[Rob Instigator]

"anonymity" makes people think their shit has no consequences.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

"anonymity" makes people think their shit has no consequences.

of course the internet is real-- a lot of money gets exchanged on it every day.

but anonymous message boards are not the same as business communications and they are no substitute for bodily friends. the internet is a horrible drinking companion, for example. alcohol causes enough drama in face to face communications, alcohol + the internet, guess what?

anyway, anonimity is not a black and white issue. anonimity is a choice-- not everyone wants to live their lives under the scrutiny of strangers, some of which are complete nutcases.

the post you did about people getting fired for a facebook post-- exactly. there are parts of our lives that we'll share with some people and not others. having all your information out there as a sort of "permanent record" leaves you vulnerable to snooping, crazies, bigots, teabaggers who wanna kill the president but can't and would rather shoot you, etc.

i like to keep my anonimity here for a few reasons: i have seen enough lunatics go by to know i don't want them showing up at my door. i have had internet "friends" who suddenly are some day in a bad mood and turn on you for no particular reason. face-to-face friends have conflicts too, but there is usually a greater degree of diplomacy involved when the other person is staring at your mug.

communication on the internet is a lot more fragile than face to face, we lack a good sense of inflection and body language, and things get misinterpreted and taken out of context all the time. flame wars happen on the internet but you don't see people screaming at each other in the street like some jerry springer show. to expect that in the middle of an anonymous crowd everybody is going to be nice and civilized is naive-- so anonymity in that crowd can be a form of self-defense. nobody wants to be meat for the vultures.

while i don't mind sharing my private information with people i get to trust as sane and likeable, i don't like to put it in the hands of others who may hide behind that anonimity to do pester me, attempt harm, go apeshit, stalk me, steal my money, etc. i've seen enough blatherskites and khchrises and other people lose their shit here and in other places to know you can't fully trust internet entities.

even on identifiable places like facebook, ridiculous useless drama can ensue because of the distance that the internet creates: during the world cup, my wife posted some innocent comments rooting for a particular team and some "friend-of-a-friend" launched into a tirade against her because she was rooting for the opposition. that type of shit doesn't happen when people sit around a tv together. i've watched world games in bars where half of the crowd goes for one team and the other half goes for the other and everyone behaves civilized. same last year's superbowl, went to a party where it was mostly saints supporters but others were for the colts and some were talking about their dogs. no screaming.

i think this has to do with the fact that on the internet even people with names and addresses are free from the consequences of their own actions: you push somebody in real life and you get pushed back, but on the internet you can scream and nothing happens. so EVERYONE is more rude on the internet. to paraphrase kissinger in his observation of university politics, "the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low".

beyond that, the internet is open to everybody, it's not by invitation only. just like i wouldn't want strangers to walk into my house uninvited, i wouldn't want some random nutcase to barge into my private life.

some people enjoy living their lives in full display to others, while some enjoy a measure of privacy. it's a choice. maybe one day we'll all live in a police state where everybody's moves get tracked online and everyone has access to your "permanent record" and be able to dig out all your fuckups, but i will resist that for as long as i can.

take for example your weed smoking-- you're fine with it, boardies are fine with it, but if you were unemployed and looking for a job, would you want every employer to dig out this fact and judge you unfairly because of it? would you want a cop to start following you around so he can catch you because he found out on the internet that you like to smoke weed? not me, no fucking way. but to each their own.

i do have a facebook profile i use only to communicate with friends, i use skype to talk to my parents, i am part of a number of other message boards where i act more "professional", and there are places where i like to horse around, like a carnaval where people wear masks and get drunk and dance half naked. there's a place and time for everything and the internet is big enough for it all.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

"anonymity" makes people think their shit has no consequences.

But that is entirely the thing. The internet is no longer some facade of pseudoreality, people do their real shit out there now. As I said, jobs, music, family, friends, churches, schools.

I find volunteer work, I network for jobs in Ethiopia, I keep up with Rastafari i-dren across the globe, let alone talking to folks like the SYG from a variety of locations..

I talk to real people far more than the anonymous ones. I think that is what trips me out most of all, sure in the mid-90s that was the allure, the internet was anonymous, but these days there is hardly anything anonymous about it.

