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I hate the internet

Zergling

Permabanned
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
Messages
1,377
MBTI Type
ExTJ
Obviously the title is an exaggeration, since I use the internet a lot and it is quite good for some things, this is more a rant on all the crap I have to look through sometimes to get to the good stuff. Reading through several forums, blog comments, and such often gives me a feeling of wanting to rip my hair out, or otherwise commit various violent acts to something related to what people write/do.

Some of the things that tend to show up over and over:

1. "u need to look 4 some1 to pwn...". Some annoyance with this kind of text/leet speak is guilt by association, but it is quite hard to read.

2. "Why have a friendly discussion, where I learn something from the other person, get a sense of their opinion, etc., when I can just insult them/call them an idiot". Many, many discussions/arguments on the internet seem to get filled up with these kinds of people, especially with politics or movie/computer game related viewpoints, and in addition to making such parts of the internet far less fun to read, I don't get what they are hoping to accomplish or why there is is enough emotion/desire to stir up trouble that it has to be written this way.

3. "Sure, I could describe something I don't like in a calm way, laying out the what I don't like one step at a time and giving some background, analysis, etc., but instead I'll over dramatically whine about it." This is kind of similar to above. I wonder whether the amount of whining that goes on tends to cause other people to tune it out and miss actual problems that may be going on.

4. "I'm sure that guy over there put a lot of thought into what he's written, and probably has something good to say, but I'd rather respond to the overdramatic whine.". This one can be the most annoying of all, because it probably feeds the two above, and the responses often have the same quality, continuing to drag down the overall quality.

5. "First Post!", or "I have nothing to say, but still want attention". The second quoted sentence kind of describes the annoyance here.

6. Nazis, Bush, "Liberal" (by non-liberals), and most other types of "The hated enemy". There are many equivalents to godwining a thread, and they all tend to fit with either the "overdramatic whine", or "insult the other person" type of mentalities.

I am not sure whether the these parts of the internet are really worse than stuff that goes on outside of it, whether they concentrate these sorts of things from outside, whether i just don't notice this sort of stuff outside, but it is quite annoying. Many of these types of writing seem to cut off possibly quite interesting lines of though by either not paying attention to them, using a nitpick for an insult, scaring away people who would have something good to say, etc.
 

heart

heart on fire
Joined
May 19, 2007
Messages
8,456
One place I particulary cannot stand online is the childfree culture. I am a childfree person and would like to interact with others who are, but online, there's so much hate being knocked back and forth on the issue and in the foulest and most degrading of language, it is impossible to respect anyone participating in it.

The forums become just a nasty debate about having or not having children and not about childfree people sharing interests.
 

Jeffster

veteran attention whore
Joined
Jun 7, 2008
Messages
6,744
MBTI Type
ESFP
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sx
Man, I pretty much agree with every word of that. I hate the way every board that has a politics section always turns into us vs. them, and there's namecalling and generalizations more often than actually trying to understand anyone else's point of view.

I'm probably guilty of the "posting for attention" thing, but I DO have something to say....sometimes. ;)
 
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