Tom describes being threatened on a New York street, then argues that "it's just the internet" is a cop-out. Online behavior should follow the same moral rules as real life, not get a free pass because it's digital.
Well, hi, it's Tom. Could you imagine this scene? You're walking down the street. For me, I'm walking down the street in New York City, and I'm on the Upper East Side, and I'm walking 81st and 2nd. I'm walking down the street And somebody walks up to me and says, "Fuck you, motherfucker." Huh. And I go, "Wow." And I walk down the street a little more and the same person cuts in front of me and says, "I said fuck you, motherfucker." Wow. And I keep walking. Now I'm a little worried. I walk a little more and this person comes up and says, "I know your name and I'm going to come after you and I'm going to come after your wife and I'm going to come—" And I go, "Whew! Officer, over here! We got somebody that needs attention." So that's what we do in life. When we have people in our lives who are outside the boundaries of normal civil interchange, we have recourse. We have ways of saying This is okay. This is not okay. Now, we've been engaged in a lot of conversations here online about these kind of issues, and very frequently what I hear and what many of us hear is, "Hey, it's the internet. It's only the internet." You know, deal with it, toughen up, suck it up, what's wrong with you? Wow. So we've got the world and then we've got the internet, and somehow the world has rules, conventions, practices Thousands of years, thousands of years of history and death and sacrifice and thought, and because we engage with one another through a piece of wire, that means that all of that goes away? It's just the internet, it doesn't matter anymore? What kind of nonsense is this? What kind of craziness is this to think that, well, because it's done here in this way, that it doesn't count, it doesn't matter somehow? Wait a minute, we didn't progress all of these years to get to a point where the epitome of our technological and intellectual progress was going to create a place in which It doesn't matter what you do or say when we've done everything that we could possibly do to make it very much matter what you do and say in the world. So I just wanted to say that this idea that there is a difference between the way you behave online and the way you behave in the real world, and that somehow this difference is gonna be sustained sustainable over time, and that somehow it's okay to be any kind of fool that you want to be over here online because over here in real life, "I'm really a good person. I'm a student. I really am a good son. I'm a good daughter. I work really hard." You know what? It's not gonna be okay. We are not going to permit our lives to be split by technology the way they are now. And that's the key to what's going to make the site that we're thinking about different from any other place that you've been so far. So take it easy, and we'll see you soon. Bye-bye.
