Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Anonymity is Like a Warm Blanket

You know,I find the internet to be a fascinating place.
The types of interactions you see online are sometimes so unreal or surreal that I sometimes wonder how people cannot think before they type, or is civility just a retarded gene in the pool of life.
I was reading a forum that I frequent quite often( Not Porn!) and people were posting about movies that they liked and thought should be listed as "essentials". Now I know that movies, like music and books, are very subjective. One mans trash is really another man's treasure. But some of these people just reamed each other out over the slightest comment or opinion that was posted.
Now you and I both know that in real life, if you overheard someone say that their favorite movie was Herbie: Reloaded, you would never jump in their face and tell them that they are lower on the evolutionary chain than soap scum.
But on "teh Internet" it's okay. In fact some people seem to pride themselves on it.
The fact that someone is possibly thousands of miles away from you and unable to tell where you are or really, who you are, seems to offer people more courage than a bottle of the hard stuff. And the fact that you do not have to physically back your thoughts up seems to be a great comfort to some of these people. In the real world, I mean the really real world,( Joe I know you'll get that reference) if you were that rude you would get your ass handed to you by any number of people. And you just wouldn't do it.
And it's not only in forums and chat rooms either. How many times have you opened up your real life mailbox to shouts of "Make your Penis Bigger!" or "Watch German Girls Play in a Pool of Shit!" (What, you mean nobody else gets those e-mails?....Oops.) If someone was stuffing things like that in your mailbox, you'd be on the lookout for them. Either to tell them to stop or else get some more information.
It's partially because of all this that I avoid certain aspects of the internet. I really like the thought of online gaming, but don't want to put up with all the jerks out there. I know that there are good people and not everyone's an ass, but why should I be forced to wade through the shit to find the few nuggets of gold?

Why is being civil so hard for some people? Can't you just state your point and leave it at that? I get really frustrated sometimes with some of that stuff. I know in the grand scheme of things it's quite a small pet peeve, but as this method of communication becomes more commonplace, it's going to be as important as the spoken word is.

That's My 2 Cents, and I know I'm not the only one.

5 comments:

  1. All I gotta say is, You Suck.

    Ha ha ha, kidding, of course. I'm not sure, but maybe you could take me.

    Was the Really Real World quote from Crow? It's a cool quote, either way.

    I spent a half an hour, one night on this online game, responding to the barrage of spam I was seeing with private messages to 'please use the trade channel. thanks', I think mostly for my own curiosity as to the responses I'd get. To a man, none of them offered to spare the rest of us their spam and use the proper advertising medium, and some of the responses weren't too surprising: poorly-spelled, 3rd-grade grammar "Fcuk of u lmaer, I kin uzz this bcuz I own the game" and similar. I felt very elite in my ability to string 3 words together properly.

    Of course, I tried to follow up with survey questions - You're american, aren't you? What are you, 12? - but I didn't get enough responses to form anything.

    We need a virus that causes a great big cock to jump out of some lamer's speakers and repeatedly skull-fuck them. Oh, sorry; that may have been a bit over the line there.

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  2. Your suggested method of treatment for this problem intrigues me. I think we should patent it and then have Microsoft incorperate it into Windows Service Packs.

    Yes, the quote is from the Crow. Has to be on MY all time top ten list.

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  3. Поставки железоотделителей, магнитных сепараторов, металлодетекторов для промышленности.

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