Two things to question here, really.
1. Does your online persona match your real life personality? Me, I like to think mine does. I'm a reflective loner, a bit of a doofus, with a touch of Adult Association Disorder. Always seen the world as if I'm watching it from inside a dark, musty garage, through a hand-rubbed spot in a dingy window. Half the people I meet, we get along fine. We have simple, stupid fun laughing at the incongruity of evolved primates. Really enjoy each other's take on things.
The other half I just rub the wrong way. They get aggressive with me, I get aggressive back, flip them off, we go our own ways. Fuck 'em. Grouch and let grouch.
Most of the time, I think, I'm introspective, pleasantly self-amused, and generally in awe of God's creation, animate or inanimate.
TMI? Oh well. That's how I do. Same here as in real life, I think.
A couple of voices here, oh I hope to hell they aren't like that in person. I have to believe the anonymity of an online "community" let's them be rude when in real life they would be more tolerant.
2. Online "community": Fact or fiction? When I used to hear people talk about Facebook and personal interest forums as if they are real communities. Boy, I didn't know about that.
I definitely see the value of an "online neighborhood" where you come after work, pour a drink, and relax "listening" to your online friends' thoughts and reflections and anecdotes, commenting or just lurking. People gathered around a similar interest, learning, sharing and enjoying the camaraderie of a group they could belong to.
I value that aspect. I value that we converse in forums like these without filtering each other through some of the biases we each have, biases that developed over a lifetime, prejudices we might not admit we have, but have just the same. Sedentary or athletic, well-dressed or slovenly, tatted up or pierced everywhere ... perceptions of how masculine, effeminate, blond or bald, cross-eyed or blemished -- those aren't here. (As much)
With the exception of judgments based on diction, social customs and protocol, choice of topic to participate in, we speak to each other soul to soul, person to person, raw -- or closer to raw than we do, I think, in real life.
But community? In real life the guy next door put up his wooden fence "ugly side out." He blows snow from his driveway into mine and washes his catfish guts from his drive into my lawn.
In Facebook I can just block him. In a forum, eh, I move on to a different thread. Ignore that one. I could just quit the site and move to another one, or turn off the computer and turn on the TV. Or take a nap.
In face-to-face life, I sigh, deliberating whether to confront him at each and every new transgression that annoys me, or to just let it go. I have to see him daily, unable to just turn him off. Our relationship is superficial. I say hi to him when we are doing yard work at the same time. I tease his kids and remain affable. It requires tolerance and energy I sometimes think I don't have.
To me, a real life community -- whether neighborhood or church or scout troop or gun club or workplace -- is a whole different animal from an online "community."
And maybe that's a good thing?
A young man came to us having just lost the love of his life. I was impressed with this community by the number of compassionate, nurturing responses he got. That shouldn't go unremarked.
No, we don't all "know" him. Probably never going to meet him. But we know what he's going through. We hurt with him. Desperate to ease his pain, so many of us offered him anything we could to let him know he wasn't alone. We ourselves grew through our own pain, matured, gained wisdom or grew jaded.
Should he have brought it here to us? Or should he feel ashamed he didn't keep it to himself?
Even old, callous bastards like me, deep down, wish at times we had a "place." So much of the world's literature is based on that basic human need. Can a guy or gal find it in an online community? Is it "real" if they do?
I think so now.
When I went through my divorce, two-year-long felony defense and subsequent bankruptcy, and loss of fatherhood (out of contact from my kids for that two years), I longed for someone who at least cared enough to say, "I feel for you. Been there myself. You're not alone."
I think a person in despair scares people. Some get angry if "it" comes near them, someone with the first runny nose and cough in the cold season, wanting to shake hands. My friend and coworker one night, when I was going on about what happened "now," told me about his own divorce. He had been in a bar, self-medicating, talking about his loss, not knowing how to go on now, so much of his security destroyed, ruined. Same as me. Then he told me the guy turned to him and said, "Buddy. Tell you a secret. None of us gives a fuck. We want to drink our beer. Now shut up and drink yours." Sobered me right up. He was looking at me as if I were a drowning person he needed to keep away from, a threat to his own security. We all work for and guard our own emotional stability. People in unstable situations threaten us, or remind us no one helped us when we went through it. Put your big boy pants on and man up.
Sitting here puffing on my Sav 320 loaded with Newminster 403 slices, I realized how much I've been thinking of that kid, the forum's responses to him, the overwhelming number of compassionate responses, and I'm changing my mind.
Wouldn't want every thread to be about it. Wouldn't have the patience for someone who did it all the time. But sometimes we need this. Sometimes maybe this is less superficial of communities we belong to.
