Talk of the Town

For this small town it's like high school never ends. Gossip and bullying online is a problem that is getting bigger and bigger with every advancement we make to connect with one another online. It makes it much easier for people to harass others and get away with it.

This article focuses on the issues of small towns and their gossiping ways. These are the neighbors against neighbors anonymously posting stuff about each other. Studies have shown that this is a bigger problem in rural areas than large cities because everyone knows each other. The local gossip groups, who back in the old days would sit around a restaurant table to share all the juicy details have now gone to the Internet to let their opinions be known. They are now logging on the the Mountain Grove Forum, a forum on the website topix.com and letting out the dirty laundry. Topics like, "13 year old preggos by momma's man" or "methed out, doped out whore with AIDS" , this is not friendly talk about what is going on in the small town, this has turned into neighbors hiding behind their secret online personas to spread gossip about others. This site has been the cause for provoking fights, divorces, and in a more serious case suicide. A woman being tormented by the website with gossip about her divorce led her to kill herself and her children, but not before she went online to post "Now it's time to take the pain away".

Lawsuits have been filed but the company is not responsible for what is posted and can not be held for libel, but whoever posted the comment can be found guilty. The only thing filtered out is racial slurs and threats made on the site but that is only about 9 percent.
Check out the forum for yourself: http://http://www.topix.com/forum/city/mountain-grove-mo

Technology advances much slower in these rural areas, so these people are just embracing the power of the Internet and obviously abusing it. Christian Sandvig, who studies social media and how it affects people in these areas, says "There is something about rural culture that makes people want to have conversations in public."

This is a trend the needs to be stopped before more people get hurt. But as one of the local victim said in the interview, "It's a small town, rumors stay forever." Sadly for this woman that means every time she goes to the grocery store she knows people are labling her with the false accusations made against Mrs. James. Of course this is not just a problem in small towns, Nationwide we are seeing problems with online gossip, but the affect is so much larger in a place where everyone knows your name.

Article posted in the New Your Times http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=socialnetworking