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A blog post concerning last week’s Country Music Association Awards was posted by an "Entertainment Weekly" blogger just before 9 a.m. Nov. 12. In two hours, there were 102 comments.
The comments varied in their takes on the blogger’s opinions, but some just seemed out of place.
Natasha wrote, "… Sorry but i don’t think (Taylor Swift) should have one anything but entertainer of the year."
Corey responded, "You don’t think she should have ‘WON’ anything but entertainer of the year."
Kind of petty, perhaps. But welcome to the snarky world of the Internet.
Time magazine named the computer Man of the Year in 1983, the same year the United States got its first cell-phone network, and the country hasn’t looked back since.
These inventions have not only changed the way we share information, but they’ve changed the way consumers respond to that information, says Michelle Drouin, an assistant psychology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
In face-to-face or traditional telephone communication, a response is immediate.
Through a computer, and through text messaging, there’s usually a lag. It can be easier to be snarky or confrontational, or even to lie, when the response to that comment isn’t immediate, Drouin says.
"It’s a difference between those communication mediums," she says. "It may lead people to say things that they might normally not.
"If they’re doing that anonymously, of course anonymity allows you a cloak to express how you really feel without the fear of the social judgment."
Being faceless gives these commentators more freedom, says Mike McNamara, a professor and chairman of the communication department at Trine University in Angola. People don’t need to take any responsibility for what they say; these are not the people who would ever submit a signed comment, McNamara points out.
"I think a lot of it is based on frustration by the reader/viewer/listener," he says. "(The Internet) is an avenue that wasn’t available before. These same people, even if they had this burn a year ago, I would believe 99 percent of them would not write a letter to the editor and sign it."
People who comment on these blogs or forum posts will often have a strong opinion on a certain issue, Drouin says. By focusing on something aside from the topic at hand – something like a grammatical error or a spelling error – a commentator devalues what the other says.
Why even bother?
"People have a lot of extra time on their hands?" Drouin says. "It seems like a rather trivial thing, doesn’t it?"
It all points back to changes in the media landscape, McNamara says. He references a problem in the NFL that would have been unheard of two years ago: tweeting football players.
The Radio Television Digital News Association is fighting the NFL for limiting certain media access, McNamara says.
Included in the change? Restricting players from posting to Twitter during a game.
"That may sound silly, but that’s where we’ve come in this business," McNamara says. "Can you imagine someone sitting on the sidelines, and they’re tweeting? You and I laugh, but that’s where we are today. That never happened, what, a year ago?"
