D, on 21 July 2014 - 07:21 PM, said:
I don't have an issue with people barbecuing their babies in The Sims or that sort of thing. When you're playing a game or whatnot you consciously know that you're not barbecuing a real baby, that there aren't going to be any consequences for you or for the baby which you know is just some digital data.
When interacting with other people, you consciously or sub-consciously know that you can't physically interact with them, that they can log off whenever they want, and I think that lowers people's self-restraint a fair bit. That's mostly okay, IMO, but can also easily be taken too far. The weird humiliation rituals in the survival games in GH's video above? That's weird, but those players can indeed leave anytime they like or just restart the game with a new character or whatever, and at the same time that is intentionally part of the game - they can always go play a different game that doesn't have that sort of thing. On the other hand, people shouting death threats or bullying people they actually know outside of the internet, etc, have gone too far and need to get a grip on their impulses. Still, I think those sorts of people have always existed, it's just that sending an angry email is much faster than writing an impulsive angry letter so you can write and send the email before you settle down/get lazy.
Maybe the aspect that I dislike the most about communication and interaction on the web is that it all sort of blends together. I wasn't a living adult before the internet, so I can't actually say for sure, but it seems to me like before there was a fair division of "play" and "serious things". Newspapers, magazines, TV shows, movies, books, etc would mostly either fall into one category or the other. There wasn't a lot of magazines that had both comedy articles and political commentary, and the news wasn't back-to-back with entertainment news.
Nowadays, though, people browse facebook, play minecraft, read the Economist online and post on major political blogs, all at the same time, switching back and forth between them in seconds. You don't get a mental shift of "now I am doing a serious political activity" the way you would have leaving the house and walking down the street to a town hall meeting or opening on the bus a magazine with ten major serious geopolitical or business articles listed at the front. I have no evidence to support this, but I sort of have the idea that maybe accessing serious things and play through the same medium and with no stop time between them makes it easier for people's attitudes towards each blend over and ergo makes it easier for people to post inflammatory comments on serious websites... because part of their brain is still in "play" mode.
Good argument, D'rek. As someone who does remember pre-internet days, I would say that you are correct in there being more of a line between extremes. The other difference was that most of the opinions would be by 'sanctioned' people. That means the people writing in a newspaper would be known to the publisher, have a documented background and likely some proof of their expertise would have been requested along the line.
Obviously, the internet is giving a broader range of opinions a chance. But... the user sitting at home with a bottle in their hand, hardly aware of what they are writing, has just the same chance to voice an opinion as some kids egging each other on to write the equivalent of viral graffiti... there is no differentiation between them and the genuine considerate internet user when they press the 'send' button.
Looking at it from the other end... the internet is totally unreliable. As reader, you will never know for sure what type of person you are dealing with - could be a trained monkey for all we know. Unless you do meet people eye to eye (and more than once at that), you really have no idea where on the scale of believability any internet figure is. Never mind the extreme end of the scale where you get criminality... just the sad bod with a sad life who totally re-invents him/herself online and gives you a totally false impression of the sort of person they really are...
The internet has been around for quite some time now, but a scary number of people simply do not understand the 'anything goes' nature of it; the fact that much of what they see and read online is fabricated, manipulated and distorted. In the way people react to posts it is obvious that they (actually, we,) rarely consider that the person we are talking to might only be eight, or someone with mental health issues, or a drunk, rather than a nasty out to get us.
Going back to the question about how sites change... I believe many internet sites are shaped depending on the gangs that form over time. Just like in the playground... those like-minded will start hanging out together, support each others opinions and mostly ignore outsiders. Those that don't fit in those groups either stay on the side-lines trying to get in or just go to other internet sites where they feel more welcomed. On forums, that may just be hanging out on another board.
The exception to the gang mentality are sites with strong objective admin teams who make sure that the playing field is fair and level. When the admin team itself has a gang mentality then playground rules again apply.