Collide Magazine

Let me ask you this: How many times a week do you witness one person verbally attack or assault another? I mean yelling, screaming, cussing, harsh words, derogatory statements, insults, and degrading accusations — how often do you see that kind of thing in public? It could be on the street, in a mall, in your workplace, or at the park. How many times a week do you come across that kind of thing?

Unless you live in New York City (OK, that’s probably unfair), your answer is likely to be zero. In a given week, you don’t witness that kind of thing.

Now, let me ask you this: How many times a week do you witness one person attack or assault another person online? I mean yelling, screaming, cussing, harsh words, derogatory statements, insults, and degrading accusations — how often do you see that kind of thing online?

If you know where to look — Christian sites and otherwise — you see this kind of behavior weekly (if not daily) in the content or comments of a blog post. In fact, one of the things many church leaders, anti-theists, and everyone in between have in common is their willingness to eviscerate someone online, where they don’t have to look their victim in the eye or audibly voice their vitriol.

Now, don’t tell me that technology doesn’t change us.

UPDATE: Tony Morgan wrote a nice post on why his convictions result in a boring blog. Love it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 8:43 am and is filed under The Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.