Give me your lunch money! No? Well, OK then. I guess I’ll just have to post something nasty about you on my blog.

Web 2.0 has given us powerful new modes of communication, but old meme’s die hard. In this case, I am speaking about the growing trend of internet “gangs”. Of course, since the first person posted the first Geocities site sometime in the Pre-Cambrian period, people have been making nasty comments about others online. However, Social Networking has given a new platform for internet bullies to really make their mark.

Take MySpace for example, where a teenage boy organized a group of like-minded bullies in a “vote” to decide whether a teenage girl had AIDs. If this was an isolated incident it would merely be a horrible, however, it follows an increasing trend of using the social web to air dirty laundry — much of which is pulled right out of the nether regions of the bullies anatomy.

More benign are troubles like those faced by sites like Digg, where individuals are banding together in blocks to game the system, voting up stories that they want and voting down stories that bother them. While some might say this sort of mob rule is exactly what Digg was meant to create, it is hard to believe that Kevin Rose really wants organized cabals to win out over true Democracy.

The question is, as Social Networking becomes more important to the way we function, how can the individual win out over these groups of cyber ruffians? It’s difficult to stand up for yourself while sitting behind a desk.

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