Internet Perfidity

[Greg Montalbano]

At 11:56 AM 8/8/97 -0400, you wrote:

>"How can I know whether I'm being kidded or not, or lied to?  I don't know
>what the point is, except how gullible people are on the Internet?"  An
>angry Kurt Vonnegut [...] From THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE, August 8, 1997. p.A7
>

Yes, but are they any more gullible than they are reading newspapers,
watching tv, or exchanging "true" stories around the water cooler ("This
REALLY happened to a cousin of a friend of my sister...." -- followed by
one more retelling of the Eddie Murphy story)?

As local columnist Jon Carroll recently pointed out, EVERYTHING seems to be
so much more terrible and grandiose when it's on the Internet -- we've had
porn for ever, but porn "on the INternet" becomes an issue of national
concern;  credit card fraud has been around since the invention of credit
cards, but credit card fraud "on the Internet" suddenly has us all living
in constant fear and dread.

Watching grass grow "on the Internet" .... (at www.grassgrow.com)

~G~