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by com2kid
563 days ago
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Why not? It is mostly correct. One on one most people are reasonable. In large groups, or when posting online with the need to show in-group behavior, or when posting publicly where everyone in one's social group can later judge, people start doing the herd mentality thing, and they also become rude to anyone not in their same social circle. I have no proof, but I dare say the majority of angry people posting horrible stuff on social media are rather pleasant when around friends and family. But all of a sudden, when they get up on stage, they feel the need to copy the behaviors of those around them, which means anger and vitrol. When I first joined the Internet (1995!), there was more of an expectation of civility (IRC being a notable exception), and that is the behavior pattern I picked up upon. |
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Also netiquette, learning to lurk before posting, meeting people outside your normal groups and getting along with them and other behaviors I'm sure I'm forgetting. Being a tech person on the early internet, despite the flame wars, was a positive experience for me. People wanted to make this work, and that early internet full of tech-minded people and engineers did work to some degree. The idea that this could become a place where people could be what they wanted to be but were still accepted was the idea going at that time, at least according to my experiences. Niches mostly kept to themselves, you could find the groups you wanted to be a part of, and you could avoid those you didn't. When everything we had started to go mainstream, it started to crack and fray. When everything went commercial, it all came crashing down.
I'm thinking mostly of pre-web, and early web. I remember thinking when I came across the first URL in a movie that it was likely the start of the end of the internet as I knew it. I think it was "The Net" which was probably mid-90s.