Real life and virtual

Beer Moth

You are right in identifying the reasons why there is so much spleen knocking around. There is indeed a great helplessness abroad, and the sense that fundamental rights are being lost is very acute. A residual yet homeless conservatism is at work.

In such a climate, the natural tendency is to gravitate toward some dependable base at which people can hope to be understood and through which their concerns might be bolstered by the articulation of others. One of these bases has traditionally been the Spectator, and yet even here we find that the very movement we bemoan, has taken hold.

Such that despite the many astute items raised in these pages (the site as a whole), there persists a general undercurrent which prevents the ship being turned head on into what many perceive as a coming storm; there is yet, a 'house reluctance' to tackle the inevitable. It's a kind of psychological disorder - Neather syndrome - and in such a situation, the boundaries of courtesy will at times be crossed by those aggrieved.

Gregor Hunter

Nah. We are rude on the internet is because, instead of pouring our ire on the creases and frowns of a human face a few feet away, we are rude to a computer. We hate our computers and spare them no insult - lifeless, expensive, RSI-causing wastes of our time and energy that they are. And it's much easier to be rude to an object.

The solution is to grow a thicker skin. Failing that, state-provided netiquette lessons for all. But fat chance of that.

Snowman

If I may suggest Susan, humbly and respectfully, Beer Moth @ 4.00 gets closer to the roots of anger than you. It’s not that things’ve gone badly wrong, they often do, after all to err is anything but human. It’s the deadly feeling of impotence of each of us of not being able to do anything about it. The Daily Mail has been banging about the lunacy of our criminal justice policy for years, and it gets loonier still, viz the story of a murderess sentenced to life, but absconding on a shopping trip two years into her sentence. Other examples of lunacy abound, even the Guardian have joined the queue. It seems as if virtually every institution that has a bearing on the governance of the country has been populated by creatures from the outer space impervious to common sense.

Just ponder abit about the rise of the BNP, a party of largely pub rousers led by a man one would be reluctant to entrust a lemon for fear he will repatriate it. Nearly one million people cast their votes for them at the latest EU election. Bet you none of them can be classed as racist. They found it a home because, weird as it may sound, this lot of arm waving bigots seems to be the only possible avenue out of the lingering impotence that many feel.

Still, welcome back from what one would hope was a successful tour.

Bunnykins

Susan, the anonymous internet is a boon for rude, irrational and uneducated people. The best thing for someone who writes a blog is to offer an opinion and then run for cover - never to return. People do have pent up rage, which I may add, is often stoked by the media, however, you can soon recognise the cut of someone's jib when they think no-one's watching. Blogs and call centres etc give such people the only cover they need to unleash the side of them that they haven't the guts to show in public.
Regarding your last paragraph, surely the deliberate smashing of crockery is every bit as uncouth and ill-mannered as swearing.

porkbelly

Well-said, but isn't it also true that bloggers themselves are occasionally guilty of posting ill-considered nonsense that would never see the light of day in their print columns...perhaps after a drink or three? There have been postings (elsewhere on this site, needless to say) that have had the whiff of the grape about them. They are responded to in the spirit (hic) in which they are written.

Joanna Murphy

At the risk of sounding gratuitously contrary: what's wrong with a bit of knockabout spleen, Susan? Surely we're all grown up and can look after ourselves? I'm all for people getting stuff off their chests in the most vigorous terms possible, excluding feeble-minded swearing. Too much store is set by British 'good manners'. Conversely, the attractive ebullience of the Continental approach, the so-called 'Latin temperament', revolves around immediacy and spontaneity, as opposed to our stifling sense of Anglo-Saxon reserve. It is my experience that a great deal of honesty is given vent in the heat of the moment, that would otherwise moulder in the dank confines of repressed conscience. - Moreover, having, over the past twenty years, been bound by the bible of political correctness, yea even unto madness, the last thing we need is yet another excessively (over)sensitive rule-book to guide our self-expression. come on Susan, have at you, you daft old......

SUSAN HILL

Joanna. No. Others above you have disagreed in large or small measure with what I said but they have done so with courtesy. I am not over-sensitive and my skin is not thin. I have been a writer for 50 years and you learn to take it on the chin. But rudeness, unpleasantness, ugly language, name-calling, are NOT acceptable. Spleen can be vented in other ways.
On the subject of the crockery, my friend bought chipped cups and saucers at jumble sales, specifically for the purpose. No new china was harmed in the making of her throwing-cupboard.

Dave B

The culture varies from one website to another. On most of the (IT) websites I browse, the culture seems to have changed to be more polite over the past few years. Perhaps the same will happen to Coffee House?

EC

Dear Susan Hill,

First of all you tell us what a fine commentariat that the Specator has, and then you go on to equate it with the rest of the internet which you say is a "cess-pit."

