Nerve Endings Firing Away

The downside of social media is that lack of sensitivity in comment boxes thanks to the shield of the anonymity the Internet provides. Free speech should and must be protected however personal censorship is often not exercised much to the detriment of quality of debate online. We have often seen how seemingly racist speech on blogs is superceded by even more racist comments. The anonymity of the Internet in spite of the many benefit it affords us, has unfortunately let the latent ugliness in us to rear its unwelcome head.

CBS News found out this brutal fact recently when it was forced to disable comments on stories about presidential aspirant Barack Obama. Obama who is seeking the nomination for Democratic candidate for the Presidency is one of the few African-Americans making a serious bid for the White House. You would think that thanks to the Civil Rights movement more than 40 years ago, racism in America is on the decline. But as CBS found out that their constant monitoring and deletion of racist comments was simply not enough due to “the volume and the persistence” of the objectionable comments. Of course, CBS is completely within its rights to purge any content that it considers objectionable to its image but the fact that in today’s over-sensitive age, some can virtually get away with racist comments thanks to their anonymity is disappointing.

Many blogs let alone news websites have chosen to shut off comments altogether due to the lack of reasonable and civil debate by the commenters. Thankfully, the comments on this blog however few they might be have been greatly enlightening and civil. I make no bones about deleting clearly hurtful comments. Also, by the way the top commentors on this blog are now listed on the sidebar. I don’t have a blogroll but this list will serve a similar purpose and even give the contributors to this blog some Google juice.