by Gareth Hewes

Created on: May 09, 2009

This subject is very close to my personal life, because I have, on occasion, been known to rant about certain things from time to time. I have in the past posted bulletins on sites like MySpace about my very heated response to issues (that sometimes lead to even more heated debates), but have now come to the point where I generally recognize and avoid doing so, since it rarely helps a situation. It is an interesting proposition to analyze why we do such things, though-the answer comes, like many changes in social conduct have, from fairly recent changes in social paradigm.

People have always ranted to some degree or another, but as of late, there does seem to be a great deal of effort spent on pointless rants-rather than incisive pointed declarations to incite change, most nowadays (particularly online) are often just sloppy efforts by "wronged" individuals to vent grievances. Rather than using language to solve problems, many seem content to engage in the verbal equivalent of spinning around a crowded room blindfolded holding a baseball bat at arm's length.

Rather than exclusively blame the Internet as I could be tempted to do, the framework for the change came in the later half of the twentieth century, before the widespread advent of the 'Net. Up until roughly the 1950s, society was fairly structured in the conduct that was acceptable. Though counterculture movements were brewing, in large part the attitude was one of conformity and agreeability-problems that a person had were to be kept behind closed doors and swept under rugs. In the sixties onward, however, the social paradigm began to shift. People began to more publicly exercise their rights to voice their opinions on problems faced in society. By forsaking conformity, society took on the burden of volatility.

This mindset only continued throughout the seventies and eighties. The boundaries that were broken down were replaced by a new kind of wall, one that separated people from each other based on their differences in opinion. These circumstances didn't cause people to rant as they do now, but did act as a catalyst for the explosive chemical reaction that was to come when the right reacting agent came along-and that agent was the Internet.

By granting people potentially full anonymity, the Internet provided a staging ground for any person to voice their opinion, and in the process largely abstracted personal opinion from common purpose. Unlike real life, where you can tell if your complaint is falling on deaf ears or has sympathetic support, a Web rant can continue largely indefinitely with no indication of whether or not anyone is paying any attention. This leads people to jump to the somewhat inaccurate conclusion that their problem is of equal importance to every reader (or viewer/listener) as it is to them. I know this is true for at least some such ranters, because I have found that within myself when I look at my situations outside of my point of view.

This change also had another interesting effect-it worked backward, leading many (particularly younger) people to believe that since ranting is so commonplace online, it must be equally acceptable in normal conversation. It is difficult to say whether this is a bad thing, since it seems to have been accepted and is even seen in things like films. If anything, the growth of the rant is for the most part just progressively leading to another widespread social skill to be enhanced-the ability to tune people out.

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