internet cowardice

Trust me. I love the internet as much as the rest of you. It allows me to keep in touch with old friends, make new ones, shop for products never before accessible to me, learn just about anything about a gazillion different subjects and the list goes on. Increasingly though I have become uncomfortable with the anonymity factor the internet provides. Anonymity that allows predators to prey, bullies to bully and general nastiness to abound. Its disturbingly interesting to see comments made by people who would most likely never dare to say those things in public. The anonymity factor provides swagger, and some parody of courage. Because anything can be said without repercussion or consequence, everything is. Skinny jr. high boys talking smack like they're grown men with a dangerous physique, little girls acting like they are fully developed women with voracious sexual appetites. Flip back through some of the comments on this blog and you will see shining examples. Comments left anonymously whose only point has been to degrade,insinuate, to insult and potentially hurt. Comments that no one would dare say to someones face or leave their name to, and this is just a little blog where I should and wish I was free to say whatever comes to mind on this small little piece of the internet I call mine. I can't think of too many people that would come and urinate all over my home, but in the secretness of the internet they can piss all over this blog. I should probably turn the comments off for anonymous users, but there is some strange curiousity in watching how humans behave when they feel like no one is watching. Gavan sees it on the SBX website all the time. Little morons who make ridiculous and obscene comments but would be shaking in their boots if they actually dared to say the same words aloud. What bothers me is it won't be long until this behaviour starts to become so normal that anonymity won't even matter anymore. People will just say whatever they want regardless of what effect it will have or what the consequences will be or who it hurts, even though in the long run it will probably be themselves. It's a sick sick world.