California Stripped for Export

@twitter, you really do need to look at your abuse policy. Like, formulate one, you know?

Anyone who wonders what it would be like to live in a world where Spinozism actually ruled need only consider the gigantic descent of conatus upon the head of feminist Caroline Criado-Perez on Twitter today, for the successful campaign to put the head of Jane Austen on sterling notes.

Blogger, Twitter, and Facebook are California, the dark side of, stripped for export, in a box. A world of dirty looks and instant judgment.

What can a body do? Gang up on others...

I fear that Mary Beard had it quite wrong when, having been dive bombed similarly a while back, she argued that in the end people would learn some kind of etiquette online.

Hmmm, online etiquette--let's call it "netiquette"...only that already happened, in about 1990. Now that everyone is online, as it were, we have descended from the vaguely libertarian days into pure superego suction.

Mary Beard had it backwards. Etiquette came first. That was when there was the illusion that online space was a kind of suspension: a world separated from the physical one by an irreducible gap. Then came the Spinozan collapse.

It's the dark undertow on Stinson beach, dudes...

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