Internet communication - field of battle or platform for discussion?

The Guardian article on Stephen Fry, "technofile and twillionaire", who has recently been considering "committing Twittercide", in other words leaving Twitter, gives food for thought. An avid twitter having quite a renommee for his sharp wit and smart retorts, Stephen Fry appears to be immune to Twitter challenges - comments of users which are quite often unpleasant or even gross. But even Mr. Fry admitted to feeling frustrated with the low level of culture of internet communication.


Lots of people seem to feel protected by a solid shield of cyberspace separating them from their interlocutors, and that makes them behave in a much bolder way on Facebook, Twitter, Livejournal and all kinds of other social networks and forums than they would do in a real life conversation. It looks as if hidden behind their usernames and avatars people have no longer to face "flesh and blood" opponents but rather some kind of a "virtual character" who has no name, no face and no voice. The whole personality is squeezed into an obscure username and avatar picture that may not reveal anything about the user at all.


Can it be so that thanks to the anonymity of internet communication some users perceive people they interact with in the web as "unidentified objects" having no feelings to take into consideration while posting another nasty comment? The topics of discussion can be different ranging from political issues to climate change to this autumn's fashion trends or favourite football clubs. But judging by what I've witnessed, there would always be a number of people humiliating their opponents' views or ridiculing them. They can argue that they are only expressing their opinions. But I firmly believe that "freedom of self-expression of one person shouldn't be an insult for another". I bet that most of those people, well, at least a certain percentage of them, wouldn't dream of phrasing their points of view in the same harsh and sometimes even obscene way in a face-to-face or even a phone chat. Why?


Can it be so that some people follow moral and ethical norms of behaviour in their everyday social life only fearing a severe verbal reaction (and maybe not only verbal) if they fail to do so? And once in internet they enjoy total impunity and permit themselves wicked lash-outs on those who dare to disagree with them or in some other way arouse their negative feelings? If this is the case we could probably consider this as one of the side-effects of web interaction. Which is sad if you come to think of it.


The internet offers so many opportunities to socialise shortening distances and ignoring time zones between people, and it would be a shame to turn it into a field of battle instead of using it as a platform for discussion. Probably enforcing more rigid restrictions on the acceptable ways of self-expression in the internet would be a good initiative and would be one more step towards tolerance and open-mindedness.