People on the internet act like people in real life. News at 11.

Also, he says this: "In the last few years, though, a new twist has appeared. Along with all the sites that encourage individual expression, we are seeing a flood of schemes that celebrate collective action by huge numbers of bland, anonymous people."

But then he fails to identify even a single example, or why that's necessarily a bad thing.

Well fuck that loser!

::pulls out the pitchfork::

I keeed, I keeed.

People on the internet act like people in real life.

I'm glad I don't live where you do, then...

Actually, though, I could buy this statement:

People on the internet act like people in real life. rush hour traffic

That's actually pretty close to the truth, I think and for some of the same reasons: relative anonymity, lack of serious consequences, and aggression that they can't act out on elsewhere.

No, he pretty much is a loser. He's like a guy who wanted to be a sci-fi author but couldn't write fiction even to those lowly standards so he works the speaker circuit and the technology media posing as some kind of "futurist." I've met him a couple of times and he's a pretentious dingus who is careful to keep himself surrounded by elderly, out of touch white folks who will think he's cool.

He's also obese, which might have something to do with his thinking the intarwebs are mean.

"...we are seeing a flood of schemes that celebrate collective action by huge numbers of bland, anonymous people..."

Also, the more I think about it, the more stupid this statement is. What exactly is he talking about? The most prominent meta-example of truly collective action on the internet is the idea of collective tagging used by, e.g., del.icio.us and flickr. If he thinks that's what's wrong with the current generation of webapps, then he really is an idiot.

he's citing wikipedia and digg as examples of what he's talking about, which makes it seem that he hasn't really pulled together much of a theory.

He's also obese, which might have something to do with his thinking the intarwebs are mean.

Alternatively, he could just be bitter about how his first article was received on Metafilter.

I dunno, it does seem like a half-formed essay, at least in Lanier terms. I was surprised that it turned out to be less about meanness than about the, you know, arithmetic mean -- average, bland, the thing you regress toward. Except I'm not sure he intended it that way. That point, I'll buy.

which makes it seem that he hasn't really pulled together much of a theory

I agree -- you can hardly call it a theory. Furthermore, I think this second article actually damages the argument he made in "Digital Maoism" -- a piece I actually found quite inspiring. Many people critiziced that article, but instead of responding to the criticism in a constructive manner by further explaining some of his thoughts etc, he resorts to calling everyone a meanie.

I'm feeling quite dizzy and sleep deprived, [but|which is why] I cannot help but rant a little bit more on this subject. I'm not familiar with Lanier's works (other than the two writings linked here), but it seems to me that he once had an utopia about the Internet as a creative medium which didn't really work out the way he had visioned it and now he's being all bitter about it (much like a teenage boy who has been turned down for a date by a gorgeous girl and is now promising himself to never fall in love again) and claiming that nothing good can come out of the net, instead of accepting that people might have interests different than his utopia.

he's citing wikipedia and digg as examples of what he's talking about

I think at this point, you can cite Wikipedia and Digg as examples of pretty much anything you want and it will still be just as true.