Evan Thomas has an insightful piece at Newsweek that compares anonymous online gossip to the Communist Red Scare of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The article’s main focus is JuicyCampus, a gossip site devoted to cataloguing the “juice,” or rumors, at college campuses across America. So where does McCarthy come in?

Part of McCarthy’s twisted brilliance was his ability to manipulate mass media to malign the character of his enemies. According to Richard Rovere, “[McCarthy] invented the morning press conference called for the purpose of announcing an afternoon press conference.” The Wisconsin Senator was able to claim that he had proof that his opponents were Communist Sympathizers and the press ate it up and gave Joe free ink. In the end, though, the “charges were bogus, but the denials and refutations never quite caught up with the initial banner headlines.”

Similarly, anonymous online gossiping sites are, according to Thomas, calling out malicious buzzwords and gaining eyeballs in order to trash reputations and increase page views (some posts have received over 10,000 views on JuicyCampus). And because of the nature of this site, individuals are guilty until proven innocent and rebuttals are often lost beneath all of the “juice.”

Thomas readily admits that his analogy fails on a number of levels; “Unlike McCarthy, who craved publicity, the modern-day campus blowhards thrive on anonymity.” Indeed, it is the anonymous component of speech that so often leads to malicious and incendiary speech. Another key difference between modern character smearing and the Red Scare of last century is the status of those impugned. Targets at sites like JuicyCampus are not Government Officials or members of the Hollywood elite, but instead are everyday students, working toward their degrees. As we mentioned in an earlier post, it seems that one consequence of internet growth is the decay of privacy and notions of private internet lives.

What do you think? Are gossip sites harmless fun and meaningless distractions or is there something base and innately cruel to their business model?

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