I couldn’t express myself fully in the title, so let me explain better:
When you are on the SDMB or any message board for that matter, how are you viewing your fellow posters? Are you viewing them as friends, real people, pixels on a screen?
I have always considered messageboarding a sport. I view other posters as players, or gamers. You enter into the internet realm and you play by internet rules, not real life rules.
For instance, in real life, if I meet someone I like and think they are cool, and I know them for 7 years, and I talk to them nearly every day, and then one day they tell me their mom died, I would go to the funeral. If they told me they got married, I would send a gift. But if the same thing happens on line, I just offer internet blessings. I don’t treat them the same way I treat a real life friend.
Recently, I have been posting at a new site, and I noticed something they do there…they refer to each other as ‘fonts’. So, they don’t tell me, “I like you, Nzinga.” Instead, they say, “I like your font.”
They say that because they understand that the people on the internet can be literally anyone and anything. You don’t really know the person, no matter how much you think you do. You only know their posting personality…so they aren’t your friends, and the rules just aren’t the same.
So what’s up, folks? How do you view each other here?
Somewhere in between. I don’t think we’ve quite invented a word for the relationship yet, although perhaps “font” is in the running (never heard it before in that context.)
When I’m talking about, say, purplehorseshoe’s experiences with her husband in the ICU after contracting West Nile, I’m likely to say “my internet friend’s husband got horrible complications from West Nile”, or “my message board friend…”
If I’m talking about a good debate, it’s “This guy on my message board…”
If I’m talking about a fact, it’s usually “someone mentioned on the board…”
Just like in real life, someone I feel great empathy for, or have had a positive emotional exchange, or talked via PM or email, I’m more likely to refer to with “friend”, but there’s generally a “message board” or “internet” modifier.
WhyNot, I say that exact thing, all the time in real life, “This guy on the message board…”
The thing is, some of you guys, yourself included, get a LOT of mentions from me in real life, just because of all the things I’ve learned here. So I really do respect the ‘fonts’ here. Truly like and respect them. But as MB personalities. Totally different than real life.
I think of Dopers as my co-workers. Since I work from home, alone, and have done so since I joined this board - which has also been my entire post-college life - I’ve never had more than 2 co-workers at a time. And those guys are just my friends who work with my and I communicate with via IM.
The SDMB gives me a chance to interact with other people about as much as you would with real co-workers. Some you make bonds with, some you twitch every time you come across their name, some you like while they’re around but quickly forget them when they move on.
It’s not a “family” or a “friend” situation, but not pretend.
One way I do NOT view my fellow Dopers is as some sort of amalgamated blob that is represented by “Typical Doper.” I hate when folks accuse all the people of the board of always having the same response to situations. So not true!
To me, it’s not that different from other old long-distance friends that I used to know in real life. I just say “my invisible friends” or “my invisible internet friends” so I at least sound like I’m aware that it’s crazy.
I always form mental pictures of real people and am usually about half right when I see photos of them. But I always relate to people here as real and think of the interchanges here as though we were in a real life face-to-face situation.
In terms of referring to things I have read here, the reference is usually along the lines of “I read on the internet…”
I mostly think of the people here as “message board people.” I mean, you are all real people with real feelings and opinions, but on the other hand I know that a lot of people aren’t taking it very seriously, and a few people are trolling, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time worrying about people’s feelings if we’re in some debate thread or whatever. This is like my safe Internet place where I can be as sarcastic as I want to and blow off steam by sharing my real thoughts about stuff without pissing off people I have to see at Thanksgiving every year.
That said, I do get to know some people from the Internet better (via Facebook or very occasionally by meeting up in person or whatever) and those people I give a little more consideration to, because they are more real to me.
People generally have a hard enough time being honest and truthful in person. Hide them behind a screen and an alias and I have little reason to suspect it gets any better.
I come to this site for entertainment, and occasionally to be informed, so I guess it isn’t surprising that I view other posters as essentially fictional characters in a story. I wouldn’t expect the reality of the real life doper to match up entirely with their characters persona.
This is the thing, though. If some of us come for entertainment and see each other as ‘internet people’, do we have some kind of responsibility to the people who really see everyone as real people?
ETA: I have the movie pit thread in mind. I actually felt guilty for laughing. I’m not kidding. I laughed so hard, and then I realized that people were taking it very seriously. They didn’t see the pit as some sort of tough level of a game…they see it… well as real life??
Well, if someone has started a thread about how sad they are that their dog died or whatever, I see no sense in coming in and being a douche to them. I mean, I can respect basic social niceties even though I’m on the Internet and discussing with people I don’t consider close friends. There are a lot of shades of gray here, IMO.
I.e., if someone wants to complain that their feelings got hurt because someone challenged them on their ideas in GD, I don’t have a lot of sympathy. But if someone’s feelings got hurt because they were posting about their sick kid and someone came in to be a jerk about world overpopulation (or whatever), that seems more legit.
I’m not sure this explanation is very clear, but then perhaps neither is my thinking on this topic.
Ok. So you’re in the pit. You are arguing with another poster about declawing racist babies. The poster begins to call you names. Are you fine with that? Or do you feel like someone is calling you names in real life?