cyberdisinhibition

cyberdisinhibition
n. A temporary loss of inhibition while online. Also: cyber-disinhibition.

Example Citations:

According to the study, their world is expanding and narrowing at the same time because of social media's hyperlocalization quotient. And "cyberdisinhibition" — being more willing to behave online in ways they wouldn't in person — has both emboldened users and led them to inappropriate behavior.
—"Americans redefining their lives online and offline with social media tools," RISMedia, November 23, 2009

A recent study confirmed what we all suspect: The anonymity afforded by the Internet emboldens people to spread their inner creepiness. The authors of the study, published by Euro RSCG Worldwide, even coined a new term, "cyberdisinhibition," to describe the phenomena.
—Joe Livernois, "Joe Livernois: Wild Web deserves to be tamed," Monterey County Herald, January 24, 2010

Earliest Citation:

For what you are describing is the well-researched but under-reported phenomenon of cyber-disinhibition. Psychologist Daniel Goleman explains that it was noticed in the first days of the internet, then known as the Arpanet and used by a small group of scientists. They noticed "flaming," the tendency to send abrasive, angry and emotionally wild cyber-messages.
—"Blame cyber-disinhibition for inflaming e-rage," Canberra Times, March 7, 2006

How to report the news

Want It!

Foot on Bomb, Marine Defies a Taliban Trap

SHOSHARAK, Afghanistan — If luck is the battlefield’s final arbiter — the wild card that can trump fitness, training, teamwork, equipment, character and skill — then Lance Cpl. Ryan T. Mathison experienced its purest and most welcome form.

Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.Go to the Blog »

Living Story

The War in Afghanistan

Recent developments on the war in Afghanistan with background, analysis, timelines and earlier events from NYTimes.com and Google.

Multimedia

Slide Show

Luck Trumps Death

Related

Two U.S. Soldiers Are Among 17 Afghan Deaths (January 24, 2010)

The New York Times

A foot patrol in Shosharak came close to disaster. More Photos »

On a Marine foot patrol here through the predawn chill of Friday morning, he stepped on a pressure-plate rigged to roughly 25 pounds of explosives. The device, enough to destroy a pickup truck or tear apart several men, was buried beneath him in the dusty soil.

It did not explode.

Lance Corporal Mathison’s weight triggered the detonation of one of the booby trap’s two blasting caps. But upon giving an audible pop and tossing small stones into the air, the device failed to ignite its fuller charge — a powerful mix of Eastern Bloc mortar rounds and homemade explosives spiked with motorcycle parts, rusty spark plugs and jagged chunks of steel.

Great true story about how a journalist pursued Klansmen who committed murder.

I would like to shake this man's hand.

MP3

A Joke

An older gentleman had an appointment to see the urologist who shared offices with several other doctors. The waiting room was filled with patients. As he approached the receptionist's desk, he noticed that the receptionist was a large unfriendly woman who looked like a Sumo wrestler. He gave her his name.

In a very loud voice, the receptionist said, "YES, I HAVE YOUR NAME HERE; YOU WANT TO SEE THE DOCTOR ABOUT IMPOTENCE, RIGHT?"

All the patients in the waiting room snapped their heads around to look at the very embarrassed man. He recovered quickly, and in an equally loud voice replied, 'NO, I'VE COME TO INQUIRE ABOUT A SEX CHANGE OPERATION, BUT I DON'T WANT THE SAME DOCTOR THAT DID YOURS!

Montana has been cooler than New York City for a number of years.

BY midafternoon on a recent Saturday, Bierkraft, the beer emporium and grocery on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was half-filled with customers, many of them parents with babies or toddlers in tow. They were browsing the more than 1,000 varieties of bottled beer or surveying the listing of selections available on the 13 taps and 3 cask lines. Some carried a good-sized satchel.

Diaper bag? Gym clothes?

No. It was a tote for their growlers.

Quick! Give me a beer!

What to do when you are bored at work.

1. Kill a few Flies 2. Put them in the sun to dry for one hour. 3. Once they are dry, pick a pencil and paper... Let your imagination flow. Here are a few examples...

As clay pigeons?

The wallpaper that makes your kids sleep alot.

Dirty Harry Meets Rainman

How a man feels about peeing by location

The Illusion of Political Parties

Helena's Power Block, circa 1900

Don't say "Don't"

Free Music on iTunes

I have no idea of it is good music, but it's free.

Whale or Mermaid?

Recently, in a large city in Australia, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said, "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?" A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym. To Whom It May Concern, Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans.) They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia . Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world. Mermaids don't exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them .... where is IT? Therefore, they don't have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store? The choice is perfectly clear to me: I want to be a whale. P..S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver, and a piece of chocolate with my friends. With time, we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren't heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good grief, look how smart I am!¨

Gibberish rock song written by Italian composer to sound like English

It Does.

