The Internet Still makes it OK

It looks like the forum thread which various individuals decided to discuss my last entry in has been locked. Right as I was going to post something, too. So I’ll paste it here instead.

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Actually the blog was mine, thanks. If you want to call someone a white knight, among other names, refer to me.

Firstly, I am distancing my comments from Team IPX; My opinion is my own, again if you want to target someone then target me. All the other guys want to do is play some games, so there is no need to villify everybody who wears Team IPX symbols.

I was hoping for some meaningful discussion, unfortunately maybe too optimistically. Not long after I made my post New Scientist posted an article on the same phenomenon of Internet anonymity, their comments section was also flooded with people posting drivel. Pretty much any time an article like this comes up you will immediately find proof.

One thing I would like to make sure of is that I’m not arguing against Nesreca, and don’t condone unsubstantiated attacks. They are rallying around Neg and his attitude, but I would expect that from a clan. They know it’s a joke, and they may well laugh that the rest of the world doesn’t realise that. The IPX vs NES scrim was not the sole motivational factor, so to claim that he was provoked is less relevant from my point of view, unless Neg has been provoked on every single occasion he has resorted to racist overtones. My intention was to show, inspired by and using the example of Neg, that people who could very well be ordinary citizens act like idiots online. This forum is a golden example; the level of discussion is often at the level of hormonal school kids, yet these are probably people in their 30s with university degrees, people who put in the hard yards at demanding or fulfilling jobs, people who in real life would be exceedingly polite and go out of their way to help another person.

Instead of reading and taking in my opinion piece for the subject it was, it has been glanced over like a Slashdot article, and people in this forum have decided to turn it into a mountain themselves. I’ve been on the Internet a long time (I was with Bigpond before it introduced the infamous 3GB cap), and I’ve seen a lot of crap that shows how deplorable human nature can be. That does not mean, however, that I have to shut up and let it be the only way things are done online. A bunch of pseudo-kids and their attempts at threat or humiliation aren’t going to scare me off the Internet, or make me stop questioning why people turn into morons online.

As I said before, I welcome enlightened discussion about the topic. If people can do that, then great. Making anonymous posts with so many logical fallacies it makes baby Spock cry only makes you look cool to other morons.

Thanks for the attention, and caring about my opinion so much.