Allow me to advance a radical thesis: Today’s outbreaks of nasty online behavior are directly linked to the history of the counterculture in America, and in particular to the war on drugs.
In order to build a bridge over what might at first seem like a huge distance, I’ll need to go over some background. It is widely perceived that the problem of uncivil conduct online has reached epidemic proportions. Michael Kinsley, a pioneer of confrontational political debate on cable television, recently wrote in Slate, “When you write for the Web, you open yourself up to breathtakingly vicious vitriol. People wish things on your mother, simply for bearing you, that you wouldn’t wish on Hitler.” David Pogue echoed this sentiment in The New York Times: “The deeper we sail into the new online world of communications, the sadder I get about its future....What’s really stunning is how hostile ordinary people ...
