The comments sections in TED videos and the more serious Youtube videos are often full of weirdos. Neurotic, abusive, weirdos. It's probably the biggest problem with the internet. Related to, but separate from, the uncivilized manner in which people interact with each other.
It really makes me wonder, are 90 percent of people in the world like this, with the self-control to retain composure in public? Or does the internet just get filled with the shouting of a vocal minority?
I'm going to be optimistic and say that it's the latter...
Though I often feel it's the former.
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I think that the internet is indeed a playground for the social misfits of the world and I tend to lean more to that group making up the social minority. I for instance would like to think I'm a fairly well-educated woman with a decent amount of social decorum and perhaps it is for that reason that I've never left a comment on a blog or youtube clip (now being an exception) and of the two mediums I view plenty on a regular basis. I think my self-imposed 'golden silence' is more to do with not seeing the merit in starting a discourse with the aforementioned simians that flood the internet. I do forward interesting blogs or articles to friends but then of course that is because I know I have a worthy intellectual discourse to look forward to. So perhaps it is indeed the small minority who actually inhibit the hopefully reasonable majority.
I think you're right.
And it's a similar story even in the physical public sphere- it's usually a small number of menaces at question time in debates, say, who spoil the vent.
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