Legislating "nice"

It seems that our friends in the Garden State have decide that people just aren’t being nice enough to each other on message boards, so some state officials would like to legislate it. Now before everyone gets their knickers in a knot, it would be interesting to look at this impartially. In a proverbial “perfect world”, there wouldn’t be all of the rudeness and intolerance that exists online. It is the anonymity of the Internet that blesses us with the ability to speak our mind without fear of repercussion (in most cases at least). That same anonymity allows people to more or less be their true selves, which in many cases, is not a very attractive thing. I would like to distinguish between perhaps stating something that may not be popular to many with general rudeness. In a sense it’s very similar to how many of us behave in our vehicles. We have a metal cocoon that insulates us from having to act with civility to others. (Again I understand that my generalizations certainly do not apply to everyone, and despite my protestations to the contrary, probably have applied to me on more than one occasion.) People do things to others on the roads that they would never do in person without their metal shell. The Internet is even more enabling, since you are pretty much untraceable (to the average message board poster at least, I don’t believe anything done on the Internet is actually anonymous). To summarize, a lot of people out there are jerks, and when they are freed to behave as they wish through a perceived removal from responsibility, well, we have all seen that. Many people are very considerate of others no matter the situation, but it just takes a few to really make things unpleasant.

Now to look at the proposed solution, they would have everyone provide a real name and address in order to post on specific web sites. I don’t know who proposes to maintain that information, but it sounds like a logistical nightmare, privacy concerns notwithstanding. Which is worse to us, having to deal with the name calling jerks on message boards, or having to hand out private, identifying information? I am sure that many message boards and websites already require that sort of information, but for the government to require it, or collect it, seems a little chilling. I am not naïve to the fact that for most of us, our personal information is already out there, ready for the taking by the technically semi-knowledgeable. That doesn’t mean that we should have to hand it out in order to post on a public website. It still seems like a silly piece of legislation, no matter how you slice it.