Your Ugly Snow Shovel Violates Our Community Rules

Oh, the frustrations of homeowner association rules, or freaky neighbors, or both....Here it's a snow shovel that's causing a potential conflict. And Dave, the owner of the shovel, isn't too sympathetic to the complainer, Kevin. Aren't there more important things to be concerned about? Like curb set-offs or noise level regulations or ... world hunger, war, recession, unemployment? Apparently not.

Shitmydadsays

"The baby will talk when he talks, relax. It ain't like he knows the cure for cancer and he just ain't spitting it out.

"Oh please, you practically invented lazy. People should have to call you and ask for the rights to lazy before they use it."

"A mule kicked Uncle Bob once. Broke his ribs. He punched it in the face.. My point? You have an ingrown fucking toenail. Stop bitching."

“We’re banned from the dog park. Well, I guess it’s okay to hump, and it’s okay to bark, but both at the same time freaks people out."

5 Jokes About The Apparent Eagerness Of Certain Democratic Members Of Congress To Abandon Health Care Reform In Light Of Scott Brown’s Victory

1. A Democratic congressman walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your kind here.” The Democratic congressman whimpers, “You’re right, I’m sorry, I never should’ve come in here, it’s all my fault, boo-hoo, please, bend me over, I’ll do whatever you want because I’m a little punk.” The bartender says, “Jesus Christ, you people are pathetic.”

2. What do you call a dead baby with no arms and no legs wearing a sombrero? I don’t know, but whatever you call it, it’s got about 1,000% more fight in it than these jackass Democrats.

3. A member of the House Democratic Caucus goes to the doctor. The doctor says, “I have bad news and good news. The bad news is you have a broken foot. The good news is, you’re a congressman, which means you have health insurance, which means you’ll be able to get treatment without going totally bankrupt, unlike many of your constituents, who you are actively betraying by thinking only of your electoral prospects. And also,” the doctor continued, “I can’t believe you actually broke your foot by jumping off a bridge just because a Republican told you to. What kind of spineless loser are you? Get out of my office. I can’t stand to look at you.”

4. The entire United States Senate is flying on a plane when its engines start to fail. The plane starts falling through the sky. There are 100 senators on board, but only 41 parachutes. The Democrats say, “Let’s give all the parachutes to the Republicans—that way we can just sit on our fat asses and die while the plane crashes because we’re a bunch of self-hating pussies.”

5. Little Johnny Congressman (D) was sitting in class one day. All of a sudden, he needed to go to the bathroom. He yelled out, “Miss Jones, I need to go pee!” The teacher replied, “Johnny, that is NOT the proper word to use in this situation. The proper word is ‘urinate.’ Use the word ‘urinate’ in a sentence correctly, and I will let you go.” Little Johnny thought for a bit, then said, “If a Republican wanted to urinate on me, I would let him because I have no self-respect.”

Data mining online dating sites and what profile photos people post

Dirty Harry

You dropped food on the floor. Should you eat it?

If browsers were women

Presidential Travels

Are alcohol and beer consumption related?

When you add an extra comma . . .

Don't tell my co-workers. I achieved zero inbox today.

Here's a story that you will never hear of again

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

A Joke

A fifteen year old Amish boy and his father were in a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and then slide back together again.

The boy asked, 'What is this Father?' The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, 'Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don't know what it is.' While the boy and his father were watching with amazement, a fat ugly woman moved up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened, and the lady walked between them into a small room. The walls closed, and the boy and his father watched the small numbers above the walls light up sequentially. They continued to watch until it reached the last number, and then the numbers began to light in the reverse order. Finally the walls opened up again and a gorgeous 24-year-old blond stepped out. The father, not taking his eyes off the young woman, said quietly to his son.... 'Go get your mother.'

Problem Comparison: Tiger Woods vs. Jay=Z

Find the populations of speakers of different languagaes

Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.

Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

I had a pretty fun weekend

Word Of The Day

A non-existent or manufactured controversy.

Database: Injuries reported by emergency rooms

The Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) is a sample of 100 hospital emergency rooms in the United States and its territories. Patient information is collected from NEISS hospitals for every emergency visit involving an injury associated with consumer products. Make no mistake: Many injuries found here are the result of accidents or carelessness and not the fault of the product itself. More than 374,000 injuries were reported in 2008, the latest available year for NEISS data.

Type a keyword (such as "ladder" or "toy" or "eye" or "shot") into the empty text box and click on Search. You can also search by sex, age and treatment date. Use Advanced Search to select a date range. Children under age 2 are shown by age in months and have a "2" prefix: 223 = 23 months.

