The Death of Good Manners in the Internet Age
I’ve been stewing on this for the better part of the week: a girl I know de-friended (un-friended?) me on Facebook. That didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me was the total lack of decorum in the whole affair. Hallowed laws of etiquette had been infringed at my expense. That was a crime I could not abide.
First, let me rewind the tape. There is, in this world, the tiniest percentage of people over whom I have a disturbing power: I am given a mainline into their very psyche, direct access to their cerebral cortex. For whatever reason (I don’t pretend to know), the smallest things I say (or don’t say), do (or don’t do), take on a monstrous life in their tortured cerebellums.