So Rab Hines, noto­ri­ous cyber­stalker, is caught, or at least iden­ti­fied. Good news for trum­peter Bruno Leicht, whose life the pseu­do­ny­mous Hines has made mis­er­able. The stalker’s real last name seems to be Leicht, too, sug­gest­ing that there might me some famil­ial con­nec­tion. Let’s hope Bruno can put this behind him … after, of course, pur­su­ing legal action against his tormenter.

The inter­net is cool, but it sure has made it easy for us to be uncivil to one other. And anonymity isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a req­ui­site. By it’s nature, the shel­tered dis­tance of the net allows (even seems to encour­age) us to say things to a per­son that we’d never say to his face. Even those with the best of inten­tions can inad­ver­tently fal­ter. In the short form of the blog, espe­cially, sub­tlety and nuance is lost. Offense is taken eas­ily. Ret­ri­bu­tion can be brutal.

I’m not sure what I can do to make it bet­ter. One thing: I’ve decided to stop respond­ing to insult­ing things said about me on other sites. I notice that as hurt­ful or annoy­ing or ridicu­lous I might find some­thing aimed at me, respond­ing or rebut­ting almost always begins a chain of events which ends up mak­ing me feel worse.

Another thing: Just as I wouldn’t allow some­one to remain long in my house if they were rude to me, I won’t tol­er­ate per­son­ally insult­ing lan­guage on my blog. Rea­soned dis­course is great. I’m all for it. But if some­one wants to trash me, they’ll have to do it else­where. I’m not going to host my own flogging.

Of course, the vast major­ity of com­ments here have been civil, funny, smart, and insight­ful. Only a tiny frac­tion have been obnox­ious. I hate to hijack the blog to address that small num­ber, but I want to get my stand on the record.