The More Things Don’t Change….
Once upon a time, in a decade far, far away called the late 70s…there was a phenomenon called the CB radio craze. Citizen Band Radio. Not many people even remember it anymore. But for a brief period it swept the nation. Due to an elimination of government regulations & a confluence of seemingly unrelated social factors, people started buying walkie talkies & CB radios for their cars in order to connect with and have conversations with total strangers miles away. You could go on your CB radio to get info about speed traps, or locations for cheap gasoline, or just ask if there was anyone on the air who wanted to chat. And thousands of people did. Movies like Smokey and The Bandit, Convoy & TV shows like The Dukes of Hazzard helped popularize it. But as more & more folks discovered this amazing new world where they could express themselves anonymously without rules or restrictions, the CB airwaves became flooded with people who simply couldn’t resist taking advantage of the freedom and started using the airwaves merely as an outlet for their aggressive impulses. People started butting into other people’s conversations uninvited and spewing vitriol, cursing and hurling insults at anyone who was trying to have a civil discussion. And due to the unrestricted nature of the medium there wasn’t much that could be done to stop them. And in a flash it became almost impossible to have a polite conversation with anyone anymore, as this amazing tool of human communication and connection became a seething swamp of profanity, venom, racial slurs & verbal abuse.
But thankfully we have evolved to the point where we don’t have to worry about such a remarkable technological communication breakthrough being misused like that ever again….
