This comes up so much I wrote an essay to link to. I'll temper it, though; I've done a lot of reading and research since and have come to a few conclusions. 1) Those who did not experience "the internet" as an extension of their lives are far more likely to devalue honesty and self-truthfulness in online interaction 2) Those who devalue honesty and self-truthfulness in online interaction are deficient at expressing themselves as they intend to 3) Those who are deficient at expressing themselves as they intend to often find themselves in conflicts they did not intend 4) If you can't say what you mean it's not my problem if you accidentally offend me, it's yours. I get in a lot of fights online. From my perspective, they invariably come about because I state something impersonal, someone comes back with a personal attack, and I demolish them (because they're never good enough to withstand the onslaught) at which point I'm the meanie. The essay linked above reflects the decision - the cold, calculated, reasoned decision - that it's more efficient to be a dick than to not be a dick. The disagreement is still there, only by making the opponent take things to the ad hominem place he's really coming from, we can move on quicker without me spending too much time playing footsie with assholes who don't know how to get their point across without being dicks. If I were to write a sequel, I would title it "it's not your fault you're an asshole. Me? I do it on purpose to save us both time."
I have a response to your Hubski post, and a response to your Reddit post. They may or may not directly contradict each other. They may also meander into irrelevant territory- I've had a lot of coffee. To the Hubski post: I disagree to a degree on point (1). I feel like those who don't experience the net as an extension of their lives are actually more likely to unwittingly present a more honest face in online interaction. I don't know whether they devalue honesty per se, but I get the sinking feeling that the people you're talking about are a lot more open and honest in a really ugly way online than they are in real life, purely by virtue of not drawing that link between physical life and digital life. Goes back to the whole Ring of Gyges thing- I've seen a lot of folks on Reddit espousing this notion that morality is a) an entirely social construct, b) as such, malleable, c) not worthy of "rational" consideration and can thereby d) be more or less disregarded online, where free speech can do no wrong, and anything cast up in the name of free speech is worth serious ("serious") consideration. This notion comes out in a variety of ways, be it within the AskReddit format, where grotesque confession is often celebrated; AdviceAnimals, where there's a meme for the specific purpose of airing dirty laundry in a "funny" way; in plain old everyday comments, often those upvoted to the top of the thread, that spout some pretty serious invective; or else whenever there's a much-publicized brouhaha over the outing of some controvertial sub or user (ahem ViolentAcrez). This last one always culminates in widespread discussions/feedback loops on the subject of free speech, where a very vocal, very upvoted contingent argue that if it isn't illegal, it ought to be allowed and even celebrated as part of the Great Digital Tradition. As if legality was the only watermark for socially permissible interaction, and all free speech is noble purely by virtue of being free. Anyhow, all this is to say: the internet makes our person invisible, and that provides a huge incentive to be more honest in some ways than we might be in real life. For better or worse, I feel like people are much better at expressing themselves as they intend to, and it just turns out that a lot of peoples' intentions are rotten. I guess this is what I meant about the whole "people being worse online than they are in real life" thing, and it ties nicely into your Reddit post. I don't have a problem with you or anybody demolishing an unworthy post- especially in the instance that the response is calibrated specifically to preempt further useless discussion. I have a problem with people being so gleefully and blithely ugly. And I think there's a big difference there. The ugliness I'm talking about is less academic, more bloody-minded. It's kids calling OP a "faggot" because they heard that's the cool way to respond. It's grown-ass men curating nasty subs simply because it's technically legal. It's prevalent in a million tiny little interactions that, when taken individually mean next to nothing but when taken en masse present such a dour portrait of humanity's secret self that I had to a) devise my own online code of conduct just so I felt like there was no way to even accidentally toe that line and b) eventually abandon Reddit altogether because it just became too pervasive. Maybe that makes me a delicate flower, but I guess I've decided there are worse things to be. When you get down to it, I'm more for being dishonest in some ways online. Or just more controlled. Or is control in the face of anonymity just another form of dishonesty? Which is why I asked the question in the first place- it's interesting to figure out what kind of dishonest people here are choosing to be, and how that shapes our interactions with each other. On your side, it sounds like you've carefully crafted this narrator that refuses to suffer fools gladly, and deals with foolishness in a way that you, the author, wouldn't in real life. I've gone something of the opposite route, but it's no less dishonest and no better or worse (I hope)- the person I present online is as of now unflinchingly affable; I still dismiss valueless interactions, but I choose to do it by being as respectful as possible and, if met with further disrespect, assume the person I'm talking to just isn't worth talking to, and I stop talking. One more thing on the note of narrative versus authorial intent- there's a weird tension between your two posts. In one (the Reddit one) you posit that we know more about yesterday's waiter than we do about those we interact with online. And as such, sounds like you're saying that we're a bunch of characters interacting with other characters rather than real people interacting with other real people. e.g. I don't know you at all, so I shouldn't take it personally when kleinbl00 insults fuffle. But in the Hubski post, the implication is that a) you're very good at expressing yourself as you intend to, and thus b) you DO experience the internet as an extension of your life, replete with all the psychological/social bleed-through that entails. Which seems to run in direct contradiction with your Reddit point. How do you jive those two? Or is that what you meant about having come to new conclusions? Or am I missing a vital point? Anyhow, that's kind of apropos of nothing, just nagging at me.
