Welcome to the Angsternet?

Call me naive, but "I sense a disturbance in the Force" on the Internet. However, whether you feel it or not is entirely dependent upon what you've seen, heard, and experienced on/about the web lately.

I opened up an online paper this morning to discover that a father of two had hanged himself on a videochat inside an 'insults' chatroom. Personally, I don't know why anyone who think that throwing around "humorous" insults at other people would be amusing - I mustn't possess the gene for that kind of 'entertainment?'

However, my thoughts on this topic began earlier this weekend when I noticed that a "guest editor" on YouTube was introducing all sorts of strange, negative, angst-driven material. I can certainly appreciate that documenting people's depression and 'hard times' can an 'art form,' but when it's unmoderated, condoned, encouraged, and let loose in the wild the psycholinguistic affect can be devastating.

When YouTube began, pretty much anything you posted was appreciated by its then-small audience. However, it's been increasingly developing into a scolding, judgmental playground where people find it 'amusing' to deride and criticize others... and, subsequently, it's developed a "big city mentality" where you can run and hide if you make mistakes, and just "switch crowds" if you seriously offend someone.

This seriously disturbs me. I have long been an advocate for utilizing the potential of such an amazing tool, but it seems like the democracy and open-minded spirit that originally drove the YouTube community is losing its way. This weekend one of the amusing users that I subscribed to a while back was "featured" on the front page of the site, but then she received torrents of abuse and criticism. I then followed her subsequent decline - she started making bleary-eyed "rants," as she was obviously harrowed by the experience. I've tried to encourage her, but of course, she's publicly putting on a brave face, and trying to act like none of this affected her. I beg to differ. This is dangerous territory - people are starting to script messages for other users like, "Why don't you just die, b***ch!" No matter how resilient you are, this can't be a positive experience for any human.

I composed a message to YouTube staff this afternoon:

"I am an educator, but I'm also a general user of YouTube. Over the past
week the featured videos (and where they're linked to) have plummeted into
depressing and unncecessarily weird avenues that are just going to spark
more dissent against YouTube by people who don't understand what it can
do. I teach in Asia, and I use YouTube as an educational tool, but there
are many schools across the US where YouTube has been completely banned.
I'm worried that the direction that the feature section is taking, and the
lack of ACTUAL good conduct in many areas of YouTube are going to be a
tipping point that creates even more oppositional sentiment for the site.

So is it just about controversy and revenue, or are the people in charge
actually concerned about the fact that the "mood" on YouTube might
actually affect the "mood" in wider society... that's the kind of power
the site has, so I'm pleading with the editors to not abuse it.

Don't be evil!"

...I love the potential of YouTube, but I definitely don't want to become part of what I've started to refer to as 'The Angersternet.' If a fruit store sells you enough rotten apples, then no matter how good it was in the past, you're going to decide to shop elsewhere.