Little to the left
MOL,
Indeed you may be Frank who behaves the same way in real life (I doubt it) - and I may be a teen aged girl named Pricilla (I do know who One Direction is). But our behaviors are our behaviors. Obvious jerk is obvious even if they are not the precise jerk they claim to be.
Of course no one forces me to go the Pit and in fact I spend fairly little time there. What does that have to do with my comment? Some people vent there. Some people post clever insults to those who could stand to have their arrogance taken down a notch. And some people act like playground bullies ganging up on someone. I enjoy the clever insults. I’ve vented myself. And I think what I think of those who enjoy playing the role of bully whether it is allowed behavior or not. YMMV and obviously does.
If I’m relating something I saw on the Dope to someone I know in real life, I’ll usually say “someone on the message board I use said…” or similar. There’s nobody here I would really consider a friend (my definition of “friend” is fairly narrow) but the board in general has been useful and entertaining to me for quite some time (and therapeutic on more than one occasion) so I do have some affection for the SDMB as a whole if not anyone in particular.
I love everybody here as much as anybody is capable of loving anybody, and I’m certain they feel exactly the same about me.
I try not to hurt anyone’s feelings when online, because I recognize that you are individuals with feelings. I don’t always succeed, but I try. I also try not to post anything that I wouldn’t tell any member of my family or my employer, because this board isn’t a confessional and you’re not bound by vows or codes of ethics to keep what I write confidential. Net life and real life intersect for me in many ways and always have.
I started online with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer posting board. We tended to have get-togethers all over the country, flying in to hang out together. These people became my real-life friends, as have some Dopers. I assume I’ll be judged for what I write, and I should be - that’s how I’m representing myself. And I judge you all, too. I don’t have anyone on my Ignore list, but there are certainly posters who I’ll read just because it was written by those folks. There are also threads and posts I don’t bother reading because of the writer. The internet is your opportunity to be seen as your best self. Why waste that?
StG
Yes, yes, yes! And why waste the chance to have real conversations with people you might never get the chance to meet? If we can treat each other well, we can really talk. Why waste that for jokes and sarcasm?
The internet is just as real, or fake, as anything else.
I have met a lot of people that I first met and “knew” from an internet forum (not this one) so I see it pretty much like real life, mostly.
of course, it is easier for people to pretend to be someone they aren’t but, in general, I assume they are pretty much the way they come across in their posts. give them the benefit of the doubt, if possible.
and I try to not take offense in general no matter where I am interacting. it’s just a good idea.
That was where I used to live.
Please forgive me, I have snipped all over your quote. But first, let me say that once again, I can read a bit about how you think by how you assume I think. Just because I consider messagboarding a ‘game’ doesn’t mean I don’t treat my fellow players with respect. I am an honorable messageboarder, and I don’t intend to make my online personality a dick, just like my real personality isn’t a dick.
Using terms like ‘fantasy land’ and ‘role play’ sounds all very cute, but truth be told, it is EXACTLY that for TONS of people on message boards, and if you turn a blind eye to that, you are kidding yourself.
It doesn’t matter how earnestly you post, you are still in a ‘fantasy world’ to some extent my friend. I think it would be incredibly naive of me to think otherwise. The very idea that people are the exact same in real life as they are online is insane. Some are, but some aren’t. I have been honest about who I am generally speaking: A 38 year old sassy fat black woman from the ghetto, married, one child, bucktooth, afro wearing, big mouth, goofy, silly, emotional hip hop loving mama.
However, I DEFINITELY am different on this forum with my internet buddies than I am in real life. For one thing, I SPEAK totally different than I do with my real life buds. If I spoke here the way I speak with my friends, I would be run out of here. Seriously, I would be run off for my slang and Black English. I would have been banned for calling posters ‘nigga’ every five seconds. So that is one way I’m not who I am in real life. As brutally honest as I am, I promise you, if I am that far off from how I post, thousands of others are super duper different than they are in everyday life.
For tons of reasons. First of all, the stakes are different. In real life, the stakes are higher; when people get online, the stakes are low. Trust me, that has a huge effect on how the people you are interacting with online are going to project themselves.
You log on to a board, you make up a name, any fantastical name you want, anything you always wanted to be. You upload an avatar, whomever you like, princess, king, whatever, and you get to project your online persona. That is not real life. It just aint.
Can I be frank with you, Dseid? It seems as if you want to be the arbiter of what is acceptable posting and what is not. You want to be able to crack jokes yourself in the pit, so you make rules that the jokes must be ‘clever’ to knock down ‘arrogance’ in other posters. Guess what? Most posters who you direct your clever jokes at aren’t going to find them so clever. And you aren’t going to find jokes directed at you so clever.
To toot my own horn here, I can say I don’t suffer from that problem . I certainly CAN and DO find jokes directed at me very clever sometimes. And I can laugh at jokes on either side of an argument, provided the jokes are funny to me, even those at my own expense. And I often make jokes at my own expense.
You also say the pit doesn’t mean we HAVE to be mean. True. It doesn’t. It doesn’t mean we have to call people cunts and cumfaces. But, if you can’t take a JOKE in the pit, then yeah, it’s you, not me. Joking IN THE PIT is not going too far, no matter how you slice it. If someone is merely JOKING with you in the pit, or LAUGHING at you in the pit, and you can’t take it, then you just really shouldn’t be there.
As for bullying and namecalling, in or out the pit, my 7 years of posts are my cites. I don’t do it. Even though I don’t interact with you as if you are a real person, I have enough respect for the ‘game’.
