Regarding Online and General Rudeness

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I made a post on another message board and got attacked as my first post. I’m not sure if I wrote anything offensive since the story was about me… And I was kinda poking fun at myself.

Now, I agree with the theories behind the online rudeness given by various journalists - take it for what is… Cause it’s a lot harder to disparage someone straight up to their faces… Well… Unless you want to eat a punch.

Please don’t get mad now, but do you think people in general should just eat a right cross to the face just so they know about his kinda pain? Yeah, I’ve been punched in the face before. Regardless, it does make me hesitate and think before speaking my mind.

What I mean is… Should more people participate in combat sports like boxing or some form of martial arts to learn the limits of their boundaries and develop a sense respect? Or have we just become ruder as a culture - the US?

2

Interesting. Any particular reason you signed up here solely to express your theory?

And I vote no on both of your questions.

3

Oh heck no… I didn’t sign up here just to express this one theory. But I figure it’s suited for the Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share section. It’s been a maddening few months. I just needed to find a place where there’s some semblance of reason - logical or not. Somebody suggested this forum.

“What I mean is… Should more people participate in combat sports like boxing or some form of martial arts to learn the limits of their boundaries and develop a sense respect? Or have we just become ruder as a culture - the US?”

Let me clarify this… I don’t mean people becoming pros or getting into full blown amateur fights. Something more along the lines people taking lessons and getting into a sparring match or something along those lines and learning about discipline and respect.

4

Frankly, I think people should learn common courtesy and manners and drop the “It’s all about MEEEEEEEEE” mindset and recognize that someone else’s opinion is not automatically a thinly veiled insult. It think it’s a lot easier to be respectful and to be respected when you can behave yourself.

Then again, I’m also an old grouch, so that could be coloring my opinion. But, no, I don’t think physical violence, whether couched in a “sports” frame of reference or not, is necessarily of any value.

5

I suspect there are three main methods for increasing civility.

The first is what you suggest - some rigorous activity that pushes a person to learn their own and others’ limits. It doesn’t necessarily have to be physical. It could be intellectual, emotional, or even all three. The knowledge gained tends to make people humble, and humility leads to civility. However, that activity doesn’t require that a person be punched in the face or beaten into submission.

The second method is the development of empathy, a sorely needed trait in almost any gathering of humans. But there’s no real top-down way to nurture empathy in people except good parenting during childhood. If it doesn’t happen then, only the individual can decide to pursue it, and because empathy, by definition, requires enduring pain, most don’t opt for that.

The third method would be some severe, instant negative reaction to instances of incivility. Ostracism, condemnation, shaming. It’s possible to do these things while remaining civil, and certain parts of society have mastered the practice. But, it’s ugly, and it only occasionally leads to an individual rethinking their behavior.

To me, the real divide in behavior is the difference between anonymity and, if you will, onymity. In personal, real life discourse, there is instant feedback to incivility, and if the incivility is beyond the bounds of accepted behavior, that third method immediately comes into play. In the anonymous world of the Internet, there is very little recourse. I’ve yet to see a troll successfully shunned. Shaming and condemnation only appear to feed their behavior. Yet, you only have to check the news stories of some vitiolic iconoclast’s unmasking (for instance, the former Reddit editor) to see how the world comes crashing down on them when their real life identities are known.

There will always be anonymous areas on the Internet. They are too valuable and too useful to die. I do think that more and more interaction will require some manner of identification - like the “real name” reviews on Amazon. It would take a genuine sea change in human nature to make people more civil in an anonymous forum.

6

Welcome to the SDMB, wuthering_lows. Since you’re looking for opinions, I’ll move this to our opinion forum, IMHO.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator, who is in favor of neither rudeness nor punching people in the face. Or punching them at all, for that matter.

7

I don’t think combat sports is the answer… maturity is.

8

I don’t get the connection between combat sports and a developing sense of civility. In fact, the few MMA wannabes I’ve known have all been distinctly less polite than other people. They tend to threaten to punch other people in the face whenever they don’t get their way.

