Full Circle Associates

This blog post from Network-Centric Advocacy, "Pile On! " Playground Dynamics and Advocacy offers an observation of some of the more challenging aspects of online group communication: the Pile On!

Back in Catholic school we really only had a parking lot for a playground so we passed the time calling out random 'Pile Ons'. The kids would pick some poor victim and randomly run and tackle the chump. The rest of the playground would then have a non-asphalt landing surface (the pile of initial kids) to swarm and jump onto ...oh the fun.

...In a networked movement, we have a greater opportunity to dog pile an issue increasing our success and 'fun'. The pile on always offers the smaller guys opportunities to get some licks in on the bullies. in an advocacy context the pile on offers the nonprofit liputians a chance to bog down the giant industries and opponents that work against us so often.

One of the side effects of the massively many-to-many publishing model that is the blogosphere is the following math:
1. controversy is fun to write
2. controversy is fun to read
3. piling on is safe and fun
4. undoing 1, 2 and 3 is no fun, hard work and easy to avoid."

Are we quintessentially more interested in rubber-necking the accident, participating in the pile on? In some ways I think so. For me the question is how can we use our interest in conflict constructively, at least part of the time?