lol, it's entirely up for debate. You cannot possibly say that about every single person on this planet.
There is no "we" in an absolute sense, even if the majority do.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
So a community full of people I care about just imploded and I'm fuming.
- Thread starter Coricus
- Start date
There is no "we" in an absolute sense, even if the majority do.
There's nothing wrong with having online friends/relationships, as long as you understand that the person you think you're talking to is going to invariably be different in real life, from an honest "put your best foot forward" in terms of thinking about responses and such before replying to messages, to full on roleplaying/faking a persona/being completely different from who they present themselves as.
It's not a given, at all, that the person would be different in real life either. There's greater potnetial there for dishonesty, but it's not inevitable in any way.
People need to stop talking about this in absolutes.
Most of my online friendships are maintained with various forms of voice and video chat. It becomes much harder to put on a front when text has been removed from the equation.
Those are also vastly richer forms of communication too. Our frontal cortex evolved to make sense of all those vast non verbal cues.
Its why strong friendships can suspect when we are down or something is wrong.
This sucks, but... You have to hold online-only acquaintances at arm's length. No matter how genuine they seem. They could be lying about anything. You just can't know.
That sucks OP. I hope everything comes out all right.
You can't know with "real life" friends either. Unfortunately it's humanity. We open ourselves up, let ourselves be vulnerable. And just because we might be hurt does not mean that it isn't worth attempting to make meaningful connections.
This might be taking things to the extreme but there's a statistic that most abductions/abuses/murders/rapes (can't remember which, or if it's multiple) are often times performed by people the victim knows well, sometimes even their own families.
Soooooo
Edit: Basically,
Last edited:
Its much easier to tell a liar if you can see the person's face and body language.
No, but in real life the level of confidence that you can trust someone is who they say they are is generally somewhere above zero.
I've evolved more over text than I have with voice or "IRL" encounters. Like it's not even close. Sure you can do more in person, but the amount of socialization and well, deeper communication you get with people over the net has far exceeded any norm you presented. Perhaps in your situation this was the norm but it's the opposite in mine.
I've encountered power-tripping, dickhead admins/mods multiple times on previous forums I've frequented, so now I just automatically assume any forum admins/mods I see are power-tripping dickheads, until they prove themselves otherwise. "Ye shall know them by their fruit".
(Fortunately, the ERA staff all seem to be pretty cool folks. Please don't ban me.)
(Fortunately, the ERA staff all seem to be pretty cool folks. Please don't ban me.)
I gave a wide range of what I thought was pretty reasonable, I don't know anyone who comes off exactly in text as they do in real life. Yes, even very close to that/authentic is still different. You also have the potential to misread the tone, or read things as you want to read them. I'm not saying people are always intentionally deceiving or can't have authentic online relationships, I've met people I've "known" for years online IRL and and I wasn't completely shocked or misled, but it's still not the same.
That's fair too, most of my experiences were a decade ago or more tbh.
Been there with having to cut a community out of my life. My old MMO guild forum went full Red Pill and just became infested with shitty Nazi fuckstains. The day I left that shit was the last day that I ever checked that site. You have to go cold turkey on garbage like that and put yourself in a better place. Sucks that I couldn't stand a place that I helped build, but one progressive against a mountain of shit is nothing and it was a fight I had absolutely no chance in.
I'm not discounting the intellectual depth possible with text communication. I think this it where it can shine over IRL communication since you need time and deliberation. It's also asynchronous, which helps a lot.
My only concern is a heavy reliance on these while not supplementing with richer versions like voice or FaceTime equivalents.
We have an extremely sophisticated social neural circuitry as a species. If possible, I know exceptions exists, experiencing these in our social landscape is very rewarding.
Reminds me of some drama that I came across while playing with a guild of people for a few years.
It wasnt a perfect group of people but man it was way deeper in shit than I first thought lol.
Apparently two leaders of the guild - whom were boyfriend and girlfriend and knew each other/live in the same city (even before making the guild) ended up with the girlfriend cheating on him by hooking up with another co-leader of the guild....(to the point where she visited him too, etc).
Lets just say the whole guild blew up after all that was revealed to the rest of the guild.
I still keep in contact with some people from the guild but not the co-leaders or any one close to them.
All this happened 6-7 years ago so its just a memory.
But man, I really would not want to go through that again, dont got time or patience for drama like that lol - which is why I dont really engage in myself in online communities too much - I just visit sites for news and information - and make a simple comment about topics.
It wasnt a perfect group of people but man it was way deeper in shit than I first thought lol.
Apparently two leaders of the guild - whom were boyfriend and girlfriend and knew each other/live in the same city (even before making the guild) ended up with the girlfriend cheating on him by hooking up with another co-leader of the guild....(to the point where she visited him too, etc).
Lets just say the whole guild blew up after all that was revealed to the rest of the guild.
I still keep in contact with some people from the guild but not the co-leaders or any one close to them.
All this happened 6-7 years ago so its just a memory.
But man, I really would not want to go through that again, dont got time or patience for drama like that lol - which is why I dont really engage in myself in online communities too much - I just visit sites for news and information - and make a simple comment about topics.