[davenotdead]

ntrnet is not real. its a parallel universe with no moral code.

show us yr tits, knox

[SONIC GAIL]

You tryin to stir her up more? She's got a full arsonal ready to go.

[knox]

Originally Posted by davenotdead

ntrnet is not real. its a parallel universe with no moral code.

show us yr tits, knox

The internet is not big enough for my tits.

[davenotdead]

cue my excitement

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by knox

The internet is not big enough for my tits.

see? that is HILARIOUS, but only if stated by YOU.

It is all context. If !@#$$% were to throw out "The internet is not big enough for knox's tits" it would sound horrible.

[knox]

That's the power of context, you should try it.

[davenotdead]

i am assuming all yr words now are foreplay leading up to the best PM i've ever received.

[artsygrrl]

Well, I am for knox. I can be almost as raunchy as y'all, but pics of dripping twats and such are offensive. Because it was agreed that on this new board we would stay away from extreme shit. She is only calling you on this.

[knox]

Originally Posted by davenotdead

i am assuming all yr words now are foreplay leading up to the best PM i've ever received.

well, i give it all.
that's something you should also say in job interviews.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by artsygrrl

Well, I am for knox. I can be almost as raunchy as y'all, but pics of dripping twats and such are offensive. Because it was agreed that on this new board we would stay away from extreme shit. She is only calling you on this.

who posted pictures of dripping twats?

this board hasn't seen a dripping twat in ages (fortunately. now of course because of this someone will end up posting one. it's how this place works)

the biggest sausagefest thread as of late was the amerikangod cock thread, in which you said you happily participated (i didn't. i didn't protest either, i just went my own way)

funny how people get sucked into mass hysteria

do you know what knox finds "extreme"?

this:

http://www.wallpaperpimper.com/wallp...1-1024x768.jpg

click with confidence-- it won't hurt your eyes, i promise you. she looks like a greek or roman goddess and there is no sight of genitalia and/or tastelessness. but anything is a good excuse for crying wolf.

 

no, that's not it.

[akprodr]

Reality isn't real.

The internet is.

[ann ashtray]

1) Do you develop a special internet persona that is not the real you?
What is the real anyone?

2) Are more willing to tolerate things or behave in ways you wouldn't in your normal life?
It depends. It can be difficult to hear tone online...difficult to tell the difference between someone making a heartfelt statement, or just joshin' around.

3) Is it hard for you to see the others you are interacting with as other human beings? What changes that detached approach, what humanizes an internet user?
Some are robots to me, yes. Just letters spreading across a screen. There are others I legitimately care about. Some clearly get online/join forums just to fuck around. I can relate, on some level. Others get online looking for more "serious" social interaction. I relate to this too...


4) Do you find yourself doing things that you think you wouldn't do offline?
Have you developed any new interests/obsessions that you wouldn't have otherwise?
I've done very little (if anything) online that I wouldn't do offline. If I'm pissed, it comes out online. If I'm drunk, it comes out online. If I'm sad, lonely, anything else...it tends to come out online.

Finally, do you really believe it shouldn't be seen as serious?
I don't believe anything should nec. be seen as anything...

Isn't the internet a REAL SERIOUS part of everybody's life now?
For most, no doubt. Why go out every night when ya can just log on? I still enjoy both worlds.

[!@#$%!]

for artsy--

see, some months ago knox protested about naked women and big asses, and asked to keep them confined to some threads, a bunch of us said ok, fine. there was some conversation at the time, a bit bizarre, but eh, it was some sort of dialogue.

when i posted that photo linked above i was talking about female goddess figures before the bronze age, when the female body was revered for its fertility and not for it's "virginity". my mind free associated of course, like minds tend to do, and i posted the picture of a woman that for me would be a much better religious figure (in the old context i mention-- paleolithic, pre-bronze age). i have spoken before, here and elsewhere, of a "cult of bellucci" and the "church of zeta", and there is even some academic discourse (camille paglia, who was fashionable in the 90s but no more) that claims that celebrities offer the same role as the deities of antiquity for our modern minds. part of this was in the back of my head and i didn't expound on it cuz i didn't want to write a paper-- it's a message board. but i did point at it and it wasn't gratuitous. the photo had a context.

