I am old enough to remember when there was no internet, while also being young enough to have been around when chatrooms were becoming popular. I learned quite early in my “chatting” days that people are much bolder about everything when they have the anonymity of the internet to cloak them. They will be kind, be rude, be perverse, or be wonderfully helpful when they wouldn’t be if they were standing face to face with you.
My father uses the internet for email, important accountant work purposes, and researching our family tree. I highly doubt he has ever been in a chatroom with random people, and if he were to, he most likely wouldn’t enjoy it. He was telling me recently about an experience he had looking up the best way to get a program to do what he wanted it to. The “help” post he found had recieved a comment from a troll. “That does not benefit anyone,” he replied to the comment, and seemed baffled that anyone would want to offer crass remarks on a help forum for a tax program. I shook my head at him, “Dad, that’s what people do on the internet.” While it surprised me that this was his first time encountering someone like that, I was glad his interactions with other people have been positive.
One of my favorite episodes of the British TV Show The IT Crowd is about a website called Friendface, an obvious spoof on social networking sites. At one point, the female lead, sitting alone on a couch, says, “I feel so social.” This is exactly how I feel about Facebook. It’s like being in high school: all the drama, but without having to smell the body odor.
I know some people who avoid social media like the plague. I did, too, when they first came out. I never had a Friendster account, and I got in on MySpace just as it was fading out to be replaced by Facebook. I held off on getting a Facebook account for several years, and only joined after I found out that an adorable friend of mine from Chinese class had gotten engaged over the summer, and I was one of the only people in class who didn’t find out until school started up again, because the rest of them had Facebook accounts.
If it weren’t for Facebook, I wouldn’t know what my beautiful cousins in Nebraska were up to. I would have lost touch with several friends whom I treasure dearly. And my aunts and great aunts wouldn’t get to hear about the adorable things my daughters do.
But since Facebook is a website on the internet, it is full of opinions. I heard a friend comment recently that she could tell which of her friends came down on one side or the other of a controversial issue just by looking at their statuses on Facebook. “You can’t tell from looking at my Facebook page,” I commented back. Since I’m one of those people who don’t like to be yelled at about my opinions, I generally don’t post them on social media for all to see.
It’s hard enough to win an argument when you’re face to face with someone, let alone trying to convince them that you’re the one who is right when they’re a thousand miles away. The internet is opinionated, and there isn’t much I can do to change that. So my policy is to just let it be, avoid the squabbling, and keep my opinions to myself.
...Usually.
No comments:
Post a Comment