So a couple things: You may feel that way, but your feelings on the subject are completely, documentably, demonstrably 100% wrong. Jeron Lanier spends a chapter on dishonesty and online cultures in You Are Not A Gadget and the nature of identity and the fluidity anonymity grants online have been a central theme of not one, not two, but three books by Sherry Turkle. Your "feelings" on the subject are internal, reflect your own emotions, and are absolutely 100% wrong in regards to common, greater trends that have been clinically documented since the rise of online identity. "A lot of folks on Reddit espousing" anything is one thing - but they know as much about it as you do. They're going on instinct as much as you are. And as we've had computers as part of our daily lives for exactly one generation, nobody has any "instinct" to go on. If by "honest" you mean "tactless" then you are correct. If by "honest" you mean "honest" then you are, as mentioned before, baselessly, groundlessly wrong. Yup. And Reddit is Thunderdome. I've been good at fighting online for more than a decade but Reddit made me absolutely lethal. It's the same problem as everywhere, though - you have to learn the lingua franca for anywhere you're at or else you can't communicate, and Reddit's default communication standards are cruel. So when I'm elsewhere, I have to reef myself in... and when I'm on Reddit, I have to let myself out. That is because you have demonstrated a naive inexperience with the online world. The fact that you think "honesty" and "tact" are interchangeable concepts proves my core point better than anything else you could have written. "Honesty" is being true in the interests of fostering communication. "tact" is being mildly duplicitous in the interests of fostering communication. Your mistake is that you think the cruelty of online interaction fosters communication - it doesn't. It's monkeys screeching at each other from treetops. Nope. I've written an apologia as to why I do not imprint my personal expectations on online communications and argue that nobody else should do so to me. That's because you started out with an incorrect thesis, backed it up with incorrect evidence and reached incorrect conclusions. From a psychosocial standpoint, "me" as in this thing that you are reading is made up of text. That text contains exactly zero body language, exactly zero facial cues, exactly zero vocal inflection and exactly zero shared experience. You know less about me from what I have written here than you do about the waiter that refills your coffee. If this is not the case, it is evidence that you're not paying attention to your waiter, which also furthers my point. No. NO. NO. You don't know me at all, so who the fuck do you think you are to have "expectations" of me. Here's the part you're not getting: there are over 400 people on Reddit that have told me, via PM, that they look up to me. That they always look out for my posts. There are over two dozen people who have asked for life advice. There are a half-dozen people for whom I have gotten jobs. There are three people for whom I have greatly reduced prison sentences. But there are over three million people on Reddit. I interact with people regularly. I interact with people above and beyond the boundaries of Reddit. But I also regularly get people professing their "disappointment" in me because I did not live up to some construct of me they have in their head. The entire point of the essay linked is to explain why, in no uncertain terms, those who are "disappointed" in me are "disappointed" in their construct of me, and who the fuck do they think they are expecting anything of me at all? Easily. All you have to do is read what I wrote for what I wrote, rather than what you want it to say. But, as my ENTIRE ORIGINAL POINT EXPLAINED, "kids these days" suck ass at this. The fact that you wrote a 500 word essay saying "you're wrong" only illustrates that "you're wrong" is your way of saying "I don't understand." Which, again, is my point. You tell me. Are you?I feel like those who don't experience the net as an extension of their lives are actually more likely to unwittingly present a more honest face in online interaction.
the internet makes our person invisible, and that provides a huge incentive to be more honest in some ways than we might be in real life.
I have a problem with people being so gleefully and blithely ugly.
When you get down to it, I'm more for being dishonest in some ways online.
