Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Are Internet users too easily annoyed?
Almost nothing anyone has ever said or done on the internet has ever seriously annoyed or offended me, not because I don't get annoyed or offended in real life (I do, probably more easily than I should) but just because it seems less real to me and I feel more detached from it. To me, being harshly criticised by someone with a made-up name who represents themselves with a cartoon just isn't Serious Business, not like getting harshly criticised by an angry person over the phone, which actually happens to me quite a lot.
Do some people take offence/get angry too easily on the Web, and if so why? Or is my attitude the wrong one?
Please don't use this as an excuse to re-hash recent or not-so-recent drama here, or on any other forum - it's a general question.
Comments
"To me, being harshly criticised by someone with a made-up name who represents themselves with a cartoon just isn't Serious Business"
Actually, that's a good thing to keep in mind.
I think captainbrass used that phrase in terms of perspective: namely that this is all you see of an Internet "person".
To be honest, sometimes I get unnecessarily annoyed by Internet users because they give me primary evidence of the existence of racists, sociopaths, and Objectivists. Even though I don't directly meet them, it's still disheartening.
Juan - I was toying with responding by acting all offended at your post, but that would kind of completely invalidate what I said...
Seriously, however, my point isn't that I'd dismiss what someone had to say for those reasons, more that it just wouldn't hurt as much. The handle and the avatar emphasise the unreality for me. And I like it that way.
Is grass green?
Almost nothing anyone has ever said or done on the internet has ever seriously annoyed or offended me, not because I don't get annoyed or offended in real life (I do, probably more easily than I should) but just because it seems less real to me and I feel more detached from it.
Aye, but I think that feeling can have its fair share of negative impacts as well. It seems to me that people too easily forget that they are talking to real people on the internet (well, most of the time) and in so doing let go of some of the basic politeness that everyone should exercise when conversing with someone in real life.
There is some treatment that I think no one deserves, so I believe that there are definitely times when it is fair to be very offended by something said online. That being said, I think there are good and bad ways to handle such comments. For example, from what I can tell, vitriol is never really an appropriate response.
Forzare,
While that is true, I do think that people in general tend to get way more worked up and angry about stupid stuff on the Internet than they probably should.
I definitely agree with that too. Of course, turning it around the other way and using that to justify insulting people or being rude (i.e. everyone just has too thin skin) is a problem I have seen online as well.
"Aye, but I think that feeling can have its fair share of negative impacts as well. It seems to me that people too easily forget that they are talking to real people on the internet (well, most of the time) and in so doing let go some of the basic politeness that everyone should exercise when conversing with someone in real life."
That explains why cyberbullying is so widely considered acceptable behaviour among many Internet denizens. Which it's not, of course.
"Is grass green?"
Not necessarily.
* dead grass afflicted by grub
* penguins
* scouts played by noobs
That explains why cyberbullying is so widely considered acceptable behaviour among many Internet denizens. Which it's not, of course.
Yep, I think a good number of people do not even recognize that cyberbullying really exists or at least justify it by saying that someone "got what was coming to him or her."
I guess rude comments online tend to be based on the same kind of reasoning, but frankly I believe that the whole "calling out dumb people on the internet" thing is silly. At best, it just makes people defensive and at worst I feel like it can encourage elitism and stymie friendly conversations. I have yet to see it actually make so-called "dumb people" any smarter, but I could be wrong about that.
AHR,
To be honest, I come off as more easily annoyed in real life, than I do on the internet.
That makes sense to me. After all, you have more of an ability to limit what you say online and you always have the option of not posting when your mood is not so great.
Are people more annoyed than they should be?
In general of course.
^ Yes. As I think I said earlier, I'm one of them, usually over stuff that's either trivial and/or which I have no control over anyway.
Fortunately, IRL I can usually avoid expressing this in unacceptable ways and on-line I seem to get much less annoyed for some reason. Hence the thread.
Poor humanity; no one realizes how hard they make life for themselves by refusing to be calm. ):
"A fistfight over Justin Beiber in real life."
With the right/wrong promotion, more people would probably watch a boxing match between Beiber's fans and haters than the next world heavyweight title fight.
Of course, that would depend on finding two 6 foot 20 stone guys who give a damn about JB. Or maybe two female boxers who do.
Like I said, poor humanity. Either that, or a whole bunch of mildly harsh and insulting "Poor you"s, in order to skip us lucky people.
Now excuse me while I do the disco as my life crumbles around me. I basically automatically have what people spend their entire lives suffering to attain: happiness. I genuinely posses something of greater value than many of the richest men in the world (especially intriguing, if you look at suicide rates among the rich).