"And I would argue that 'social media' isn't any more social than television is." I'm so old I remember when there was ONLY television. Three networks. The entire country glued to the "boob tube." Parents worried about the plug-in drug.

But if you couldn't bear a celebrity, or even non-celebrity, female on the Tonight Show and you wanted to abuse her profanely and even threaten to rape or kill her and to reveal her address and phone number to countless numbers of other unhinged zanies, your options were to call the switchboard at NBC and hold the phone forever, only to be hung up on ten seconds into your rant, or you could write a letter to the woman c/o The Tonight Show, New York, NY. You were able to reach one or two people that way.

A difference in degree is a difference in kind. The speed and immediacy, combined with the anonymity, of social media has put us on a whole new playing field. Almost nothing about television was social, excepting the interchanges with the small number of people in the same room watching it with you. Social media is nothing BUT social.