« Go Church | Home | Singapore Green Festival »
Message Boards
By Peace | June 25, 2007
I am writing in response to what was encounter by Roy Allen, a single dad, who got attacked from numerous people from message board. He wrote “Why do people have to be so mean on message boards?”
Why do people have to be so mean on message boards
In the internet, all we see is computer, the magic rectangle that allows us to ‘communicate’ with millions of people in the world. Most of the time when we are communicating with one another, we hardly know the person across. What we see is an avatar or just a name. Who is the real person behind we do not even know. There are all kinds of people in this world. There are the good and the bad. There are the truthful ones who tell you everything and there are the dishonest ones who only keep lying and even create numerous multiple identities to create troubles and havoc.
Some people rejoice when they see people suffering. Some people enjoy watching people suffer and they feel thrilled when doing such things. The more miserable and troubles they create, the more sense of ‘achievement’ they will get. This kind of people are psychologically unstable and I would consider them ‘pervert’. However, this does not mean that they are abnormal people. They can be normal people like you and me. They can be going to work, they can be earning a lot of money. However, they might be missing something in their life or they have some unhappy childhood memories, which cause them to be psychologically unstable in this manner.
Like what I say earlier, on the computers, everything is just name and it takes time to know the names and get ‘bonded’ and have ‘feelings’ with these names. Those people who can click well, become good friends. Soon there would be ‘gang’ or bunch of good friends who will gather to meet each other everyday or weekly and so on. This became their meeting place, their virtual place of meeting. Their relationship grew stronger and stronger each day, and it can surpass their family ties. Even if they know that it is going to be harmful or wrong to do something to their family, these people only know that they had met the right ‘friends’ or ‘partners’ on the net. As such, they can do anything to anybody, be it mean or nice.
when new comers come into a new place, those regular ‘posties’ would know who them. There would always be someone who is the ‘head’ or ‘leader of the pack’. Just like office politics, when one of the ‘worker’ spread rumours about some ‘unhappiness’ or people who they do not like or other grievances, somehow information emotional influences is involved, there might be biasness.
So all I could say about why people can be so mean to each other on message boards is because there lack ‘human touch’. What we see is always names and words. There can be miscommunication and misinterpretation of words in the process, as different people have different styles of writing and different ways of communication. It takes time to know people and when people can hardly know each other, they just lack the ‘human touch’.
See my ranking and what Roy Allen says about his experience in the message boards.
Read all my other articles at Helium (Total of 58 articles written so far) or see my profile at Helium
Whether message boards, forums or other messaging system like IRC and so on, there are very bad guys and there are kind souls around. I have met unreasonable gals, a gang of regular posties in some forum. Basically all the like-minded individuals can meet together and they share their ups and downs, and anything under the sun — so much so that there is nothing they cannot share and there is nothing they would hide. Of course, not all people are like that, but what I am saying is all through my own experience and through the people that I know and is close to me.
Topics: Internet |
