Contemptible comments have consequences

You can hide behind a fake Internet identity and phony e-mail address. You can pretend you're a man, a woman, animal or random collection of numbers. You can write any fool thing you want, just to inspire outrage.

But you will be held responsible for what you say and do, if not here and soon, then sometime and someplace.

That's about the only comfort I find after reading the Internet comments that accompanied Virginian-Pilot writer Denise Watson Batts' remarkable retelling of Norfolk's experience during Massive Resistance.

If you haven't read her six-part series, you should. When Norfolk closed its schools rather than integrate them, it spread a stain on this city that not even five decades can erase. They were days every bit as important to our experience as the Revolutionary or Civil wars.

In the electronic reaction to the stories at PilotOnline.com, there was an appreciation that our past makes sense of the present. But it was sometimes hard to find among the racism and conspiracy-addled nonsense that passes for Internet discourse, and that proves the worth of the stories themselves.

Railing about the incivility of anonymous online comment is as futile as asking the sun for mercy. My indignation, after all, is my own fault. Whenever I descend into the Internet's uglier precincts, hoping to uncover enlightened give and take, I come away feeling like I need a shower of cleansing flames.

I vow not to waste my time in Crazytown again. I promise to spend more time talking to people and listening to them. I give extra thanks for my friends, their sanity and their patience with me.

Then I read a post by friend and blogger Vivian Paige, who wrote about the comments this week. I went to PilotOnline, clicked on one of Denise's stories and hit the Page Down button too many times. Before I could stop myself, I read about how the 50th anniversary of the closing of Norfolk's schools on Sept. 29 is somehow a conspiracy to help elect Barack Obama president of the United States.

The rule about Internet trolls, of course, is to ignore them. Attention only encourages such creatures. For a writer, though, silence is acquiescence, even if the argument is with avatars and cowards. Journalists don't surrender to bullies, electronic or otherwise, real or invented.

Instead, we remind them that there are consequences to what they're doing. It's not just that threatening violence means a visit from law enforcement, though thank goodness it does. I'm talking about less-concrete consequences.

Upright people take responsibility for what they say and do. PilotOnline shouldn't allow anonymous comments, or ones obscured by a pseudonym. But The Pilot's online people couldn't care about the concerns of dead-tree guys like me. We just don't get new media. Then again, since new media is apparently where people with lousy impulse control write things they'd never say out loud or in public, I figure not "getting" them is fine.

Here's what I do get: Anonymity begets crazy, especially among folks who obey civilization's norms only because they fear being exposed. Without the threat of sanction and shame, and without any internal moral compass, they will spew whatever filth they think they can get away with.

But no matter how good you think you are at obscuring yourself online, your kids - or your parents - one day will be better at finding you. They will know that you aren't the person you claim to be.

If you were forced today to publicly own the things you've said anonymously, you'd be ashamed of yourself. You'd be ostracized by the decent.

That's because you and your friends, if you have any, are slowly forging a debased culture from the hopes for a decent one. You are turning hate into the currency of conversation.

Still, though, I have to believe that you will answer for your behavior. An accounting will be demanded. Over time, the universe and those in it tend to put things right, to mete out some kind of justice, however belated.

I'm further from perfect than anybody I know. I say intemperate things. I do things I shouldn't. I feel guilty for them. And I know that one day, I'll have to answer for each one of them, and I will be unable.

Because of that, my sins shame me, make me want to be a better human being. In your basement, behind your disguise, what do your sins do for you?

Donald Luzzatto is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail him at donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.