Office environments often have casual Fridays whereby the normal adherence to business attire is relaxed to something more casual. On all other days of the week, people choose to dress in a certain fashion to convey a professional image, among other reasons. On Fridays however, that behavior is often relaxed and folks dress significantly differently (slacks vs. jeans, etc.) I generally don’t partake in this for the primary reason that just because it is a particular day of the week doesn’t mean my co-workers will forget the manner of dress all the other days of the week. The image of professionalism is shattered and cannot be unseen.
Now think of interaction in the Pit. Often times posters who interact frequently in GD behave significantly differently in the Pit. Does this change your view of the poster in question? It certainly does for me. Some topics simply aren’t suitable for GD or other forums – in those cases it’s neutral. But other times a similar topic could be active in both the Pit and GD, with an overlap of posters participating in both. Should the posts of a particular person in one forum influence your opinion on their credibility and sincerity in another?
On Fridays I wear jeans. Everyone else wears jeans every day of the week. I am that guy who wears a tie when no brass is expected to visit. (And when you become that guy who wears a bowtie you can never stop.)
I don’t Pit participate very often because I find I am not very good at it. However, I do recognize that there are many members here who are adept enough in the use of language to Pit and GD with equal facility. I salute them for their mental flexibility.
In most settings I’ve seen, casual Fridays call for a different set of clothes, but not anything wildly different. I generally swap out my pencil skirt for nice trouser jeans, but otherwise it isn’t a huge leap.
Likewise in the pit I expect people to be a bit looser, but not wildly different than the rest of their persona.
We don’t have casual Fridays where I work, since it is casual every day. And we are quite professional, thank you. Code and circuits don’t particularly care how you dress, and we have a higher percentage of PhDs than your well-dressed office.
I see the difference between GD and the Pit as more like the difference between an office and a bar rather than Monday versus Friday. Your volume and your choice of words and topics will be quite different.
I started a thread much like this in IMHO. If I’m currently calling someone a fucking jackass in the Pit, but, at the same time, over in Cafe Society, the same guy says he likes a book that I also like, am I behaving hypocritically if I say, “Yes, I agree with you, that’s an excellent book?”
The prevailing opinion is that the forums are isolated from each other. You can whale on me in the Pit, and be friendly to me in CS, and that’s perfectly valid board etiquette.
Would they be so different if you were with the same group of people at the bar and at the office? Let’s say it’s a work function that takes place in the evening at a bar on Thursday night. When Friday morning rolls around, would you expect your co-workers to disregard any office inappropriate behavior (though bar appropriate)?
I accept that it’s consistent with board etiquette. I may be an outlier with regard to this topic but if someone is being an ass in one forum I would be less inclined to respond or interact with them in other forums. How can activity in one location not influence your interaction in another? It’s the same person.
That’s all I really meant. I didn’t mean to say it is, or should be, a mandatory approach.
I can grok this emotionally. If someone is being harsh to you on Tuesday, it’s not easy to just act normally again on Wednesday. If someone calls you a stinkard in Cincinnati, it’s hard to shake their hand in Denver.
It can help if you can figure out if the offense is foundational to character, or just a kind of role someone is playing. Many people use the Pit as an excuse to ramp up their outrageous behavior, and say stuff that isn’t really in their personal nature. Saying “shit” instead of “guff.”
On the other hand, some of the members of this board… Well… 'nuff said.
Depends on what it is. Starting a fight after getting falling down drunk, maybe not. Having a loud argument about sports or politics, sure. Canoodling with a willing fellow worker, absolutely. Use of “bad” language would also be fine in a bar.
It’s not like people can’t be harsh in GD. Is using the appropriate GD language of “your post and ideas are vacuous and totally without merit” really much better than using the appropriate Pit language of “you’re an idiot?”
Hell, when the Klingon called Kirk a Denebian slime devil in the bar, it is not like he would have been much nicer in his work situation.
Maybe I’m unusual in this regard, but I don’t really notice and remember who is saying what unless someone is ticked off at me specifically. So far I haven’t come across that situation. I sometimes make a point to look at the name if a poster mentions being in Houston, but by the next day I’ve forgotten it so I don’t know why I bother. I’m fine treating these conversations as if they’re anonymous. It’s just interesting to read other people’s views & stories. It makes little difference to me who had what particular experience, just that someone had it. Laziness maybe? Perhaps.
**Larry: **Joe, you are a moral vaccum, a worthless excuse for a human, and an utter waste of flesh! Joe: I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire dying on the street!
Back at work on Monday:
Larry: Hi, Joe! Do anything exciting this weekend?
**Joe: **[wtf] … ?
Some things, naah, not going to ignore them even if they were originally said in the Pit - racist and misogynist stuff, mostly. But I’ve been had pit disagreements with lots of other people I interact with on OK terms all the time, I feel.
Sounds a bit like Japanese salarymen, where there’s an accepted tradition of going to the bar with co-workers on Friday, getting drunk together, blowing off all the steam, and if you took a swing at your boss that night, it’s not mentioned on Monday.
Everyone’s personality changes a little bit to suit the environment they are in. I am one person at work and a different person at home. I am one person when I’m hanging out with a bunch of stuffed shirts. I’m another person when I’m with a bunch of clowns.
Some situations call for reason and calm. Others call for cursing and screaming.
If someone wants to judge me because I don’t behave and respond the same way no matter the context, that’s fine. But I’d rather they judge me on whether my behavior/responses are appropriate for the context.
The mistake many people make is thinking that the Pit is somehow creating hostility and nastiness. It’s not. To use the analogy upthread, if I go out for beer with my coworkers and they all start calling each other shitbag assholes, the problem is not with the bar, it’s with the workplace. Something is fundamentally wrong and covering it up with a veneer of civility won’t make it go away.
Me, I prefer honest hostility to passive aggressive sniping and tight-lipped derision, which is why I stay out of GD.