Peer Pressure

Back in the 1980s a Canadian band, Red Rider, had a huge hit. The big tune was Lunatic Fringe. The song remains a rock station staple after 25 years. Yes, it owes a lot to some Pink Floyd sounds from the decade before, but stands alone as that singular identifier of a peculiar type of public personality that has amused and pissed us all off for these many years.

Today we live in a world where any amusement over the lunatic fringe wore off long ago, and we find exasperated contempt for the current lunatic binge howling extremist positions of idiocy fed by dense ignorance, or by unspeakable acts of violence over the smallest perceived slight. How did so many people get caught imbibing on this decade's lunatic binge?

Here is a tough segue way, but needed background. I'm a fan of computers. Once upon a time zone change, I pounded keys on a little Osborne 1 and felt immediately empowered. I loved the little machine, which looked when folded up like a small sewing machine. It had a small 5" screen with two floppy drives, and impressed the hell out of my biz mates. The Osborne 1 cost about $1,800 at the time of purchase. Funny, every new personal computer each time I upgraded usually cost me roughly this $1,800 amount.

I moved from floppy to floppy to CD-ROM to DVD-ROM to UBS ports with memory sticks to the Internet, and finally to the poor house over all the computers I have hammered on over two-plus decades . The last several years, due to a crippled economy, has seen my face a lot less in a public place hanging with like minded art and culture mongers of Main Street. I have been alone in my zone with my current pc board of choice.

I read to try and keep up with today, and glean gobs of economic news from a bunch of sources. I find I have a lot of company staying off the streets these days. This past decade has seen every job created become just another lost job. Men took it in the shorts this decade in a huge way with construction, financial service and manufacturing nose diving into the ground. Since the start of this recession 82% of all workers cashiered have been men.

So, I have a ton of company I never see, hanging in their caves banging on keyboards to some vague unseen audience, who may or may not agree with anything being imprinted on some server and fed to some monitor, which feeds the lunatic-binge-juice of displacement.

The last time I remember so many out-of-it people inhabiting a common area that impinged on my good times was back in the K to 12 years.

When I think of my old school days, I remember crappy-stupid behavior found immediate smack-down by those in control. Teachers were in charge in the classrooms, but teachers could always be ignored, and profs never followed you home to beat on you, or toilet paper your parents house. Tough big kids could be a force on the playground, but the real power was held by groups of students in class, and out in the yard, who were the ultimate committees to approve acceptance or finger rejection. Most kids from third grade through high school lived by the rules of approval from peer social groups. Today those who get the cold shoulder at school or on the job can do really bad things.

It wasn't always fair. Actually, as I remember, the process was never fair but it worked to keep really stupid behavior from becoming pure anarchy on various campuses of hormone driven social misfits. It was life training. When you graduated, or dropped into the job, employees were working peers, always eager to correct a too eager kiss-ass, smart-ass or lame-ass no matter the time of day. Peers were necessary to keep the world real and the business honest. Peers are the ultimate checks and balance of society.

The computer, and by extension the Internet, works without peers. Out here on the web life moves with fans, trolls, stalkers, friends, bots, spam and family but each individual is without a peer. No one really gives good honest ass-truth on the Internet, because peers do not exist. Without clout and no group control over the true misfits lunacy grows. Subscriptions and like minded social groups can lock out the misfit from little circles but the web is a vast ocean all these little circles swim in, and chances are always good the fringe-buoys will pop up frequently if you are a constant swimmer. Another aspect of why peers have disappeared in cyberspace is the fear of the hacker. Offend the wrong party who has just enough malevolence and learning and you and your machine can suffer some heavy consequences.

A cat has no peer. But, I believe people need peers to keep chaos at a safe distance. Maybe the web will evolve over time and come up with nonthreatening peer-ship to help steward the race through these troubled waters. In the meantime I am now set on a course of more local interaction in public places. I am hopeful the few peers who tag along with me still have the necessary balls of etiquette to politely point out the misplaced nose hair or help me understand that a hummer is not necessarily the cute little bird flitting in my backyard.