Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

worked. The new users, of course, thought the old users rude, unwel-

coming, and unrealistic to think that their idiosyncratic culture

would last forever. Of course, the influx of new AOL users in 1993

was a mere trickle compared to what came later, but it represented the

first major clash to result from a large group of the general public

crashing what had been a private Internet party.

The influx of new users into the formerly insolated Internet cul-

ture has re-created many of the same tensions that plagued interac-

tions on the Old West frontier between newcomers and old-timers.

The changes created by the Internet culture clash have been obvious in

some ways. There has been a massive crackdown on gambling and

prostitution online, just as there was ...