On Eminem’s second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, there’s a song called Kim which represents just about the borderline for violence in music or art that I can cope with. In the song, Eminem kidnaps his ex wife and high school sweetheart Kim, drives her out into the woods, and murders her, after telling her he’s already killed her husband and step son. It’s bleak and angry and violent and it’s difficult to listen to, but somehow incredibly compelling thanks to the rawness of the song and Eminem’s extraordinary ability to tell a story.

If you’ve never heard it and want to, you can find it on YouTube here. Not for the feint-hearted.

Eminem is one of that particular breed of artists who write under a persona which allows them to create controversial and disturbing material as a challenge to society. The song isn’t condoning violence or suggesting that Eminem actually wants to murder his ex wife: it’s a character sketch of a person gone utterly over the edge. It’s Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers and Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight all rolled into one.

And yet, after seeing Eminem performing the song live, Kim attempted suicide, and filed a lawsuit against him for defamation. Quite rightly.

With that in mind, I’m looking back at my attitude to internet debate, and I can’t help but ask: where do we draw the line between a person and a persona? At what point does ‘I’m only writing under the guise of an alter-ego’ stop being an artistic defence and start being a shallow excuse for hurting other people with your words?

Is it when the attacks spill over and hurt unprepared bystanders who never asked to be part of the game? Is it when bloggers start packing up and stopping blogging because they just can’t deal with the vitriol any more? Is it, perhaps, when online commentary spills over into real-world physical abuse?

There are many who would say that the intended recipient of online comments could just ignore their inboxes and carry on regardless. There are others who say they’re letting themselves in for that abuse by writing online – but newspaper journalists are professionals – they’re just doing their job writing for an audience. They didn’t ask to be sent death threats (which is just what 90% of the nastiness appears to be, to a person unprepared for it).

Charlotte Gore has suggested that the Labour government will try and shut down online debate by making bloggers responsible for the comments posted on their blog. She said “Enforced moderation kills debate or leaves only well funded organisations able to run open comments. Reduce their income, increase their costs – result? The only blogs left are blogs like mine that have no financial costs and blogs that happen to have access to party or union interns – like, you know, Labourlist.”

I’m surprised to find myself disagreeing with her on this. I do absolutely agree that moderation shouldn’t be enforced by law, and that bloggers shouldn’t be held directly responsible for the comments of others, but I do believe passionately that all bloggers should all be actively moderating their comments, and I think complaining about expense is just trying to dodge the issue.

The reason for this is simple: by allowing this sort of nastiness on your blog, you’re helping create an atmosphere across the internet of tolerance to foul language, threats of violence towards others, racism and other such behaviour. It’s the same as the broken windows policy in New York.

If you don’t believe me, consider this: Guido Fawkes is the most popular political blogger in the UK, with pageview stats to rival a number of websites of major print media publications. He has a very particular style to his blogging: he writes short, to-the-point articles which concentrate on attacking political figures; he asks lots of rhetorical questions to lead his followers through his thought processes; and he frequently makes short asides, using red italicised text to distinguish his asides from the main body of his post. With that in mind, take a look at other anti-politics blogs such as Events, Dear Boy, Events. It’s not hard to see an influential relationship. The popularity of Guido’s style causes a ‘Guidoisation’ of the British Politics corner of the blogosphere.

Guido himself is fairly innocuous most of the time, but there are those who aren’t. Popular libertarian ‘swear-bloggers’ such as Devil’s Kitchen or Obnoxio the Clown use their online personas to make obscene rants and threats against journalists and politicians. While they might not mean to be taken seriously, other bloggers are directly influenced by their style, and their readers aren’t necessarily in on the joke. And it’s when they start commenting on sites which aren’t prepared for that kind of abuse, that the blogosphere gains a reputation for being an obscene, offensive and idiotic place.

What I want to know is: how do we stop the hate, that’s like a rash all over the internet?

A common suggestion is that hurtful commenters can just be argued down, and that a good community will survive the trolls by talking them down. This quite simply doesn’t work, because the posters tend to remain anonymous. It isn’t like a meeting at a town hall where a nuisance-maker could be ejected or ignored. There’s no ‘tackling their hate with reason’ online – if you challenge a person to defend their comments then far from being put on the spot they can just ignore you. You don’t know even who they are.

On this blog I do not have a strong moderation policy. Comments go up unmoderated but I will delete any which are, in my opinion, overly hurtful, personal or violent. Swearing is taken care of with an automatic filter (by the WP-Politifier plugin, if you’re interested) – but the original word used can still be seen by holding your cursor over the blanked-out word. You are required to put a name by your words, because I believe anything worth reading ought to have somebody taking responsibility for having written it.

I would also suggest you go to Gravatar and create an avatar for your email address, and then that should appear on here as well (if you have a Wordpress.com account linked to your email address, congratulations, this has already been done for you). Make sure you read Dan Benjamin’s explanation of Why Your Avatar Matters, as well. It doesn’t just look pretty – it lets people recognise comments from you quickly and easily, and gives just a tiny insight into your personality.

I think the fact that I have never had to delete a comment says two things: one, not very many people read my blog; two, those that do are not inclined towards leaving aggressive comments. Since you’re a self-selected bunch, I figure I can take a little responsibility for this, in that my writing doesn’t attract violent behaviour. It would be nice to think that just be maintaining a pleasant atmosphere, I am contributing somewhat towards making the web a more pleasant place to discuss ‘stuff’.

I feel that somewhere there’s a line that should be drawn on this issue. I’m also a believer in free speech and the right of a person to say whatever they please, regardless of whether I find it distasteful. So, I’m going to draw the line here: I shall not link to or comment on any blog post which is obscene, or abusive, or violent, nor any blog which often publishes posts like that, regardless of the merit of the content of the post or the points being made. I know it’s an ineffectual measure, and that my lack of links will leave nary a wrinkle on the brow of such a blogger, but if in writing this post I encourage just one other person to do the same, I shall have achieved something.

I just don’t think we can sustain the status quo. At some point, the hate needs to stop.