This show was recorded last Tuesday, February 15th, in front of a live studio audience.

Ben Allison performed this live, too.

From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media live from the Jerome L. Green Space.

I'm Brooke.

And I'm Bob Garfield, Brooke.

Yes, Bob.

I just want to begin our very first live broadcast of On the Media to say that the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

Tonight we intend to resolve the question, and yes it is a big one,

will the Internet deliver us or destroy us?

We're starting with, well, you.

How is the Internet changing you on a personal level? Is it making you better, smarter, less isolated? I think that it does.

And I'll be making my case, the correct case, that we're being just a little bit decivilized, devolving slightly into sad, evil trolls, lurking

in the shadow, saying horrible things about one another, stealing content, and shrinking our

attention spans like a sweatshirt in a hot dryer.

Right now, I'll argue we're living through an internet utopia

and the next part of the show, Bob will be the utopian.

As if the onset of digital barbarism were really in doubt.

Have you ever heard of the site 4chan?

Oh, no.

People do the most reprehensible things because the Internet makes them think that other people's feelings are just less real. There's actually a name for that. It's called online disinhibition effect. So that's where Matt Othias Schwartz came in. Yeah, he spent a whole lot of time with 4chan fans. And he witnessed, in his reporting, some extreme cases of online disinhibition effect.

I wrote about a young man by the name of Mitchell Henderson. He was, I think, 12 or 13. He shot himself in the head with a rifle and then

inexplicably became this phenomenon. They made up this rumor that he had killed himself because

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