Comments on: Spoiler alert

By: Fake Tempus

Fake Tempus — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:59:51 +0000

man, I miss Potter…..alot!

Yeah, people are really mean online these days….

By: Chris/Nestor

Chris/Nestor — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:21:13 +0000

Wow - 100% agree with what you said and you said it so well. Thanks for the last few minutes I took reading this , esp the first paragraphs

By: Dualist

Dualist — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 06:48:10 +0000

Exactly. It’s amazing how much the internet has transformed things, moreso in a generation born during the internet. It’s exciting and frightening to find out in the future what the internet will be. It really is going to suck being a celebrity, because since you have information instantly, its easy to put up some humilating videos of celebs for the whole world to see. But still you have sites like myspace which celebrate individuality, at the same time could reinforce narcissism and a sense of false self-importance.

That line hasn’t been blurred, between reality and cyberspace, yet, but if it does (and when) then I wonder about the quality of life. We are all egotistical, but something I admire about my parents and other adults is their restraint of exploding their own ego out of porportion. Unfourtantley I see a trend that the younger population might not develop that kind of a restraint and in turn all hell breaks loose lol.

You can’t enjoy the things in life anymore, without nitpicking. Everything has to be perfect these days. Speaking from a 1st world civilazation perspective, things are just taken for granted and we constantly have to go out of our way to put others down for their own viewpoints, or perhaps the way they look, etc. It’s pretty messed up…

By: Andy Tatnall

Andy Tatnall — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 06:27:12 +0000

No problem, and really, even though I used my thoughts about “e-attitudes” to lead into the Potter stuff, those were thoughts I wanted to express all on their own as well.

I’ve observed the same total opposition between people’s online and offline personalities. It’s my belief that for many people, the more of a rough time they have of it in their lives—and the more afraid of confrontation they’ve become with others—the more attractive it is to try to take some measure of revenge in the faceless online environment, and to try to reclaim some of the power they don’t have in their normal lives.

By: Dualist

Dualist — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 02:15:03 +0000

Great write up. I agree with your viewpoint that people have become more smug, people thinking they are the end all be all. I’ve been a victim and a culprit of this. The thing when you go on the internet, is that there is no control. You can post up whatever you like without any consequences. Granted you might be ridiculed from other internet users, but if you live in anonymonity it shouldn’t have any bearing on you outside the internet.

If you like something that perhaps everyone else doesn’t like you will get tormented on here. None of the people out there that make fun of that single person, get that it doesn’t really matter. You might have a guy that loves the Spice Girls, and then when voicing his opinion about how he dislikes Radiohead he’ll get extremely ridiculed because of it. You almost can’t fully express yourself on the internet because of this, the pressure to not be subject to some kind of form of humilation.

It’s also amazing to see that people who are very vocal on the internet, and at the same time very arrogant and condescing, act in the real world. It’s almost a complete opposite. I’ve experienced this with some of the forum users on G4, how they act on the forum compared to say Xbox Live.

But anyway sorry if this wasn’t so much on topic with the new Harry Potter novel, I’d just had to give my thoughts about what you were discussing first.