legionnaire

I had an interesting conversation with this psychiatrist who works in my lab. It seems in his spare time he's created this alter ego called Horace P. Osterdonk (if you google his name you'll find him in a few message boards, he's pretty funny) and posted on a couple of different internet forums with this name, seeing what sorts of responses he gets. Horace is apparently a "friendly, if not quite-so-bright chap from out of town" and provokes the most interesting reactions from people he interacts with. His posts are mainly nonsensical, but in a jovial enough fashion; he's vaguely reminiscent of Balky Bartokomos from the 80's show "Perfect Strangers." Some of the members find him endlessly amusing, and seem to be happy when he comes back after long absences (the psychiatrist is pretty busy). Some of them get virulently angry at him though, and seem to take out all of their aggression on this poor, unsuspecting person.

He and I were discussing the pros and cons of internet forums the other day. He made a good point that I hadn't really thoguht about before. Basically, what he was saying was that generally speaking, we tend to surround ourselves in our regular lives with people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, levels of education and ideals. So while we have occasionally disagree with something one of our friends has to say, in general it won't be like Michael Moore vs. Ann Coulter, we probably wouldn't include someone whose views were so inherently different from our own in our friends (for example, I'd have a real hard time being friends with someone who's a racist or a homophobe, which is why those sorts of issues don't really come up in conversation for me.)

But the internet changes all of that. When you take part in a discussion group, you're putting what you have to say out there, and essentially anyone can reply in whatever form they like, and their views on issues could be vastly different your own. Not only that, but the people who respond could be certifiably insane, and you don't really have any way of knowing this a priori to getting involved in the conversation. For instance, if I saw someone on the subway who clearly hadn't showered in a few months, ranting to themselves about "the government" and other things, I probably wouldn't attempt to involve them in a complex discourse about geopolitics and economic globalization, because I wouldn't assume him to respond rationally or to consider my argument thoroughly.

And yet that is a completely plausible scenario on the internet. Which I think leads to a lot of the frustration on discussion boards (witness the apotheosis of this phenomenon, the Current Events boards.) It's quite possible in a format such as that to have a university professor, a 12 year old (hopefully not on this site, but you never know) an escaped mental patient and a survivalist discussing the finer points of Supreme Court judicial procedure. Recipe for disaster? I think so. Hence the hourly train wrecks in that particular discussion group.

I guess that purpose of writing this is to tell people that they shouldnt' get overly frustrated with others who absolutely refuse to see things rationally, take facts into consideration or consider an alternative perspective during a discussion on the internet. Because honestly, you never really know who you're talking to - their opinion really might not be worth winning over in the first place.