Slander Online

My friend Catherine Holahan does a nice job talking about an issue that's very personal to me: The damaging affects of malicious anonymous comments online. I have long since stopped Googling my name and have finally convinced my husband having a Google Alert on me is just more anger than it's worth. In fact, just yesterday I related these sentiments to my mother-in-law who says there are several user names she has burned in her head and will one day seek revenge on for things they've written about me. (You know who you are! Watch your back!) She suggested at the very least making T-shirts that read "I Twitter, because I'm bitter" to give away (FREE OF CHARGE!) to any Sarah Lacy haters. ACT NOW! MAY SELL OUT!

I really empathize with the girls in Catherine's story and am glad these sites weren't around when I was in high school and college. That said, I think only morons believe anonymous cowards. I, for one, have had loads of horrible things written about me and never lost a job, assignment or even a single source as a result. People are smart. They get to know you and make their own judgments. They do consider the source. So as horrible as it may feel at that moment it blows over, and per the "Lacy Principle" it's almost always a net positive.

So, ultimately I'm on the side of free speech as much as I loathe sites like JuicyCampus and agree with Michael Arrington that we may see a gossip site suicide. (Although, I think there are far worse culprits of this than ValleyWag.) And I have one absurdly Utopian hope based on the fact that you only really get how damaging and hurtful it is when this happens to you. Don't laugh, but maybe it gets so ubiquitous that everyone sees how it feels and thinks twice before slandering someone. More realistically: Maybe it just gets so ubiquitous that it's all just absurd noise that becomes even more irrelevant.