AbsoluteDestiny wrote:
The same thing is repeated over an over in other places. The way things work online are so very different to the way things are at conventions and it's a real shame. I can understand being annoyed at this, I get annoyed too, but I'm encouraged by the fact that it's not like this in reality.
I don't want to sound all cynical, but the truth is, what we say online actually holds more truth than what we say in 'reality' so to speak. When a person speaks to someone in real life, most try to show respect and don't try to show what they are really thinking. Most are afraid of the consequences of disrecpecting others that they have just recently met. It's easy to brush someone off that you don't know, but once you meet them, confrontation is usually something most people try to avoid. That's what makes it so easy to vent and disrespect people online, we don't have to deal with anyone face to face. Sure it may escalate to that point one of these days, but the possiblity of it happeneing is pretty slim.
Basically, what I'm saying is that at cons and such, we try to respect people by hiding our true feelings. I'm not saying that we're all secretly out there thinking that we are better than one person or another, I'm saying that in general, people hide what they really feel about a subject in order to keep order in the community. When we get back to our own little corners though, we feel much more comfortable and able to dispense our thoughts without really thinking about the consequences since we think we are safe from the rebuttles of others. Online, we can choose to ignore the things we don't want to hear and select those that appeal to what we believe in. When confronted however, we have to deal with the conseqeunces of our actions and beliefs. We are all hiding something.
So, in conclusion, this 'reality' that you speak of is a combination of the way we present ourselves in real life and the way we present ourselves online. It really isn't as peaceful as you believe it to be AD.
