And we're back...

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

It's been a while but I'm back and ready to get back to getting on the soap box again.

Today's topic: Normal person + Internet Anonymity = Jerkwad

If you've ever participated on an internet forum you know what I'm talking about. When you take completely normal people and give them complete anonymity and free reign to talk about whatever they want, they become the biggest idiots of all time. It's almost magic how the transformation takes place.

Let's take for instance, posters on our local newspaper forum. All reason and sanity are gone when a comment is made.

I have witnessed someone posting a topic on a video game forum stating that the original player had died and the brother was posting in the forum to say his goodbyes for him. The very next reply was by one of these anonymous idiots asking "Did he drop any loot?"

When a disagreement takes place it is not uncommon for one person to tell another to "go and die in a car fire" or "have a few drinks and go for a drive".

It's been called by the media "cyber-bullying". I call it being an idiot. You wouldn't say these things to someone's face.

The famous advice given to children about annoying friends is still the same today: Just ignore them and they'll quit doing it. Unfortunately, people are unwilling to ignore such people and give forum trolls and idiots exactly what they're after: Attention.

So please, do the internet a favor and stop feeding the trolls. Happy surfing.

0 comments: