The “Leviathan” as described by Wallace is a system that maintains order on the internet. The Leviathan keeps societal norms and standards in place for the benefit of the community. The Leviathans I noticed took place in email.
The use of email is present in almost everyone’s daily lives. From students to people in the workforce to retirees, everyone uses email. It allows us all to remain in contact in a simple and quick way. I have discovered two instances of social norms existing within the email space.
1) Not sending massive attachments in email (i.e. uncompressed photos)
2) When responding to a list serve, only responding to the person you mean to respond to, rather than the entire list serve
For number 1, people learn this social norm as soon as they get an email with a gigantic file attachment and it either takes forever to open or clogs their entire mailbox. This rule can be enforced by two ways. First, the recipient of the message sends a message back to remind them of the annoyance they just caused. Second, by the sender just remembering how annoying this practice is by remembering the last time it happened to themselves. Unfortunately, my mom seems to be a repeat offender of this social norm so perhaps some people just never learn.
For number 2, the list serve response, I have noticed this particularly in my fraternities list serve. For instance, someone will send out a general email asking certain people to respond back to them, only to have them respond back to the whole list serve. This is generally enforced by a whole bunch of not so nice email reminders telling people to “not hit reply all”. After that, most people get the point and don’t do it again or continue to do it to annoy others.
I feel that these social norms fall under Wallace’s description of the “arched brow”. Wallace describes the arched brow as a friendly reminder of when people on the internet forget to follow the established rules properly. Each of the aforementioned examples contains established rules and a friendly reminder is used to keep the rules intact.
1 comment:
Because when you send uncompressed photos, you usually send them to a group of changing people who do you think is the leviathan? One thing I noticed was how social norms can drastically change from one group to another especially across list serves. I agree with you that list serve spamming is an excellent example to illustrate the idea of the leviathan as you have a defined group with a defined set of standards. One thing I disagree with Wallace on though is the "arched brow" being a friendly reminder. Because of social distance theory and CFO I find that people are usually more hostile to people who break the social norms. Only when you are in a familiar group is it a friendly reminder not to break a certain rule. Good post though, keep up the good work.
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