In Small Towns, Gossip Moves to the Web, and Turns Vicious

[groovedaddy]

MOUNTAIN GROVE, Mo. — In the small towns nestled throughout the Ozarks, people like to say that everybody knows everybody’s business — and if they do not, they feel free to offer an educated guess.

One of the established places here for trading the gossip of the day is Dee’s Place, a country diner where a dozen longtime residents gather each morning around a table permanently reserved with a members-only sign for the “Old Farts Club,” as they call themselves, to talk about weather, politics and, of course, their neighbors.

But of late, more people in this hardscrabble town of 5,000 have shifted from sharing the latest news and rumors over eggs and coffee to the Mountain Grove Forum on a social media Web site called Topix, where they write and read startlingly negative posts, all cloaked in anonymity, about one another.

And in Dee’s Place, people are not happy. A waitress, Pheobe Best, said that the site had provoked fights and caused divorces. The diner’s owner, Jim Deverell, called Topix a “cesspool of character assassination.” And hearing the conversation, Shane James, the cook, wandered out of the kitchen tense with anger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

[CBGLuthier]

1. The internet has revealed the one universal truth

People hate each other. A lot. One hell of a lot.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Holy shit- you ain't kiddin! I just went there and read some posts and they are...

...some pissed off people.

PB

[RKP5637]

4. Interesting, on the Topix Poll they're all for Obama (in the lead) over Perry and Bachmann. n/t

[ChairmanAgnostic]

6. all it takes is one Tea Bagger to ruin it for everyone else.

[MrTriumph]

3. Agreed.

x

[get the red out]

5. Small towns

Small towns tend to be hateful, judgmental places in my experience of growing up in one. I don't know if it's boredom or lack of exposure to new or different ideas/ways of being? I would imagine the web offers a broader audience and faster pace for the churning of the rumor mill, but it didn't create the tension.

[Katashi_itto]

7. Here is the Alamogordo New Mexico Topix...a more evil buch you wont find anywhere else.

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/alamogordo-nm/TN2FRS5CI0IEQT21F

[sakabatou]

8. Sounds like FR.