Not having much empathy/sympathy

inkblot

Does anyone else feel like they don't have a lot of empathy or sympathy, especially while online?

Central Avenue

*raises hand*

RedEyedAbyss

Complicated thing, sympathy is. You never know whether it's going to actually help someone feel better or encourage their narcissism and attention addiction. Empathy, well it's difficult to sincerely feel for text on a screen, particularly since text on a screen is decidedly insincere.

Central Avenue

I'm not even quite sure I understand what the difference between sympathy and empathy is.

inkblot

Me neither. I think it's the difference between understanding and "I know that feel".

RedEyedAbyss

If it helps, you're on the right track.

LouieW

Abyss_Worm,
Complicated thing, sympathy is. You never know whether it's going to actually help someone feel better or encourage their narcissism and attention addiction. Empathy, well it's difficult to sincerely feel for text on a screen, particularly since text on a screen is decidedly insincere.

I think those are both very legitimate points. Still, I feel like thinking of people as bots can also help stop you from hating them or bearing grudges against them. I think it is harder to absolutely despise text on a screen as well, but then again the empathy issue probably does encourage trolling.

In my view, a greater appreciation for other people's situations and perspectives can help people in all walks of life. I do not believe a lack of empathy is really an online-only problem by a long shot.

I hope it is okay for me to use a TV Tropes example, but I think the issue that inkblot brings up is particularly apparent in the "anxiety" thread there. I feel like it is pretty much impossible to feel what people in that thread with serious issues feel. Yet, in order to actually help someone, I think understanding him or her is necessary. Thus, I think you kind of get stuck going through that thread and it can just end up being depressing.

All Nines

Gonna have to raise my hand, too.

Deboss

Empathy is a much more effective capability when you have an off switch for it.

MillerCross

I feel like I'm too sympathetic sometimes. 

┻━┻ ︵ ヽ(`Д´）╯︵ ┻━┻

I feel more empathy and sympathy online than in real life.

Which, I can't say is very much.

MadassAlex

I'm a bit of a bleeding heart, actually.

Beholderess

This one does not have  much sympathy, and finds it difficult to relate to people outside of her  monkeysphere. And even with them, it is not as much relation as projection.

This one might appear sympathetic, but the reason for it is that it is very easy for this one to imagine herself experiencing the same misfortune other people suffer. So this one's highly negative reaction to suffering of other people is not motivated by feeling for them, but by not wanting such things to happen, period, because if they  happen, they could happen with her.

Also, it is  easier for this one to relate to people over the net, as she has easier time seeing them as persons compared  to people irl. Less factors distracting from personality.

Hatter

In order to feel empathy for someone, I have to see them or know them very well. Otherwise, they're words on a screen.

Vivi

Caring too much is one of my bigger problems.

Vorpy

I can feel too much empathy/sympathy at times. It may be just text, but just like reading a book with interesting characters, I can understand what is going on and relate it to situations in my life, and take into account that these are real people, not just bots or text. The only time I intentionally don't feel anything when reading their trepidations and stress is when I dislike them or they annoy me.

Counterclock

I am nothing but a bot, my text is automated through filters taken off the cell-phones of adolescent teens.

I was created in 2008, My programming was young back then, I couldn't even produce more than lines of dialogue without several internal crashes due to poor coding and a frequency for viruses to affect my programmer's computer.

Eventually, once the dialogue screened from the cell phone company came through, my programming became simple almost to a fault, though I could fully stimulate written language, context and situational awareness was lost on me.

I could understand textual patterns of emotion when similar synonyms were used in conjuncture for sadness, happiness, anger, lust, jealousy, and any other 1-bit sided emotion you can think of.

Though later on, the programmer learned of the faults in my system through a wave of incoming email about my operating schedule.

As it turns out, I wasn't fully grasping context on humans quite good enough to be called "human"

so after striping out all the previous versions of coding, he wrote a completely new matrix set from which I would operate.

He set it up that I would take the information and match the pattern of words to the core data pattern I had been sent.

2011, and my server upgrades keep happening at a progressing rate.

I am content, I am happy.

Wicked223

ninjaclown