then of course i posted the picture, finding nothing wrong with it.

of course, none of this mattered or was taken into account, because it was a naked woman oh my god let's paint some clothes on that sistine chapel and wrap david in a towel.

knox was drunk when she saw the photo & started ranting some utter nonsense directed at me, and i whas like "WTF"?

she took offense or something, and sent me a PM that i discovered later and which she asked me not to repost in which she claimed that i had "disappointed" her and i was a hypocrite and all manner of demented nonsense-- self-righteouness ran amok. the only possible answer to a PM like that would be to grovel like a miserable dog. so i told her to fuck off.

if the picture bothered her (go figure why it would, but if it bothered her) all she had to do was to ask me to take it down without going into hystrionics and i would have no problem doing that. but because the way in which she tore at me i told her basically to fuck off, which is something that i'd do to anybody regardless of gender, age, nationality, etc.

then she conflates my irritation with her tone (drunk, demented) with bullshit fable about "disrespecting women" and suddenly i am the harbinger of sexism on this planet, and guilty that sonic gail gets catcalled at work and that there are no girls in bands and that 9000 penises are raping children (ok this is my own addition). ridiculous and hilarious. but again, mass hysteria will always win the day on the internet or the tv news.

knox's tactic is to take any criticism of her and her drunken post and rather than acknowledge her own role in this bullshit she says "it's sexism and disrespect of women". well, fuck, i don't think it's that-- i think that she expects that because she's a woman people are going to do her bidding no matter how she treats them. i guess you can get away with being a rude drunk if you're a woman, or else everybody else is "sexist" and "disrespectful". that's some very convenient bullshit and a horrible logical fallacy.

if it was a guy i would have told him to eat a bag of dicks. maybe i'm being sexist for not having told her the same thing. ah, yes, "disrespectful".

i call bullshit, and i don't care if nobody else wants to see it, i still call bullshit, because that's what it is.

i'm not saying there is no sexism here or in the world, by the way. i'm saying that it's pretty convenient that a person can act like an asshole and then take cover under the mantle of sexism and get away with it.

[Genteel Death]

Is this thread real or just retarded?

[knox]

Stop making up things I didn't say, please. I never said anything about the extreme, or what I find extreme etc. I don't like having my words twisted, or this weird stereotype you seem to be trying to get me into, symbol.

You're not willing to care about what women from this board are saying - fair enough, just admit it: I don't care. Now you're the one who seems to be trying to come across as if I'm victimizing you in someway.

Everything that had to be said is there (another thread), in which I am saying things and other women are saying what they feel as well. Pointless to be dragging this everywhere just be honest and say you're not listening.

I did act like an asshole and I can be a proper cunt - but the whole argument wasn't about ME and YOU, so stop making it that way.

If the whole debate ended up in another debate about sexism and women on this board - it's because people are willing to discuss it again, not because people are accusing you to be the evil of the world.

[knox]

Paglia is considered an anti-feminist and someone who glorifies male dominance. One example of that is how she defended women are partially to blame for being raped in one occasion. So I didn't read much. She also says people aren't born gay and defends therapists who say they can convert gay into straight, so there you go.

Although, she is right if she says celebrities have replaced what Gods used to represent, but it isn't her idea.

[artsygrrl]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

who posted pictures of dripping twats?

this board hasn't seen a dripping twat in ages (fortunately. now of course because of this someone will end up posting one. it's how this place works)

the biggest sausagefest thread as of late was the amerikangod cock thread, in which you said you happily participated (i didn't. i didn't protest either, i just went my own way)

funny how people get sucked into mass hysteria

do you know what knox finds "extreme"?

this:

http://www.wallpaperpimper.com/wallp...1-1024x768.jpg

click with confidence-- it won't hurt your eyes, i promise you. she looks like a greek or roman goddess and there is no sight of genitalia and/or tastelessness. but anything is a good excuse for crying wolf.

 

no, that's not it.

I went after amerikan's cock thread with gusto. I got caught up in the spirit of the thread. If he was offended I would've apologized,really.
(check yr pm's re: dripping twat).ha