Internet Perfidity

[Peter Giordano]

Greg said:
>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 [...]
I say:
I agree with the above BUT:

Jules once made the argument that his article about Pynchon must be true
because PLAYBOY printed it and to a certain degree he is right - The fact
that information is published by recognized sources lends a limited degree
of credence to the work - Which is not to say small publishers or
self-published works have no credence but let me continue:  for example,
you can look at HALLIWELL'S FILM GUIDE (published by HarperCollins
currently) and be fairly sure that the factual information presented is
accurate or you can look at THE 1990 SURVIVAL GUIDE TO FILM by Richard Sean
Lyon (published by LyonHeart Publishers) and get some questionable and
carelessly (in my opinion) put together materials or you can go to CINEMA-L
and allow some 15 year old kid make up facts for you - The problem with the
internet is that there is little accountability (which is apparently why
copyright was first invented: so the king of France knew who to behead if
he didn't like the book)

Greg is absolutely right that all the problems of the internet like porn or
credit-card fraud have always been there - But I would suggest that if I
wrote an article where I claimed to be the inspiration or model for a
character in GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and I submitted that article to THE NEW
YORKER or PYNCHON NOTES or any other journal my article would be rejected
unless I could come up with some darn good evidence for my claims - But I
could upload the same article onto Pynchon-L where it could stand virtually
unchallenged - And this throws us back to something jester suggested - How
seriously should we take what we find on Pynchon-L?  If, as jester says, it
may be a new and revolutionary interactive communications system then
perhaps we should require a certain amount of truth when people make claims
about various authors - I'd invite those who need to know what color sox
trp wears or whether he's a jockey or briefs kind of guy to write fiction
about the subject and clearly label it fiction

Peter Giordano
Williams College
Williamstown, MA