[SnakePlissken]

Whenever I see the Internet Hate Machine in full spin I'm reminded of the following quote:

"The sage of Toronto [Marshall McLuhan] had formerly spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by the ‘global village’ instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity." - Guy Debord, Comments on The Society of the Spectacle, 1988

I'm not very familiar with Debord or The Society of the Spectacle but the analogy always struck me as well suited to the darker, more banal side of the modern Internet.

[dang]

Somewhere in this amazing 1967 documentary, McLuhan defines the global village as "everybody minding everybody else's business". It's astonishing how much he got right.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/this_is_marshall_mcluhan