor, too. Not knowing the local customs, when they intrude into some fabled exotic civilization, they adopt clothing styles they never would be seen in at home, and act abominably—shouting at the locals who don’t seem to understand plain English.

Now, of course, we have Rosetta Stone.

People who flame others online exhibit poor “Netiquette.” The need for a Miss Manners became extreme when everybody swarmed into the Internet and clogged the information superhighways, letting it all hang out: Whoopee! Express yourself anonymously! Spill whatever is on your chest and get it off!

The problem is, what belongs to everyone ends up belonging to no one. And people assume that there are no rules that apply there in Nowhere Land. But “Nature abhors a vacuum.” There are those who are ready to step up and try to apply remedies.

Now, for example, the big providers all make us sign contracts agreeing to behave ourselves on line. However, not all of us have honored our promises to behave. Some Cosmos still have the habit of snooping in other people’s mail, running up charges on other people’s credit, sending anonymous threats and fake promises, or short-sheeting other people’s Net sites as a form of recreation. So now should we worry if Big Brother is also Big Nosy-Parker, tracking our every misstep?

Where’s the fun in that?

Of course, if you live in glass (or silicon) houses, rock-tossing is an ill-advised recreation. It behooves us to learn to govern ourselves, lest someone else decides to step in and do it for us.