KEY POINTS:
When I was about 17, with a freshly minted driver's licence, I went to a friend's house for dinner. Not far from her place, a red Mazda cut me off, to which I responded by yelling an obscenity out the window and giving the female driver my best rude sign language. Pulling into the driveway at my friend's house, there was the red Mazda. You can imagine the embarrassment of meeting her mother for the first time, and the suck-up I became over the course of the evening.
The digital world can also incite road rage. Its anonymous nature brings out our most primitive anger, often with nasty consequences. Have you noticed how vicious people can be when they're not in front of you? How much easier it is to tell your flatmate what you really think of them via text message?
Last week I received two emails disagreeing with a gig review I wrote - nothing new or terrible there. One of the them came from a fan who wasn't even at the gig. Despite her geographical disadvantage in gauging the success of the event, she was ropeable, speculating that any criticism of her favourite singer was due to the fact that the writer knew nothing about anything and was a "no-talent fatty who no one would pay to watch in a million years".
The other, who sounded like a young fella, wrote all kinds of stunning turns of phrase, the best one being: "Next time instead of voicing your own opinion like a stupid dumb bitch capture the reaction of the crowd." He went on to explain he was at the front of the moshpit - aka the little bubble in the audience where you're virtually guaranteed to find happy punters.
Rude reactions are par for the course when you're taking a swipe at what makes people happy, even if you're not really criticising the artist, just the performance. So is polite, reasoned disagreement, complete with points to back up their view. All of it is passionate opinion, which most critics are happy to receive. If you're dishing dirt, you have to be able to take it, obviously.
But what's interesting is the venomous conviction behind some of the feedback. "You didn't deserve to be at the gig ... It was the best night of my life ... You're completely wrong." These are common reactions, some followed by a series of unrepeatable words usually reserved for adulterers, criminals and telemarketers. Since when was one person's opinion right or wrong?
Thankfully for this no-talent fatty, the internet means it's not just critics fielding this faceless wrath. Readers are becoming the critics, and thus cushioning the blow of being "wrong". Just look at the huge amount of online feedback after any major rock concert in New Zealand. A few excited column inches on and readers seem to forget the original review altogether. Instead they started to critique others' critiques. While most engage in healthy debate, there are always a handful who take brutal umbrage at others for expressing different points of view. Online road rage, in other words. And that's where it can get nasty.
Andrew Keen, a British-American web expert and author, reckons the world is being wrecked by "digital narcissism", a symptom of the glut of news and reviews posted online by Joe Blogs. Experienced journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown tends to agree (which you'd expect), saying: "It is like looking out of a car window on a motorway as you pass changing images only fleetingly, adding up to nothing you can describe to yourself."
That's often true of the confusing picture that can emerge from scrolling through online forums. But if they give people a chance to vent their thoughts, no matter how bad a speller they might be, where's the harm in that?
I don't think my friend's mum ever forgave me, but for one small moment in time my anger was eradicated in a flurry of rude words. Even though she had the right-of-way.