Or just more controlled.
On your side, it sounds like you've carefully crafted this narrator that refuses to suffer fools gladly, and deals with foolishness in a way that you, the author, wouldn't in real life.
One more thing on the note of narrative versus authorial intent- there's a weird tension between your two posts.
And as such, sounds like you're saying that we're a bunch of characters interacting with other characters rather than real people interacting with other real people.
e.g. I don't know you at all, so I shouldn't take it personally when kleinbl00 insults fuffle.
Which seems to run in direct contradiction with your Reddit point. How do you jive those two?
Or am I missing a vital point?
So, what you're saying is... you might have a job you can get me...? Thanks man, I owe you a biggie. I dunno, I'm pretty sure we're saying the same thing after around P3. But that can wait for a second. In regards to P1-3: sounds like some good reading. I kind of love this field of discussion, but as you may have surmised, haven't gotten to study up on it in any academic sense. I'll have to check those out. Regarding the whole "honesty" versus "tact" thing- you've got my idea a little spun around. I don't equate honesty with tact. But I come close to equating the inverse, and your words read as though you kind of agree- "'tact' is being mildly duplicitous in the interests of fostering communication." So yeah, I believe that in some cases, no, a lot of cases, tact is a form of dishonesty. Or at least a bending of light around honesty, which is, by any other name, dishonesty. And I don't think this is a particularly naive or offensive viewpoint, but rather an interesting one. That's me and the ol' feelings again, though! After that, it sounds like we're saying the same thing. Except for the waiter thing, which, I gotta admit, I didn't go out yesterday for a meal. But! I'd argue for the hell of it that a "waiter" (or, I guess in your original words waitress) is a role being played by a person. Something along the lines of "user" as a role being played by me. Each role requires a certain amount of shaping/shading/ignoring of the truth to function as it should in its setting. Thus, I can look at my waiter, but I'd have a hell of a time seeing the person behind the waiter's costume. In something of the way I can see the username, but not the user behind it. Each has its strengths and weaknesses as far as the parameters of human interactions go. Yeah, with my hypothetical waiter, I can observe metalanguage in a way I can't with people online. But then again, that metalanguage is still being strained through the waiter persona. So unless I'm really really good at registering, say, pupil dilation and sweat levels and tiny facial movements (and I live in the Pac NW, so half of that hypothetical face will be covered by beard), I'm only going to see what the person lets me see through the "waiter" disguise. Anyhow, conversely, with online interaction, I only see what the author lets through to the narrator. And that doesn't include metalanguage, unless you count italics or emboldening or caps- thanks for employing all three by the by, it helps me "get" what you're saying! But even the way somebody crafts their online persona might tell us something of the person behind that persona. In a way that we don't learn from the waiter, who's constrained not only by their social role, but their professional one. They can only volunteer so much in the name of being a waiter before they're tipped poorly or fired. With online interaction, I'm allowed to be much less tactful/much more honest because they only thing riding on it is my online reputation, which may or may not have any meaning to me. So there's that. Only other thing I'd say is that I never really said you were wrong, only that I disagreed. Also, that I may or may not have understood a few points. But I think you clarified some of them, so there's that! Seriously though, give me a job I need money.
Well, what can you do? And where can you do it? As to the rest, you are - again - overestimating the context one can get from the written word and underestimating the context you can get from interpersonal interaction. Hell, let's skip interaction. Let's just go to the context that's possible from an image. What can you surmise about this person? We're not jumping to conclusions, now. We can see that he's a young adult male. We can guess as to a few other things and those guesses will help establish our other assumptions about him. It's not a lot to go on, but it's enough to distinguish them pretty distinctly from this person: ...yet they both come up for the image search "waiter." Compare and contrast by what you can tell about a person from their name: You seem to be insisting that you can somehow "learn" something about a person by interacting with them online. I'll say for the third time that you are grossly, demonstrably, succinctly incorrect. You can disagree with that all you want, but it will not change the fact that the facts, the research and the general experience of online interaction are at odds with your theories. And, once again, my assertion is that those who grew up "online" are worse at picking up the differences. How old are you?
I'm 30. Just on the cusp, but spent most of my formative years internet-free. As for marketable skills: I've done audio editing for a good ten years, but I've only been decent at it for four or five. Done some production work (spanning from setting up for live events to recording to "can I get you more coffee?"), learning more about recording but didn't go to school for it because of the cost. Studying under some Real Deals, though. And I've got a good ear. I have no experience waiting tables, so that's right out.
