A week ago I saw an article about the unabashed racist comments on the Internet that you don’t hear in public conversations. At the start of the article, the author of the piece asks several rhetorical questions, concerning what this means: Is racism on the rise or has the progress in race relations been an illusion? Personally, I think it more the later. Racism, as well as other prejudices, have moved underground from fear of public outcry denouncing such comments as despicable. Prejudice comments can ruin careers and when their true feelings slip out in public they get so much flack in the media that they are forced to publicly apologize. Except for people like Ann Coulter, who make a living out of being an angry, hateful bigot. It is true that “politically correct” may have gone a little too far in what is offensive, but the reason people complain about PC is that they cannot speak their mind, especially when those beliefs and feelings are of a prejudice nature.

The anonymity that the Internet affords a person, liberates them to be able to air their thoughts without the fear of ruining their reputation. And even if they destroy their online reputation, one can just create another persona under a different ID. This not only occurs in posts on the Internet, but I have also seen it on PS Home. Conversations in a public place on PS Home are not in the slightest private. It may feel like a personal conversation, but it is not. The whole world is listening in (or more succinctly reading in) on your conversation. It is like one Massively Multiplayer Online Chat Room (MMOCR)[You heard it here first]. There are lurkers everywhere, watching people and listening in on other conversations; a sort of voyeurism. And these lurkers feel that it is their duty to comment on you and your conversation. I have witnessed people spouting all kinds of filth on PS Home. And if they get banned all they have to do is create a new ID linked to a different email address and they are back on. Again hiding behind an avatar allows them to be as rude, prejudice, and racist as they want.

So my point in all of this is that things may have gotten slightly better, but most people are only not voicing their prejudice remarks out of fear of the response from the community. Among social animals, including humans, this is how behavior is controlled. And with the Internet, unfortunately, all of these social controls have been lost.