More Nastiness, Anger, Sexual Comments on Internet

This is a good description, IMO, of how society is changing. It's a rapid change I think, because of the constant segregation of the young from the old. This is also true in our churches.

On the Renew America blog, the writer thinks the Internet has promoted this. Here are some fo the things this blogger says:

Anyone who has posted to an Internet message board knows how quickly interactions can sour. This is because the coldness and anonymity of the medium removes inhibitions and the incentive to be polite. That is to say, it's relatively hard to look into someone's eyes and be condescending, dismissive or downright nasty, and not just because you have to worry about a punch in the mouth. But it happens as a matter of course when he is reduced to a screen name and bits and bytes, because he is then disassociated from his humanity.

This brings us to the most important point in this piece: This anonymity breeds not just nastiness but also vulgarity and lewdness. Yet even this understates the problem, as, in reality, it destroys every wall of propriety that should exist among the family of man.

For example, go into many Internet chatrooms and you will see new acquaintances making sexual comments to one another that, were they to have met in person, would never have passed their lips.


This blogger is probably talking about society in general, but believe me, if you go into Christian Internet chat rooms, you will see this same thing. And it isn't just once in a while either. I finally had to get out of these Christian chat rooms and forums, especially the theological discussion ones because there were so many angry hateful "Christians" in them.

The blogger says near the end of the post,

The young today are immersed in a virtual world in which coarseness, nastiness, decadence, perversion, superficiality, egoism and nihilism are the norm. They are instilled with moral relativism's only guide, "If it feels good, do it," and then their feelings are twisted in the worst possible way, through vile entertainment, so that what feels good is cultural poison. The result is that we are breeding barbarians wholly incapable of sustaining a healthy constitutional republic.

Along these same lines, I am currently reading a book by the author of Generation Me which I think is one of the best books I've read in the last 5 years. Dr. Jean Twenge is the author and professor of psychology at California State University San Diego. Her new book written with another psychology professor is entitled The Narcissism Epidemic. I will report on it as I read it, but it certainly pertains to the above blog post as the reason for all of this unpleasantness, especially from the younger generation.