[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by VonDondu

I guess that's one way to look at this thread. It's certainly true if you ignore all of the original material that is added with each new post.

LOL Sometimes I really appreciate you kind of flat and dry statements, although I am not sure if they are meant to be funny or not

However, when you say, "In RL, there will mostly be consequences," you can't assume that all of these people "have a life"--that is, a social life in which they behave themselves because of their perception (conscious or not) of the consequences. Maybe they don't get out much and the way they act on the internet is the way they always act.

This is probably true in some cases, and in those cases it is sad. However, as deceiving as having no social life where real interaction is going on, is it to have a social life where group homogenity is very strong. This I also think is true in some cases, since many people actually interact only with people who are very similar to themselves. Some people are very dependent of confirmation from others, and the safest way to get constant confirmation is to surround yourself with people who share your thinking, opinions and emotional set up.

There has been some recent studies of internet using, and the conclusion from these studies are that many people use internet interaction to get more attention, or attention for different aspects of themselves, that they feel they can get IRL. Thus, the internet use for many people seem to be more compensatory rather than a simple reflection of a person's RL.

The lesson for people who get hurt when other people disagree with them is that even if your messages are important to you, you need to realize that they're not important in the same sense to anyone else, so you shouldn't think that other people are deliberately trying to wound you personally just because they're shooting holes in your ideas or calling you a moron or blowing you off.

I still say we need to make a distinction between a) the messages we write to people we actually know when we actually feel like we're having a conversation; b) the messages we write for ourselves just to put our thoughts on "paper"; and c) messages we post on message boards for total strangers to read (which might overlap with "b").

I agree totally with the first paragraph. I also think it is an important distiction you make here regarding the motivation people have for posting a message, as well as for using an internet message board in general. Different people wish to fill different needs by posting at an internet forum, and some seems to feel injured or unhappy when those needs are not fulfilled the way they wish. Here at SYM for instance, there have been periods when some members have complained about too many serious discussion since they felt SYM should be a place for fun and entertainment rather than discussions about controversial topics. At another forum where I post, there has been complaints that some people post too much about games, too much about sport, too much about politics etc. I think some people have unrealistic demands of how much you can control other people's respones. Everybody who use a public internet forum must be aware that what they have written is there for everyone, friend, foe or stranger, to read and respond to, and also that the internet forum is not like a computer game - made for your personal entertainment without you taking responsibility for fulfilling your needs.

Btw, the line between public and private and the illusion of public and private, is an interesting topic on internet. I think of all these people who write "internet diaries" meant for other people to read, thus creating an illusion of privacy in a totally public room. Well, that's another discussion....

When it comes to how we react to internet debates, I think our station in life plays a role.
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...the internet just doesn't seem that important to me, even if I enjoy spending a lot of time on it. Some people have a lot of friends on the internet, and that's great, but in my case, my social life is full enough as it is, and (I hate to say it) being on the internet is more of a break from my social life than a way to forge deep relationships. (That doesn't mean I don't like all of you, so please don't take that the wrong way.) Again, how we use the internet reflects our station in life. And how personally we get involved in our posting affects how we react to other people's messages.

Again, I agree with you and I actually don't think internet interaction is so different from RL interaction at the same level. A close, intimate relationship between two people may be as close and intimate over internet as in RL, minus physical appearance and contact, which may not be very important for that particular relationship anyway. A more superficial aquintance-type of relationship between two people where interaction is limited to a few aspects of life, will be the same regardless of medium. I however think that differences in expectations may be harder to identify on internet, since we miss so much communicative information about each other.

If I'm reading you correctly, you're talking about two different things in your last sentence: "blunted sensitivity" which affects what we say to other people, and "increased sensitivity" to what they say to us.

Why are people more vulnerable to criticism when they post messages on the internet? I don't quite understand what you're saying. You seem to be suggesting that people are more sensitive to being opposed on the internet because their real life social environment is different from the (heterogeneous?) social environment of the internet. Or is there more to it than that?

I think blunted as well as increased sensitivity can occur both from sender and receiver on internet as compared to that individual would react IRL, but what I wanted to emphasize with the last paragraph of my post was the increased sensitivity I believe can occur because of the differences between a homogenous RL social environment and a heterogenous internet community.

I think they're more sensitive because they feel like they're putting themselves on the line when they write messages on the internet. I think there is a qualitative difference between what comes out of our mouths and what we write. When we are inside our own heads (outside of our usual social context, if you prefer), our ideas and beliefs are the measure of our worth and the source of our pride, and we are more vulnerable to disapproval or disagreement. In RL, we have lots of buffers and defenses, and we simply don't pay as much attention to what other people say because we're concerned about other things besides pure ideas (such as how people look when they're talking). In RL, other people's words are spoken into the air; but when we are on the internet and the space we're occupying is in our own mind, other people's remarks seem to be coming straight at us, right into our personal space. (I'm having trouble putting that into words, and I hope this isn't a circular argument.)

I think I get your point...and if I do, this is the same thing as I have been referring to when I have commented on people mixing up private and public, demanding privacy for stuff they choose to express publically. However, I am almost falling asleep now - I may post more on this topic later on.