hwhatting wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 1:22 pm
Ares Land wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 4:28 pm
I'm not sure about the real world analogy. The Internet brings a certain anonymity and safety from consequence. It's not the only factor, of course (I've seen people spout racist bullshit on LinkedIn, under their real name and that of their employer...), but it's a factor.
Plus there's the whole trolling thing. Who knows what social media trolls really think? (Who knows if they think at all?) Being as edgy, racist and unpleasant as possible brings some benefits on social media that you don't usually get in real life.
I agree. Except for maybe in bars after a couple of glasses too many, in my experience people try to avoid antagonizing other people face-to face.
OTOH, that often means that they don't object against obvious nonsense or toxic opinions out of politeness, group dynamics, or because those things were said by high-status members of the group.
I think that all of these statements are broadly true, with regard to how people behave on the Internet vs. face-to-face.
Ironically, when I first began interacting with the ZBB and other online communities more than twenty years ago and witnessed my first (relatively mild) flamewars, what struck me overwhelmingly at the time was the fact that the online environment provides a perfect opportunity for the exact
opposite behavior: when you see something on the Internet that upsets you, you have the ability to stop, take a breath, think about your reaction, edit your (perhaps infuriated) initial response before sending it (or decide not to send it at all), etc., all without anyone seeing you (at least in the days before video chatting became more common). As I put it at the time, with apologies to the slogan for the movie
Alien: "In cyberspace, no one can see you bite your tongue."