Is that what we’re supposed to be aiming for in terms of respecting other people? 'Cause no thanks.

9

Maybe the solution is for everyone to go thru compulsory in-your-face harassment in school. The cocky, alpha-asshole types would learn what it’s like, and the resentful, emotionally brittle types would be relegated to second-class adulthood.

10

If you go to learn to punch people in the face so you can learn not to punch people in the face, you’ve already lost the game.

11

This is a truth generation on generation of masculine men could ill afford to acknowledge.

12

Whoops, wrong thread.

13

Maybe I’m missing something here, but how is learning to beat someone up and get beaten up by someone (which many of us learned in childhood) supposed to make us more civil and polite when posting anonymously?

I wonder how rude teh interweb would have become if the custom had evolved that there would be no anonymity – everyone posting would have to include their name, address and photo.

14

How rude are people driving by in cars? You can get make, model, and license plate for every car that cuts you off and that can get tracked back to the owner.

It takes a remarkably few rude people to make it seem like everybody’s a bastard out there, even if there’s an entire planet full of reasonable people.

15

I don’t think people quite understand what I’m trying to say, and I’m not endorsing reckless violence here. Like I’ve said, I didn’t like being punched in the face. So, I don’t go around punching people in their faces. It taught me about the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would do unto yourself. So, I don’t like rude remarks made about me, therefore I don’t make rude remarks about others.

No. Learning to punch someone in the face defeats the purpose of the exercise. The exercise is eating a punch as nutty as that sounds - which I don’t recommend people actually doing this exercise cause it’d hurt. Did anybody ever see that Family Guy episode where the inmate stabs himself?

Okay… Never mind. But there aren’t a few rude people on the internet. There are millions of them.

16

Sounds like some ‘defense first’ Karate nonsense.
Most real fighters go to learn how to punch someone in the face, simply so they can…well punch someone in the face, and do it well.

I used to know a guy into Muay Thai. He said “I train so I can learn how to fu** people up..”
At least he was honest.

Online rudeness is a bi-product of the impersonal nature of online relations. That much is pretty obvious.

The furthering lack of civil attitudes is a reflection of real life society’s lack of moral compass.
Combine it with online anonymity and you have keyboard warriors galore.

17

What Fairy said about “It’s all about MEEEEEEEEE” is absolutely true as well.
The entitlement boomer generation birthed the entitlement music video generation which then birthed the current entitlement Facebook generation.
The main differences between them being is that now social services and government policies support their whine fests which they call life while the rest of us are downgraded to their playing field of pathetic-ness.

18

And once we organize, watch out!

19

That is not ALL they are learning to do. The aim is to be able to punch someone in the face or other permitted parts of the body while your opponent is moving around and also trying to do the same to you, so defensive abilities are just as important as attacking ones. In this crazy world we live in, being able to dodge out of the way of a sudden attack is a very handy ability to have, as is being able to block an assault. You don’t need to be great at the attacking part if you are really good at the defending bit and don’t want to engage.

Saying that, it’s not something you can just do casually. Despite how easy an accomplished boxer can make it look - even against another accomplished boxer - it takes a lot of dedication and sacrifice to get anywhere near that level of ability, but even in trying to get there and failing, you can learn a lot about yourself, your fellow opponents and the teammates who helped you get competitive, and those lessons can be applied to every aspect of life.

There’s a documentary on bbc’s iplayer called “Cuban Punch Up:The Kids Who Fought For Castro,” that is well worth a watch for those who think there’s nothing positive to be gained from learning to bop someone on the nose. If the people who like to cause misery, anger and frustration via their internet presence, had a tenth as much respect and appreciation for what they have as those under 12’s in that documentary, they’d be out doing something useful with their lives.

20

You think the way people learn some ‘respect’ is to take a beating at least once in their lives?

Count me unconvinced, encouraging barbaric fist fights is a step toward more civility.