A Quick Thought On Growing Up With The Internet

This post is about the ridiculous furore about the gaming press lately, but only tangentially, so stick with me if you’re not really interested in gaming.

So one of the primary complaints about “ethics” in games journalism that I see is that sites aren’t responding to things they disagree with.  One of the most frequent complaints I hear about Anita Sarkeesian in particular is that she refuses to respond to particular criticisms that some people have of her work.  There seems to be this real feeling among some of her critics – and critics of the gaming press more widely – that any concern that is voiced requires a response.  That anyone who raises any issue is entitled to have that issue replied to directly by whoever they are complaining about (whether it’s Anita, or the editorial staff of a gaming web site, or whatever).

I suspect it goes without saying that I think that attitude is nonsense.  But what I’m wondering is whether it’s an attitude primarily held by people who have grown up with the Internet.  The people who are most angrily strident about these issues certainly do seem to be young people.

These are people who have, for most of their lives, felt connected to their sources of information in a way that older generations didn’t.  If you grew up in the 1980s, for example, there was no real way to connect to TV personalities.  Newspapers and magazines accepted letters to the editor, but only a few of them were printed and virtually none were ever responded to directly.

But for people who are in their late teens or early 20s now, there’s a sense of connectedness with public figures.  If you post on Twitter, there’s no real distinguishing characteristic between regular users and public figures, aside perhaps from the Verified checkmark.  Everyone’s mentions go into the same column, everyone’s tweets appear side-by-side in the timeline.  Many writers for large newspapers or magazines even respond directly to questions, comments, or discussions.  I’ve personally exchanged tweets with major media figures from a number of outlets in both Canada and the U.S., which would have been unthinkable when I was in high school or university.  The gap between “readers” and “writers” has collapsed to a large degree.  You can extend this out to comment sections too.

Basically, many people who’ve grown up with the Internet have frequently been told that their voices are important, and content distribution networks are now often designed with this idea in mind.  So what I’m wondering is whether this feeling of immediacy, of being connected to public figures and having forums to contribute (in)directly to media, has lead a lot of young people to believe that not only is it their right to be heard, but to be responded to.  Is part of the attitude toward Anita, and Gamasutra, and so forth, a result of the ways that young people have learned to connect through media?

I don’t have a real answer to that, or any major conclusions to draw, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.  And this obviously wasn’t all going to fit in a tweet, one that could fit in on your Twitter feed right beside the latest story from the NY Times.