Word.
Really? So this {{jsgoddess}} is the same as a loving embrace from a friend. Ok.
And this is where I am getting conflicted. Because I am just like you here…I don’t take offense. However, I am starting to consider that everyone isn’t like me. Some posters are more sensitive. If I am more thick skinned, do I have a responsibility to those who aren’t? In real life, I do. I know that I don’t want to hurt friends or co-workers or acquaintances who are very sensitive. And I don’t want to hurt online buddies who may be sensitive either.
But it seems to me that the Pit is there for those who CAN joke with more dark or biting humor. That is a part of the game. That is why this board isn’t real life. Because in real life, there is no room that one can avoid to keep more acerbic humor away from them. Online, you can log on, sit down and choose not to go into the jungle gym. If you DO go into the jungle gym, I can see getting hurt if someone gangs up on you and calls you a cunt. But joking, no matter how dumb those jokes may be should be fine in the rough room of the message board.
I think you’re getting hung up on the fact that the Dope (and other online fora) have different rules of social interaction, and you are equating different with “fake”. I mean, no, giving someone an online {{hug}} (I am kind of mad that you just made me type that out) is not like giving a real hug, obviously, but it’s not supposed to be exactly the same as a real hug. It’s an online written expression of sympathy. That doesn’t make it fake. It doesn’t make it the same as a real hug either, but that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be. And people can create different personas online, sure. I would venture to say that most of us behave and speak at least slightly differently online than we do in person. But again, that doesn’t make our online personas fake. I’m wordier online and much much more likely to get into nitpicky debates with people, or to openly speak my thoughts about how stupid or ridiculous I think someone’s ideas are. But that is not me being false; that’s me speaking my mind.
Message boards and the Internet are just a part of real life. There’s different rules, but there’s also different rules for church and for a bar. That doesn’t make church real and the bar fake. I can joke around with my friends at the bar differently than I can speak to my grandma at church, but I still take their feelings into consideration and I back off if I sense that someone’s feelings are really getting hurt. Different context, different rules, but all real people interacting in real ways. I don’t see the Internet as significantly different from that. The rules are just different on here.
Ah, rightrightright. Then we all had spaghetti and meatballs.
Get a room!
Since you aren’t a friend (not that I have any issue with you, but we don’t interact much) and I’ve never had any inkling that you would care if I get hit by a bus (which sorta precludes your being “loving”), no. It’s not the same as a loving embrace from a friend. But most in-person interactions aren’t, either.
MsWhatsit, I hear you, but…I just can’t. Sometimes, internet people GRADUATE to real people. They meet in real life, or they begin to communicate off of the message board. Yeah. But then the stakes are changed. You no longer call me Nzinga, you call me by my REAL name. You get upgraded to a REAL friend.
I just happen to project my internet personality in a way that is consistent with my real life personality in a lot of ways. But in some ways (the slang, my name…) I’m different. It is totally up to me how close to the real me I project. It is that way for everyone on this message board. They are logging on to a board where they can choose exactly how close to the ‘real’ them they project. In real life, you can’t do that.
Oh sure, we can get philosophical and say, “Who among us in real life doesn’t wear a mask in some way” but that is a cop out. Because we all know in real life, you can’t hide your job, kids, looks, wealth, name, and physical abilities or lack thereof from the people around you.
You can’t catfish people in ‘real life’.
ETA: hahaa! I did consider you an internet friend, jsgoddess! I guess you told me!
I met a woman a few years ago whose husband had died a little before mine. Turns out, he wasn’t the person he said he was. He had a mistress. That’s not that uncommon. But he also lied about his job, his college, his degree, and his age.
And his family went along with it.
A physical presence makes it harder to scam someone, but not impossible.
I didn’t mean it to sound as if I were rejecting you. Our interactions are so sporadic that I didn’t put you into that category, but I have no issue with you and wish you well.
I am supposed to know better than to not qualify what I say on this board. Let me try again.
It is WAY more rare to totally catfish someone in real life. Not IMPOSSIBLE. There is always going to be exceptions to the rule.
The rejection though. Damn. "I have no issue with you and wish you well.’ That is formal as hell. I feel like Lisa Simpson when she was talking to Moe.
Moe: Ok, look kid, you don’t like me and I don’t like you.
Lisa: I like you, Moe!
Moe: Oh… well…anyway…
I still think it’s basically the same thing, though. Most people are going to show you some version of their true selves, whether on the Internet or in person. Maybe filtered depending on where they are or who they’re talking to, but not a lie or a fake. Then there are some people who are just going to flat-out lie and construct a fake version of themselves. It’s more frequent on the Internet because it’s just easier on here, but still the minority of people you run into.
Well, honestly, I have no idea how to take what you’re saying to me at this point. When are you joking and when not? I can’t tell. I do not mean to hurt the person I’m writing to, but even now I don’t know if you are playing a role for kicks or are feeling even slightly rejected. If it’s the former, okay. I didn’t harm you. If it’s the latter, I’m sorry.
Re: the catfish thing. I pointed out the in-person example just to show that it’s a difference in degree, not in kind, not to say, “Aha! I can come up with one solitary example which shows that it’s all exactly the same!”
Ha ha. You give “real life” rather more credence than it’s worth. People lie to your face all the time, every day, about big things and small things, and the more there is to gain, the faster and thicker the lies come. On the internet, there’s very little to gain from dishonesty and few consequences to speaking your true mind. Hugs? A poster’s history tells me far more about their true character than a hug or handshake or conversation in a crowded room.