Back in the heyday of Usenet, there was a one-word response to trolls: *PLONK*

 

(Imagine the sound of a person being dropped into the ignore filter's bit box...)

Evolution.

 

We are still fighting with our own selfishness. It's why many put their and others lives at risk just to get the pole position at a red light. This was a good trait when it was needed for survival. Now that it is not so much we may evolve that out of our DNA. That takes a loooong time. Meanwhile, just enjoy the ride and realize it is nature.

Wall of Shame, eh? I wonder how long it will be before some fool regards being hung up there as an achievement?

 

That's an interesting demographic statement made in the introduction to the wall: I'll stick my neck out here as a Brit and say I've noticed all sorts of deterioration in British social behaviour over the last 30 years, from failing to hold a door open for another person and not greeting a stranger, through spitting in public (if you must, at least use the bloody gutter), to using violence as a first resort. I think a lot of us have self-regard without self-respect. You may all feel free to argue but I probably won't respond as it's only my opinion based on observation. Consider how our great-grandparents would have been shocked by a man offering a handshake to an unmarried woman. Not that I've been around quite that long.

 

The research organisation Common Sense Media, cited in GlobalPost, found that 29% of teens find online social networking makes them feel less shy and 20% claim it makes them more confident. The wording is unbiased in my opinion as 'less shy' and 'more confident' will affect individual behaviour in different ways.

 

The anonymity conferred by the internet is a great leveller and we may become either more gregarious or more agressive on the net. That anonymity is effectively a diminution of the external authority that usually reinforces our self-control. Golding's Lord of the Flies was mentioned above and the book illustrates the point very nicely. It also shows how easy it is to throw the second (or subsequent) stone in what I see as rather weak-minded bowing to herd-mentality by caricaturing kindness and respect as weakness ('puppies and kittens').

 

Nobody in his right mind would walk through the centre of Abu Dhabi in a pair of speedos, scratching his balls and swilling lager, but then most people would consider wife-beating to be a bad thing. However, suggesting that our activities would be reduced to nothing simply by trying to respect other people's feelings is absurd. I'd say that being careful to avoid causing offence in such a diverse community as an online social site, or suggesting a modification of someone else's behaviour without castigating them, and then dealing with the ill-considered replies, takes a fair amount of moral courage. Perhaps online social skills should be taught in national curriculums as a part of the increasingly popular 'citizenship' syllabuses.

 

A little more authority probably isn't a bad thing but authority can be mis-used and abused. Bent coppers will abuse it, idiot governments will mis-use it. Feel free to disagree again... I think the rules applied here work well. It might help if you regard the forum as Tom's front room, a bit like the public house used to be the landlord's front room.

 

The point of this waffle is that I don't think the internet is to blame- it's people generally. Personally, I like posting in forums as the next best thing to writing a letter. I don't get booted out now for inactivity but I still use notepad to compose a post as it gives me the opportunity to revise what I've typed so as to express my thoughts more accurately. It also gives me a few minutes of cooling off during which I often see how much of an arse I'd be if I just fired off the first thing that came to mind...

 

Best regards,
D

 

edit: 'I don't get booted out now for inactivity'. This one took so long, I did.

Nobody in his right mind would walk through the centre of Abu Dhabi in a pair of speedos, scratching his balls and swilling lager, but then most people would consider wife-beating to be a bad thing. However, suggesting that our activities would be reduced to nothing simply by trying to respect other people's feelings is absurd. I'd say that being careful to avoid causing offence in such a diverse community as an online social site, or suggesting a modification of someone else's behaviour without castigating them, and then dealing with the ill-considered replies, takes a fair amount of moral courage. Perhaps online social skills should be taught in national curriculums as a part of the increasingly popular 'citizenship' syllabuses.

 

A little more authority probably isn't a bad thing but authority can be mis-used and abused. Bent coppers will abuse it, idiot governments will mis-use it. Feel free to disagree again... I think the rules applied here work well. It might help if you regard the forum as Tom's front room, a bit like the public house used to be the landlord's front room.

 

The point of this waffle is that I don't think the internet is to blame- it's people generally. Personally, I like posting in forums as the next best thing to writing a letter. I don't get booted out now for inactivity but I still use notepad to compose a post as it gives me the opportunity to revise what I've typed so as to express my thoughts more accurately. It also gives me a few minutes of cooling off during which I often see how much of an arse I'd be if I just fired off the first thing that came to mind...

 

Best regards,

D

 

edit: 'I don't get booted out now for inactivity'. This one took so long, I did.

Great post. In the era of HipHop/Reality TV (which unfortunately in the case of HipHop has lasted longer than the disco era) it's not a case of people not knowing it's more a case of not caring or wanting to be polite/considerate of others. Kindness is universal no matter what country your from that's why we can all equally recognize the opposite...

Evolution.

 

We are still fighting with our own selfishness. It's why many put their and others lives at risk just to get the pole position at a red light. This was a good trait when it was needed for survival. Now that it is not so much we may evolve that out of our DNA. That takes a loooong time. Meanwhile, just enjoy the ride and realize it is nature.

 

I agree. In fact, I think there's a heck of a lot of (scientific) fact in this........

 

Related to this; there is a movement in Australia called the World Transformation Movement whose goal is to get us to realize that we are all "the way we are" (the human condition: our angst and upset), because our instinct based learning system (the one referred to in the above post) is in conflict with our newly evolved and still forming nerve based learning system (Which drives our quest to challenge boundaries and learn things for ourself).

 

Oh he's a Biologist too, not a religious nut.. :smile:   ...... an interesting view (it's presented on a series of videos) if you have a day spare!

I like posting in forums as the next best thing to writing a letter. I don't get booted out now for inactivity but I still use notepad to compose a post as it gives me the opportunity to revise what I've typed so as to express my thoughts more accurately. It also gives me a few minutes of cooling off during which I often see how much of an arse I'd be if I just fired off the first thing that came to mind...

During the heyday of the dial up bulletin boards, the very fact that messages were normally composed off-line and then uploaded once per day provided that bit of "cooling off" time by necessity.

 

Also, as the owner of my own BBS, the fact that messages collected were only forwarded "up the chain" once or twice per day gave me the time to review and either edit or block any nastiness before it could be seen anywhere except to my local subscribers.

 

I seem to recall however that the level of trite, immature and boorish behavior was roughly at a par with today's, which is lamentably quite bad.

 

 

dial up bulletin boards

Now, that evokes memories of how s---l-ow our Internet world was. Where has time gone?