Small-town gossip moves to the Web

[Dick Whitman]

I've never heard of "Topix" before, but apparently it was originally intended to be a news site for small towns. What it has turned into is a corner of the Internet where small-town and rural gossip can go on unabated:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/small-town-gossip-moves-to-the-web-anonymous-and-vicious.html?_r=1&hp

Very interesting. Reminds me of the early days of SportsJournalists.com, in fact, when you could change your username with each post and people were pumping themselves and their friends for every job opening in America. I shouldn't have been, but I was a little surprised there is still a place for that kind of Internet gossip. Apparently it's tearing some small towns apart in the Ozarks and Appalachia. The NYT story mentions a town of 365 people with 107 of them on that town's Topix site at one time.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

TOPIX is pretty big in rural W.Va.
Ideal for small town gossip in our little corner of the world.

 

[imjustagirl]

that "town" is Tim Couch's hometown.

Also,

On February 03, 2009, Mark and Rhonda Lesher filed a defamation lawsuit against anonymous posters on Topix.com. According to the Leshers' petition, over 1,700 defamatory statements were made about them by anonymous posters on Topix.com. The 365-page petition includes 2,568 counts of defamation, libel per se and defamation per se against the anonymous users. Although Topix was not a party to the lawsuit, it was forced to reveal the IP addresses of the posters and the dangers of unmoderated anonymous posting on Topix were brought to light for the first time in the public eye.[citation needed]

Initially Topix charged money to people who requested that Topix take expedited removal of negative posts. After thirty states' attorneys generals protested, Topix stopped charging. Jack Conway, the Kentucky Attorney General, said the charging scheme "smacked of having to pay a fee to get your good name back."[5]

By 2010 Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal questioned the website's practice of charging $19.99 for expedited review of slanderous comments in local forums. According to a press release from Conway’s office, the tools provided by Topix.com to remove the abusive posts are ineffective unless consumers agree to pay the fee. Topix CEO Chris Tolles accused the pair of grandstanding and intimidation, insisting the site operates with appropriate and timely oversight.[7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topix_%28website%29

I can't find it now, and it might not have been topix, but there was a story a few years back about some guy who lost custody of his kid and was accused of murder and drugs or something on a similar site. It was horrific to read the things people were just putting out there.

 

[mjslovin91]

This is wild. Nice piece of reporting too.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I recall some site called something like Juicy College a few years ago which served the same purpose on college campuses.

 

[Cubbiebum]

I recall some site called something like Juicy College a few years ago which served the same purpose on college campuses.

Yep. I was in college when that got going. If I recall my school sent out a notice to all students that the site is no longer allowed and people posting could be punished or something along those lines. It was a front page story for the student paper which I was working for at the time.

 

[apeman33]

We hate Topix. Part of it is because people who read the local town's forum, which is full of libel and trash, think our paper controls it. We even ran a story on how we don't run it and that the guy who runs it is completely unconcerned about how random people post things about other random people just for the sake of slinging mud.

Top topics usually just have a person's name as the title of the thread. The first post will be along the lines of "I think she's a **** and she should stay away from my man!" or "That son of a ***** is a drug pusher!" And then each response just builds upon it.

Appropriate and timely oversight? If that means "no oversight whatsoever," then it's an accurate statement.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Topix is vile. Copying and pasting entire articles from our site is bad enough. But the personal stuff is way over the line.

 

[Ace]

Topix is vile. Copying and pasting entire articles from our site is bad enough. But the personal stuff is way over the line.

Yeah. They should just call it Toxic.

 

[Shoeless Joe]

Topix = cesspool of stupidity

 

[Double Down]

Topix is where YouTube commentors go to graduate school.

 

[Ace]

Topix = cesspool of stupidity

That's unfair .... to cesspools.