You already figured that out from another exchange we had. Who says you can't tell anything about a person from brief online interactions? I'm only halfway serious about the job thing. Truth be told, I don't know if I can stand Seattle much longer- we're probably making tracks in the next year. I appreciate even the ghost of seriously considering my request, though.
;-) But there you go - there's no reason to presume I would remember the exchange. I trade emails with seven or eight Redditors regularly. They initially found me through Reddit. But I cannot - for the life of me - keep track of who they are on Reddit. We remember the details that are important, and in a sea with no memory, details like that drift away.
Ok, so do you act like an asshole all the time or do you 'switch' it on when the person you are speaking to (or someone who has responded to you) triggers one of your tripwires? The problem with this approach is that I have no idea how you will respond, are you going to go all controlled-rage on me or give a reasoned reply. I get what you are doing (I think), I'm all about efficiency myself in fact, but don't you run the risk of making your Internet a little darker and meaner by playing the dick card so often?it's not your fault you're an asshole. Me? I do it on purpose to save us both time.
the cold, calculated, reasoned decision - that it's more efficient to be a dick than to not be a dick
There are sixteen footnotes to that essay. You haven't clicked a single one of them. There are six replies to this very discussion from me. You haven't read a single one of them. Give me a reason why I should answer you, considering your "question" is readily and easily answered by material I posted nearly a week ago (and wrote nearly three years ago), particularly when your real "question" is to allege that somehow I'm dragging down the tenor of discussion for people everywhere? You don't get what I'm doing. You want to paint me as the meanie because you lack the attention span to pay attention to the discussion. If you can actually read anything I wrote and still come back with "I have no idea how you will respond" it is a sign that you WILLFULLY don't want to think about how I will respond. Why should I respect that?
Thanks for answering my question though.There are sixteen footnotes to that essay. You haven't clicked a single one of them.
Sweet jesus! Sixteen footnotes! I was hoping this was one of those easy to summarize methods of communication. I don't think I have the time to invest in this one. I'm out.
"Weight" isn't the right way to look at it, I think. It's not that there's a scale of importance where the virtual is automatically less than the actual. While Reddit was busy tearing me to shreds, someone commented in one of the worstofs about me that "he takes things too seriously like someone who grew up before the Internet." That hit home - those of us who reached adolescence before Internet flame wars were more likely to be impacted by Internet flame wars. To me it seemed like an acknowledgement that those who grew up "after the Internet" took pride in diminished empathy. It saddened me, but it felt accurate. 'cuz the thing is, I give my online interactions the importance that the situation allows... and I generally start off with the assumption that the person I'm talking to is just like me. Backintheday you interacted with people online because eventually you'd meet them out in the world - and that is clearly no longer the case. So I guess I'm stuck in a "pen pal" mentality, whereby everybody I talk to is likely to be someone I run into at a party eventually. It probably gives me a thin skin because lots of people online these days act as if they'll never interact with anybody in person ever, so it gives them license. That license offends me, which offends them, because it's only the Internet, right? Thus we end up having a disagreement because they don't have the empathy to treat me like a human and I don't have the dispassion to treat them like a machine.
Yes, I can see how attributions would contribute to potential online conflicts. I will admit, I have read through a few of the conflicts here on hubski and have been a bit puzzled about what went on. One problem I have with interacting with others online is that usually there's no introduction, no handshake or even a, "oh hey, this is so-and-so, who's a friend of a friend." I hear what you're saying about diminished empathy though, as it applies to people who grew up "after the internet." I think you're right that some certainly take pride in it, though for others including myself I think it's sometimes a default position when interacting with the faceless. One reason I signed up for the pen pal project was because the last and only pen pal I had was in grade school. Thinking back, I remember I thought my pen pal was a real dickbag until our teachers had us exchange pictures. Suddenly, he became a real person to me instead of some kid from some hick town in Montana I'd never heard of who really liked wolves. This time around, I'm excited by the prospect of interacting with another person through the medium of writing in a way that doesn't occur to me to get excited about when interacting with others on the internet, but after reading through your response it's something I will definitely think about. Anyway, it's interesting to get different perspectives on these extended human interactions.
Yep. "context and what to make of it." I think people who grew up without online communication know that they're lacking a lot of context and tend to temper their conversations accordingly. I think people who grew up with online communication don't recognize all the context they're missing and fill in from their own preconceptions.