this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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Noone's capable of talking to people on the internet. The detachment from personal interaction messes with how people empathize with eachother. Forums have always been famously nasty places. Try to be kind and respectful, but don't be too hard on yourself when you don't manage to do that.
Yeah hence the unnaturally vicious dogpiling shit you see on reddit all day, although people only hold up a veneer of niceness irl. You don't even have to be rude or disrespectful to get raged at, ask me how I know.
I've seen people get vicious and dogpile in work slacks and those workplace facebook clones. Screens scramble our brains so much people are willing to risk an HR writeup over a minute disagreement.
Wildin.
Some forums have always been famously nasty places. For those of us old enough to remember the internet pre-2010, and lucky enough to stumble on the right corners of the internet, plenty of forums were actually super cool, tiny, self-moderated niche communities with like 20-30 active users tops where you could genuinely share passions and make friends. All but one of my good online friends I have now were made back then.
No idea how anyone would find many nice interactions now. Hexbear is as close as it gets for me, but it's still significantly different.
This is spot on, all of my longest and closest friends in life are people I met on a niche web forum pre 2010. The internet used to be so different before social media, that’s why I enjoy being on the fediverse so much because its the closest call back to that
Me browsing the rpg codex and 4chan in past
Yeah I think the loss of face/body language and also tone/loudness of voice is an insurmountable gap in our ability to recognize each other as real people on the internet. We're all just random encounters in the posting RPG and generosity/kindness/compassion have to be conscious choices rather than instinctual. I do wonder what effect that is going to have on the next generation as they grow up completely online.
Optimistically they'll adapt and learn ways to be good to each other. Pessimistically... well uh... nvm at least they have video and voice chat?
It's better here because I recognise so many repeating names, but even on leddit I'd often peruse somebody's profile to try to figure out what kinda person they were.
I never look at people irl and can barely read tone anyway so