Of course, as with all mythos, the reality differs. The wild west is rarely like it's portrayal in the cultural mind. Like the wild west, the internet is similar in its portrayal in mass culture.
Just as the wild west movies and series turned what was essentially a genocide into battle for good, while even managing to reverse the attackers to the Native Americans, the wild west is idealized in the cultural mind with many repeating themes of savagery and civility. A masterful piece of propaganda to be sure. The internet has a similar aspect. The most reputed hackers are evil to the consumer masses, and messiahs to the internet masses. Youtube personalities as reviled by the internet masses, and glorified by the consumer masses.
This is not intended as a diatribe about the 'evils' of mass culture.
It is a slippery slope when one starts demonizing mass consumer culture, it usually ends with a kick in the nostalgia. Conspiracy culture is another niche system for people to construct their own specialness, and will not be included here. Both provide a purpose of luxury. Like a brick, they hold no inherent good or evil, only if one smashes a window or builds a school is the brick's morality evaluated.
This is simply an evaluation of how propaganda functions, or has diminished function on the internet currently. That is not to say it is without impact, or that it will not increase it's grasp of peoples minds (as seen by any political website), only that propaganda will always need to be accounted for, no matter the methods of moral determinism.
Just as in the wild west, new sums of money came about as the result of burgeoning frontiers, so too with the birth of crypto currencies of the internet like Bitcoin.
Just as in the wild west, anonymity is valued and permitted for a rise in privacy and criminal activity, as with digital warfare and cyber crimes.
Just as the wild west brought about new standards in regulation, so to do SOPA variants keep appearing in U.S. courts.
Through both WWW's, propaganda is and was used through two fundamental methods, one more effective than the other. The first is to adjust perceptions of perceived threats through ignorance of the topic. The second is the adjustment through understanding of the topic. People fear that which they do not understand far more than those those things they do understand. Understanding frees one from rejecting a whole, and instead, choosing specific points of contention. Ignorance breeds the rejection of the whole, and is far more memorable. It also is far more effective a means of influence until the ignorance is understood.
Now, before one points to the ignorance of the people during the days of the wild west, I would point out that the literacy rate among (white) males and a majority of females was 96% to 99% nationwide. After the creation and adoption of television the literacy rates slipped into the high 80's percentile, and with the internet the literacy rate has returned to 99%.
When one ventures into the unknown, it's best to be prepared.
Preparation may be in part a physical process, but majorly a mental process. When one enters a frontier of any kind, risk and reward are increased. Often rewards seen beyond the boundary are unlike those within. Risk assessment is a comparison of data between potential loss and probability of that loss.
The possible losses are often, one's life, image, or wealth, what some would consider finite resources to begin with. The probability of loss relies on the manipulation of propaganda through ignorance. As more is known, vague arguments against the given subject become specific. As Lincoln said,
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
As more come to the internet by facebook, or reddit, or whichever such place first hooks their attention in a digital medium, ignorance is lifted and propaganda of yore ceases to work. Demonizing is, for instance 'online bullying', the result of a misconception, a vague, blanket approximation in which mass culture becomes hyper vigilant to perceived wrongs. Anything that 'seems' or 'feels' like 'online bullying' should be punished to the full extent of the law.
The demonizing process of ignorant propaganda ensures that even if the woman seems like a witch, she probably should be burned anyway.
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