An attempt at a rule for internet reading.

I think the following rule is a fairly good one. I imagine someone else has already thought it up. It probably has a cool name, like Tim’s Axiom, or Johnson’s Directive.

So here it is- Do not get outraged when an author you have never heard of writes something outrageous on website you have never heard of.*

As a corollary, Think for a bit before deciding if you should get outraged when an author you have never heard of writes something outrageous on a website you have heard of.

* Obviously, this rule is intended for the relatively well traveled internet user. It seems too often that in order to provoke a response in a reader, a columnist/blogger will quote someone at an obscure and out of the way publication/blog. They then attempt to direct the outrage just generated at other, less deserving targets.


There are many many people who write things that appear on the internet in relatively serious locations. On any given issue, it is easy to find some one person who says something so insane that the only response you can think of is "you certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler." It is then easy to focus on these writers and focus efforts on refuting them.

For me personally, this makes it too easy to turn many good and decent people into the caricature embodied by the outrageous writer of the moment.