The I-Hate-Your-Face version of Facebook

The Internet makes the bathroom wall for gossip enormous

I remember vividly the first time I was defamed. It was 6th grade in Mr. Dacey’s Earth Sciences class. I sat down at my desk to discover an anonymous note saying many terrible things about me, most notably that I was a “slut.”

Though I hadn’t even kissed a boy at that point — I was a pretty nerdy shy kid — the note rocked my world. I remember staring into the bathroom mirror that night and wondering, “Am I a slut?” Our egos are incredibly fragile in the pre-teen and teenage years, and easily warped by hurtful words.

Using middle school investigative tactics, I figured out I had snubbed the slanderer at lunch the day before, and the note had been her revenge. I threw out the note — no one knew about it beyond our small group. All was forgiven (but obviously not forgotten, as it’s still a strong memory for me now 16 years later).

Thanks to the digital age, anonymous notes have made the leap online. First, there was Juicy Campus — a site devoted to gossip on college campuses — which the Great Recession managed to kill in February. Now, the gossip sites are getting younger. The homepage for People’s Dirt shows a world map and asks in big letters, “Got Dirt?” The site is attracting the high school set, reports the Washington Post:

Unlike the world of graffiti in restroom stalls, the site’s digital insults and accusations are more lasting, profuse and widely read, with the site claiming more than 3 million page views a day since the Whitman incident. Some students shrug off the crude remarks. But to others — and their parents — they can be alarming, humiliating or painful.

“This site takes all the mean-spirited and negative elements of Facebook and other sites that have a lot of positive aspects and puts them in one place,” said Kathy Cowan of the National Association of School Psychologists, who has watched the site with concern. “It’s like the sludge of Internet activity. There is nothing redeeming.”

via Slur-Filled Teen Web Site Devastating for Some but Just Shy of Being Illegal – washingtonpost.com.

The Internet is just the digital manifestation of the real world. Gossip is going to happen regardless. Is the 23-year-old site administrator’s defense that there needs to be an “avenue for people to express their feelings, their emotions and their secrets . . . anonymously” legitimate?

As one People’s Dirt target told the Washington Post:

Still, it “didn’t cause me any trouble or make me mad,” he said, “because I’m in high school, and high schoolers talk behind people’s backs all the time.”

Last week, I attended a panel discussion on Digital Defamation: Cyberbullying and the First Amendment at the Paley Center for Media. The First Amendment lawyers in attendance pointed out that the laws protecting our intellectual property are much stronger than those protecting our reputations. Online, there’s a constant tension between protecting our freedom of speech and our right to be protected from libel. At this point, the freedom to defame is stronger than the protections against defamation.

The moderator of the panel, Brooke Gladstone of NPR’s On The Media, suggested that we’ll get used to the viciousness that comes with anonymity online. “We’re increasingly living out loud, so we’ll be less vulnerable to distress,” she said.

I tend to agree with her. But I waver slightly when it comes to applying that logic to 15-year-olds. I mean, I worried that I was a slut and/or perceived as a slut in 6th grade, when I had not yet done any of the things that would entitle me to such a label. But again, I also wore coolats and went to see Disney’s Aladdin at the movie theater. Teenagers these days certainly look more mature than I and my classmates were at that age. Maybe they’re more adaptive when it comes to reacting to gossip as well.

I took a look at People’sDirt.com. Maryland is the most popular place for gossip at this point, with over 50,000 posts.  Montgomery County schools are especially gossipy places. I took a look at the posts at Gaithersburg High, and was underwhelmed by their nastiness. But maybe I have high standards for snark. Here’s an example:

To: Heather,and her fake ass weave havin friend, From:GHS…

LOOK, I SPEAK FOR ALL OF US AT GHS WHEN I SAY THIS.HEATHER AND VIOLA U NEED 2 GET THE f@%k OVER URSELFS AND SULK UR METH-ADDICT ASSES BACK INTO THT DARK DINGY CORNER WHERE U CAME FROM
METH-b*t&h
ur b*t&h ass needs to STFU and die..seriously no1 likes u.as much as u think they do, they all jus make fun of u when u turn around and feel good abt urself..its a false emotion..i mean rly have u looked in the mirror l8ly…u look like a f***in horse tht jus got tied to the bumper of a truck and draged across town and then shot 3 pops of herione, OD’d,died, and came back to life as a zombie with a hunch-back..dude seriously kill urself…(f***nut)

VIOLA
ok first of all…WTF r u doin w/ ur life…not only can no1 understand a word thts coming out of ur mouth, but u keep on talking like sum1s actually listening and gives a f@%k. NO1 gives a rats ass abt u or wut u have to say so keep ur mouth shut..2nd: TAKE…A F***ING..SHOWER!!..b*t&h ITS CALLED SECRET AND U JUS TOLD EVERY1 URS!!

The person who should be most embarrassed by that is the author. Terrible grammar.

Another panelist at the Paley Center talked about “mutually assured humiliation” when it comes to social networking sites. He meant it in terms of our interactions with employers, but I think it can apply to gossip as well. What keeps us from gossiping in person? Fear of the repercussions.  Though the note I found in Mr. Dacey’s class was anonymous, I figured out pretty quickly who had written it. Slander on PeoplesDirt.com may be anonymous, but oftentimes it will be as easy to figure out who’s writing nasty things about you and to snub them at lunch for a week.

“Heather” appeared to have figured out the author of the above post, judging from this response:

really kirsten. i thought u said u were done with this. get a freaking life.
-heather