20 Amy Scheinerman

the bar is raised exceedingly high in the hopes that people will rise to something that constitutes a tolerable level.

There was a time when we heard a tidbit about someone, or a story about someone and then some time elapsed before we had the opportunity to retell it, time that could be used to consider its veracity and the propriety of passing it along. Today, hitting the“forward” button takes but an instant, and is often done with little thought. The speed with which memes are circulated on the Internet— even without carefully reading or considering its content— reflects both the ease and speed with which one can forward a link, making the Internet an ideal vehicle for lashon hara and rechilut. That“everyone knows already” or“everyone has seen it” lends a sense of legitimacy to hitting the“forward button,” or at least gives us cover to say,“I didn’t start it; I’m just passing it along.” This is Sulen’s“disinhibition effect” at work.

The Internet certainly affords a quantitative leap of many magnitudes in disseminating gossip, stories, rumors, and outright lies. The immediacy and relative anonymity of the Internet discourage thoughtful reflection. A knee-jerk, emotional response is possible with the click of a mouse. The nature of immediacy, and the speed and quantity of dissemination of communications via the Internet amount to a wholesale qualitative change from conventional means of spreading lashon ha-ra and rechilut by word of mouth or print media. The Internet is different not only in degree, but also in kind. This has profound ethical implications for us. We must exert increased caution and vigilance over our use of the Internet commensurate with the increased danger— quantitatively and qualitatively— it presents for committing lashon hara.”

As rabbis, we must redouble our efforts to teach the ethical value of keeping far from lashon hara and help our people develop standards for their own behavior on the Internet. While we cannot control what