Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette?

“The uncivil and ignorant have always been with us—but now they have Internet access. Mix in anonymity—what do you expect?”
  — reader response to David Pogue, N.Y.Times, 21-DEC-2006

CMT: David Pogue in his column in the New York Times on 14-DEC-2006 asked the question, ‘Whatever Happened to Online Etiquette?’

DSM: You know, it seems to me that hostility online is getting worse—and it’s not just in mass-culture environments either. Or else how do you explain, this Joshua Bell / Saint-Saens / Etude video and the accompanying bombast?

CMT: Is this sort of communication behavior emblematic of video culture, do you think, or online culture? Or is it just a manifestation of uncouthness that we simply have now a technology-based means to observe—something that’s always been around but which in the past was not played out in public? There are, after all, a number of chamber music and classical music videos and vlogs—things expressed with civility and good will. Check this Maxim Vengerov / Ravel / Tzigane video:

and this Emerson Quartet / Bach / Art of the Fugue / Contrapunctus No. 9 video:

DSM: Allan Kozinn of the New York Times has remarked that Bell, instead of performing in strait-laced recital style, characteristically does light pieces as encores announced from the stage, reviving the less formal style favored by violinists in the 1920s. Some time ago Kozinn evidently found Bell’s account of the counterpoint in the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004, satisfying. Others seem to admire Bell’s playing, too.


CMT: There are broad cultural trends recently that condone ad hominem attacks—we see this in the U.S. with many mass-media productions, including reality television programs and mainstream ‘news’ media. Open opposition to diversity has become a gratuitous modus operandi for many. And for others it’s an expedient way to get attention and do promotional marketing. It’s sad. But it’s even sadder when those deplorable tendencies from mass-culture spill over into the arts, like classical music.

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