Chat: the art of the antisocial Commentary Sociologists of the Net may seek some day to establish a learning curve to Web interaction. You start off small with e-mail, step up to chat, progress to downloads and webcasting, and eventually move up to owning a domain. But I find chat the most refreshing aspect of the new world of the Web -- the one that least reflects the false divisions set out by nature and society. By society, I mean social training, domestication. So much living is given up to being a trained social animal, predictable and undifferentiated. Perhaps people embrace stereotypes as a way of being crudely social, but being genuinely social might be knowing when to act predictably and when to act unique. Have you ever wondered why established standards fail so miserably? Why success all too often amounts to failure? Why celebrity reveals itself a sham? Why many of the people deemed to be respectable often turn out to be puppets of self-interest, low taste, and fraud? The upper crust or outer crust, as standard bearers, differ little from the unrecognized and invisible inner crust. It's about fifty-fifty, I wager. But the paragons have an investment in their reputations that requires a great deal of propaganda, and believing the propaganda is the first step to being one of them. I don't want to be a member of the virtuous few. I would much rather belong to the opposition, the insignificant. At least if I find talent in their midst, I know that I'm not engaging in mere foolishness. In chat rooms, the verbally proficient and original thinkers don't hide behind their reputations, fancy clothes, hollow titles, spacious offices, money, or personal malignancy. They usually manage to surprise and amuse, invent, foil, finesse, and display their cleverness by their gamesmanship and their gift of repartee. With only words to play with, they dress themselves in hints, comments, and challenges. Beside the give and take of chat, Web pages raise incongruous scrolls, and e-mails clouds of locusts. Only in the anarchy of the crowd is there identity, like a diamond in the rough, or a pearl in the deep. How I love those anonymous gamesters who play with words like champions and fill the rolling-carpet screen with sparkling gems. Perhaps chat was invented for writers who write their epitaphs on water, fill Web logs with literature, and give away their talent like mendicant monks. The reward for developing a third and fourth nature isn't insanity, but the freedom of art, in all its anonymous glory. March 1, 2000