Then in support of your opening remarks you go on to say,

"I am not, though, happy to be ‘spoken to like that’, to be bullied, abused, sworn at and name-called. I may well be wrong about any given subject, but I am not an idiot, a twerp, brainless, a silly cow, a fascist/leftie/middle-class moron and I object to being treated as such..."

Please can you supply examples of dates, times and commenters where you have been abused in those terms. I cannot find any.

You did provoke a mild reaction last week (Mon 16th @6:03pm) after you found time to come on to the Coffeehousers' Wall and comment. This in itself was unusual as I cannot remember Rod, Melanie Phillips, Mr Massie etc. or any of the other coffeehouse bloggers ever doing that.

The Spectator website is, currently, a free public forum where the people haven't paid to see anyone. The British, particularly the English, have historically been possessed of a healthy attitude towards authority. i.e. skepticism and disrespect. The comments on the Spectator website reflect this atttitude and are expressed in many ways including plain speaking, downright forthright, humourous, satire, lampooning, gallows humour etc. This site is good because of this and not despite of this.

So, finally in the spirit of good natured banter....

I'll leave you with the following thought - which hopefully you will find constructive and helpful in your blogging career. "It is only a short road from Ambridge to Umbridge but you don't have to take it!"

Best regards
EC

PS. I won't use the "A" word ever again. Honest ;-))

Bunnykins

EC: Interesting points, but one still doesn't have to be rude and offensive to make a point. The very best posts on the Spectator blogs are the ones which trade rage for measured comment and spleen for satire. None of Susan's topics have been particularly controversial, but perhaps she's seen the filth that Melanie Phillips has received and is commenting on her behalf?

SUSAN HILL

I was not speaking about comments only to my own blogs but to those of others, nor indeed only about comments on CH. Three offensive comments to my own blog were reported and removed by the mods. last week.
And if anyone else mentions Ambridge.....

Cuffleyburgers

A similar phenomenon has been remarked in the use of work emails in which it is extremely common that people are ruder, brusquer and generally less polite than they would be over the phone or face to face.

So yes the computer as intermediary seems to tend to lead to rudeness.

However, the point about the anger is spot on. Many of the articles on which we are commenting describe things which quite rightly make us extremely angry in large part because we know we are impotent to do anything to fix the wrongs in question. We are for example disgusted and exasperated by the utter incompetence, duplicity and venality of the government and its members, by the loss of sovereignty of Lisbon, by the wholesale betrayal of our culture and values suggested by Neathergate, the dangerous and expensive delusion that would seem to be the AGW scam etc The only thing we can do is make furious postings, and sometimes if the article writer says or espouses something particularly idiotic, as occasionally Korski and Massie do and of course, the socialist, Bright does, it is hardly to be wondered at that the red mist comes down ...

In general CH posters seem impassioned but humourous, and rather well written. You should read the gratuitously offensive tripe served up in the grauniad's cif pages. In general a lot less polite, less eloquent and frequently deeply abusive, and very seldom worth reading.

SUSAN HILL

Entirely agree about the Graun - not to mention the Daily Mail comments. CH is exemplary by comparison.

cmcarpenter

Susan: Your comment about the public anger rooms brought to mind the room called the Growlery in Dickens' Bleak House. Not the same, of course, although I have known many people I thought should be sent to a Growlery.

London Calling

Dear Susan

Congratulations on your Book Tour.

On the current issue of this months Spectator, President Obama is missing his head and left hand. Do you consider it rude and offensive to portray him this way? Is the virtual image appropriate considering the US is at war with terrorists who chop off their victims heads and hands? mmmm

Recently both R.Liddle and A.Massie both used the ‘F’ word in their blog posts, did you poke them with your broom and reprimand them? mmmm

I think they call it freedom of expression…I dislike foul language, but other than that I wouldn’t go all PC on ones right to express themselves. I note the comments on your blog posts to date have been more than polite…so far so good ;)

You mentioned in a earlier post that your friend throws chipped crockery at a wall to express anger, my father use to do that with his dinner plate, the memory of food slowly slipping down the dining room wall makes me laugh now, but as a child this was no example on how to express anger, I was petrified, I have never seen a roast potato become mashed as quickly since… Thank you for reminding me…:)

Fergus Pickering

My rule, which of cours I break from time to time, is not to be gratuitously offensive to the blogger, even the charming, and I DO mean charming, Rod Liddle to whom gratuitous offence is a way of life, and certainly not to you. But I do like being offensive to the curious pond life that comments of the blogs. The curious pod life might indeed include me. You shouldn't dish it out if you can't take it etc etc. It may be a sex thing, a gender thing I mean. Men are less inclined to take abuse personally. You notice this in parliament. Thius may be the MCP in me, but I couldn't bring myself to personally abuse a woman, not even Polly Toynbee. Well, on second thoughts I make an exception for Polly Toynbee. What, incidentally, would be your opinion on the personal abuse of, say, Alexander Pope? @this painted child of dirt that stinks and stings' - that sort of thing.