[daemin]

So as before you would say 'dumb' things to your inner social circle of friends, with an occasional stranger overhearing. Today you can say those same things online, but instead of it just being your friends it's effectively on the public record and everyone can see and comment on what you said.

This reminds me of a story that Clay Shirky told about how one of his students/coworkers wanted to announce the breakup of her engagement. She carefully configured her settings on the FB, then changed her relationship status. But even so everyone knew in real time and she was deluged with questions and messages.

The reason both of these situations are so jarring is because everyone instantly sees this information, where as previously it took a lot longer to filter through the social graph.

[asabjorn]

People say things now in a social context in real life and then someone takes it out of context to rile up a mob online, making it dumb because it was taken out of context and used against them. As we are all humans most people with the context probably recognize this and are secretly glad they were not the ones targeted, although I doubt most of us want this kind of society.

It seems reasonable to believe that the person misrepresenting is often aware of the context and is disingenuous in their representation. And if not I am not sure why we are giving the stage to people with poor comprehension skills and a correspondingly violent temper.