This is why people are still scared of the Internet

I found this beyond-disappointing story on Engadget this morning: Hackers embed flashing animations on epilepsy support forum.

When I talk to people who aren't as embedded in the online world as I typically am, I notice that most of their questions and comments are fear-based.

This goes for companies wondering whether they should market on blogs.

This goes for people who hear about cyberstalkers or cyberbullies and consider the entire Internet to be a Wild West (yes, that well-worn cliche.)

This goes for people sure that they will have their identity stolen, their credit card compromised, and their computer hacked.

I usually talk about how most bad things don't reflect the culture of the Internet or the blogosphere, but rather they reflect the culture of sub-segments of our society in general. What the Internet does is provide a mechanism to more widely distribute and more loudly spread, for lack of a better word, dickishness.

This is an example, though, where it's hard to imagine how someone might find and visually assault a group of epileptics in the offline world. This does sound like an only-on-the-Internet story.

And it's pretty pathetic.

Comments

[Trisha]

my mom thinks Internet sounds scary too.

That's terrible that people would do that to people with epilepsy though.