/Big Mouth/ Baaaaad behaviour
02/12/2008 | Filed under Discover > Big Mouth
From sheep grazing in ancient Greece to spamming on the net, it’s the same old story
I’ve spent most of the weekend dealing with spammers. First, they took advantage of a WordPress exploit to seed my blog with hidden links. Then there was yet another flood of trackback spam and comment spam. Having already ruined email, a greedy minority is well on the way to buggering up blogging too. And yet none of this is new. Just ask the ancient Greeks.
As far as I know the ancient Greeks didn’t blog, but they did know about the Tragedy of the Commons (the term itself was coined in 1968 by Garrett Hardin, but the concept goes back centuries). It’s an excellent description of what happens to good things online, and the Greeks’ version goes something like this.
There’s a nice bit of land, and a bunch of sheep. The sheep farmers are a smart bunch, and they decide the best way to keep the land good is to share it equally and ensure that nobody’s sheep take more than their fair share. For a while, it works perfectly. Everybody’s happy, the sheep get enough but not too much, the grass remains thick and lush and the farmers write best-selling books about Grass 2.0, social grazing and shared lambwidth.
Sharing is for suckers
Then one day, it all goes belly up. One farmer, Harry The Bastard, decides that sharing is for suckers. Why can’t his sheep have as much grass as they want? The other farmers reason with him, arguing that if everybody just grabs what they want and doesn’t think about the bigger picture then the commons will be ruined for everyone. It’s a good point, well made, and Harry agrees.
Then at 3am, the sheep farmers are woken by a terrible noise. It’s Harry The Bastard, astride a giant mechanical sheep. It has rocket launchers for eyes, JCB shovels for hooves and a flamethrower instead of a tongue. Harry flambées the farmers’ sheep, blows up their tents and digs huge holes in the commons while bellowing about “commies”.
The carnage continues for hours, but eventually the robosheep runs out of batteries and the tables are finally turned. The farmers rush Harry en masse, drag him from his shiny silver steed and beat him to death with sticks, rocks and medium-rare legs of lamb. But while beating Harry to bits makes the other farmers feel better, the damage is done. The commons – the lush, green land where every sheep was a happy sheep – has been ruined, possibly forever, by one man and a big metal sheep.
Give or take a few minor details (Harry’s name was really Barry, and the robosheep attack may have been at 4am, not 3am) this tale is exactly the same one Aristotle first told in 300-something BC, and yet it’s being replayed on the internet every single day. We can make technology smarter, more intuitive and more amazing, but sooner or later it always ends up being abused by Harry The Bastard.
Gary was writing for .net in the Stone Age. He’s a journo and software expert. www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com
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Comments
scott / 02/12/2008 / 16:43 / http://our-party.org.uk/blog/
I feel your pain! thro I'm not sure it's "The Tragedy of the Commons" which IIRC is more about a resource degrading because normal users (sheep farmers) fairly increase there useage of the resource (why not each farmer grase 2 sheep instead of one) as opposed to one user (Harry) unfairly increasing his useage.
Jef Claes / 03/12/2008 / 06:59 / http://jclaes.blogspot.com
Not what I expected, but I lolled :)
Ryan / 25/03/2009 / 12:58 / http://www.2amdesign.co.uk/
I know your pain, I had the same thing happen to me a couple of years ago. I love the Harry The Bastard analogy.