So of course I had to search, "penis."

"DRY HUMPING HIS GIRLFRIEND" W/PENIS RUBBING AGAINST HER JEANS,ACTIVITY WENT ON FOR EXTENDED PERIOD,PENIS STARTED BLEEDING DX: ABRASIONS PENIS

So go ahead an search your own favorite body part.

Prescription Fail

It's not about the golf bag, check the commercial behind this link.

TSA Fail

Northern Lights Brewing Company, Spokane

We tried 10 beers. One was OK, seven were fair to poor and two were outstandingly, horribly very bad:

The Blueberry Ale tasted like K-mart brand blueberry pop with a spoonful of baking soda added. The beertender said it was even better when mixed with the coffee stout.

We declined to destroy a good beer to make a bad beer taste OK.

. . . and the one that was so bad I let no one else taste it was a "Whiskey Sour Dunkel Bock." Take one left-over Black Velvet Whiskey Sour and mix it with a stout beer. As bad as it sounds.

Extreme brewing can go too far.

Sorry, they don't even have a web page to link to for the beer descriptions.

Welcome to TPA Airlines

WELCOME TO TPA (Terrorist-Proof Airlines) We at TPA, Terrorist-Proof Airlines, are in the flying business! We can absolutely guarantee no WALK-ON GUNS, KNIVES, BOX CUTTERS, SHOE-BOMBS or other weapons will ever be carried onto OUR FLIGHTS ! Book your next flight with TPA, the safest airline in the industry.

I Am The KIng of Wii !!!

So long as I make the 10 year-old twins play games that I have played in real life, like golf, table tennis or bowling.

They destroy me at Mario Kart.

$290,000 fine for 35 mph over speed limit

If you decide you want to speed your way through Switzerland, be warned there is no such thing as a standard fine for driving say, 35 mph over the limit. No, no, no. If you’re caught speeding in the land of fine watches and neutrality and you have a lot of money, you better hope you’ve kept your money stashed somewhere the Swiss can’t find it (a Swiss bank account?).

A 53-year-old man learned that lesson after receiving a record-setting fine of nearly $290,000 for driving 85 mph in a 50 mph zone through the small town of St. Gallen. Adding insult to injury, he was driving a car worth a fraction of the fine — a Ferrari Testarossa.

Why the hefty fine for a mere 35 over the limit?

In 2002 Swiss voters approved replacing prison terms for some offenses, including speeding, with fines based on your income. According to Tages Anzeiger, the lead-footed driver has an annual income of more than $820,000 and is worth well over $20 million. (Here’s the English translation of the story.)

And another tip if you are caught and given a hefty fine in Switzerland: Don’t make any big claims to try and get out of the ticket. The Testarossa driver was initially fined a little less than $90,000 by the local jurisdiction. That was raised to $145,000 by the next court after the driver claimed diplomatic immunity, saying he is diplomat from the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. That didn’t sway the court, which boosted the fine to $290,000.

Is College Worth It?

There is so much cool in this infographic

A Joke

There is a factory in Northern Minnesota which makes the Tickle Me Elmo toys. The toy laughs when you tickle it under the arms.

Well, Lena is hired at The Tickle Me Elmo factory and she reports for her first day promptly at 8:00 am.

The next day at 8:45 am there is a knock at the Personnel Manager's door.. The Foreman throws open the door and begins to rant about the new Employee..

He complains that she is incredibly slow and the whole line is backing up, putting the entire production line behind schedule.


The Personnel Manager decides he should see this for himself, so the 2 men march down to the factory floor. When they get there the line is so backed up that there are Tickle Me Elmo's all over the factory floor and they're really beginning to pile up.

At the end of the line stands Lena surrounded by mountains of Tickle Me Elmo's. She has a roll of plush Red fabric and a huge bag of small marbles.

The 2 men watch in amazement as she cuts a little piece of fabric, wraps it around two marbles and begins to carefully sew the little package between Elmo's legs.

The Personnel Manager bursts into laughter. After several minutes of hysterics he pulls himself together and approaches Lena .

'I'm sorry,' he says to her, barely able to keep a straight face, 'but I think you misunderstood the instructions I gave you yesterday...'

'Your job is to give Elmo two test tickles. "

It's true.

Good question - Would full-body scanners violate child porn laws?

The deployment of body-scanning X-ray machines could violate child-protection laws in Britain and prevent their implementation, according to The Guardian.

British officials were forced to exempt the scanning of anyone under 18 during a yearlong test of the machines at Manchester airport.

A man is old enough to die when he thinks this.

Snaps from the Boiling River with Suzanne's kids