We’ve all had a “Louie Fluet” moment, at one time or another: the occasional untimely blurt of personal information that we, really, should have kept to ourselves.

Damage from such outbursts is usually minimal. After all, how many people actually heard? Unwelcome truths aren’t usually screamed into crowded theaters.

Bellowed through the Internet’s megaphone, however, boasts of a harmless braggart like Fluet – the cyberslueth who posted the now-celebrated tale of the “investigation” he and his girlfriend, a grand juror, did into the murder case against Daniel Roberts on sunjournal.com – has the potential to reach millions.

Fluet’s turn as Inspector Clouseau has plummeted the Roberts case into turmoil, and pulled back the curtain on the pitfalls of online discussion, in which immediate thoughts can be transmitted across the globe before the messenger’s brain delivers the necessary synaptic response to catalyze a second thought.

And most Internet discussions, it seems, are conducted without thinking at all.

Like the obese woman in California, who recently gave birth two days after discovering her pregnancy. The blogosphere erupted in catcalls and cajolery against this poor soul, whose excess weight was exploited to define her entire existence. “A pig is a pig,” the invisible critics cried.

Balancing this descent into the depths of human ignorance is the real value online conversations can have, when issues are debated thoroughly and intellectually.

Internet chatter has righted wrongs, such as the infamous 2004 case of fraudulent documents relating to President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. CBS News was duped by a hot story, fed incorrect information to the public, and was outed, in short order, through the diligence of online investigators.

(Real ones, not the faux David Caruso that Fluet presented himself to be.)

The debacle spelled the end of Dan Rather at CBS, an unceremonious punctuation to his glittery journalism career, and signified a technical knockout for the Internet on the top-heavy, top-down world of national media.

Too often, however, online debates reflect the basest human emotion. We are quick to judge, quick to preach, and quick to attack. Without moderation, and sometimes cloaked in anonymity, discussions can fade from genteel disagreements into a squirming viper pit, its walls dripping with verbal venom.

Some Web sites, like Yahoo!, flooded their snakepits, and shut down discussion until the “value of the conversation” increases. Others, like the Washington Post, grapple with reviewing some 2,000 posts per-day, and goggle at the amount of uncontrollable vitriol it produces.

“If you’re an African-American and you read about someone being called a porch monkey, that overrides any positive thing that you would read in the comments,” Washington Post reporter Darryl Fears told the paper’s media columnist, Howard Kurtz, on March 26. “You’re starting to see some of the language you see on neo-Nazi sites, and that’s not good for The Washington Post or for the subjects in those stories.”

Most newspapers allowing online comments face this same realization: by providing a forum for immediate, and often unfettered, feedback, the value of its journalism can decline against the deluge of ignorance from certain online posters, nicknamed “trolls.”

I’ve seen the peaks and valleys. For every genuine soul-wrenching discussion, like about social issues such as drug addiction, there are troughs of intolerance where commentators prefer denigration over conversation. And there have been times the Web’s saved a life, like when a suicide note was posted on my previous newspaper’s Web site.

The poster’s peers immediately responded with notes of support, and eventually tracked the person’s address and notified police. The poster survived, with a little help from friends they had never met.

Ignorant debate does make Web users uncomfortable. A 2006 study from the University of Missouri found users prefer the placid waters of moderated online interaction, rather than churlish whitewater of lawless dialog. Such thinking, though, runs counter to the populist nature of the Web – do we really want Big Brother watching us?

Apparently, we prefer supervision to chaos.

Social scientists love Web interaction, and some call it the second coming of community in America, a replacement for our traditional binds as they loosen and fall away. Social networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook are the forebears of this cultural digi-revolution.

With all the emphasis on talking, however, those listening and reading must be recognized, and respected. Online commentary is a growing media force – bloggers are given front row seats at the Scooter Libby trial, and comprise a growing percentage of talking heads on television and radio – but its power must be harnessed.

For every nasty online gibe, veiled threat, and intolerant smear has an impact on a real person. Once dismissed as forums for basement dwellers’ braggadocio, online discussion’s ubiqsuity has given it notoriety, and authority.

As a culture of Web users, this means we must actually think before we type.

Ask Louie Fluet what happens when we don’t.

Anthony Ronzio is the Editorial Page Editor for the Sun Journal. He can be reached at [email protected], or 1-800-782-0759, ext. 2285.
For every nasty gibe, veiled threat, and intolerant smear has an impact on a real person. Once dismissed as forums for basement dwellers’ braggadocio, online discussion’s ubiquity has given it notoriety, and authority.