I can smoke to that!
You?
1. Does your online persona match your real life personality? Me, I like to think mine does. I'm a reflective loner, a bit of a doofus, with a touch of Adult Association Disorder. Always seen the world as if I'm watching it from inside a dark, musty garage, through a hand-rubbed spot in a dingy window. Half the people I meet, we get along fine. We have simple, stupid fun laughing at the incongruity of evolved primates. Really enjoy each other's take on things.
The other half I just rub the wrong way. They get aggressive with me, I get aggressive back, flip them off, we go our own ways. Fuck 'em. Grouch and let grouch.
Most of the time, I think, I'm introspective, pleasantly self-amused, and generally in awe of God's creation, animate or inanimate.
TMI? Oh well. That's how I do. Same here as in real life, I think.
A couple of voices here, oh I hope to hell they aren't like that in person. I have to believe the anonymity of an online "community" let's them be rude when in real life they would be more tolerant.
2. Online "community": Fact or fiction? When I used to hear people talk about Facebook and personal interest forums as if they are real communities. Boy, I didn't know about that.
I definitely see the value of an "online neighborhood" where you come after work, pour a drink, and relax "listening" to your online friends' thoughts and reflections and anecdotes, commenting or just lurking. People gathered around a similar interest, learning, sharing and enjoying the camaraderie of a group they could belong to.
I value that aspect. I value that we converse in forums like these without filtering each other through some of the biases we each have, biases that developed over a lifetime, prejudices we might not admit we have, but have just the same. Sedentary or athletic, well-dressed or slovenly, tatted up or pierced everywhere ... perceptions of how masculine, effeminate, blond or bald, cross-eyed or blemished -- those aren't here. (As much)
With the exception of judgments based on diction, social customs and protocol, choice of topic to participate in, we speak to each other soul to soul, person to person, raw -- or closer to raw than we do, I think, in real life.
But community? In real life the guy next door put up his wooden fence "ugly side out." He blows snow from his driveway into mine and washes his catfish guts from his drive into my lawn.
In Facebook I can just block him. In a forum, eh, I move on to a different thread. Ignore that one. I could just quit the site and move to another one, or turn off the computer and turn on the TV. Or take a nap.
In face-to-face life, I sigh, deliberating whether to confront him at each and every new transgression that annoys me, or to just let it go. I have to see him daily, unable to just turn him off. Our relationship is superficial. I say hi to him when we are doing yard work at the same time. I tease his kids and remain affable. It requires tolerance and energy I sometimes think I don't have.
To me, a real life community -- whether neighborhood or church or scout troop or gun club or workplace -- is a whole different animal from an online "community."
And maybe that's a good thing?
A young man came to us having just lost the love of his life. I was impressed with this community by the number of compassionate, nurturing responses he got. That shouldn't go unremarked.
No, we don't all "know" him. Probably never going to meet him. But we know what he's going through. We hurt with him. Desperate to ease his pain, so many of us offered him anything we could to let him know he wasn't alone. We ourselves grew through our own pain, matured, gained wisdom or grew jaded.
Should he have brought it here to us? Or should he feel ashamed he didn't keep it to himself?
Even old, callous bastards like me, deep down, wish at times we had a "place." So much of the world's literature is based on that basic human need. Can a guy or gal find it in an online community? Is it "real" if they do?
I think so now.
When I went through my divorce, two-year-long felony defense and subsequent bankruptcy, and loss of fatherhood (out of contact from my kids for that two years), I longed for someone who at least cared enough to say, "I feel for you. Been there myself. You're not alone."
I think a person in despair scares people. Some get angry if "it" comes near them, someone with the first runny nose and cough in the cold season, wanting to shake hands. My friend and coworker one night, when I was going on about what happened "now," told me about his own divorce. He had been in a bar, self-medicating, talking about his loss, not knowing how to go on now, so much of his security destroyed, ruined. Same as me. Then he told me the guy turned to him and said, "Buddy. Tell you a secret. None of us gives a fuck. We want to drink our beer. Now shut up and drink yours." Sobered me right up. He was looking at me as if I were a drowning person he needed to keep away from, a threat to his own security. We all work for and guard our own emotional stability. People in unstable situations threaten us, or remind us no one helped us when we went through it. Put your big boy pants on and man up.
Sitting here puffing on my Sav 320 loaded with Newminster 403 slices, I realized how much I've been thinking of that kid, the forum's responses to him, the overwhelming number of compassionate responses, and I'm changing my mind.
Wouldn't want every thread to be about it. Wouldn't have the patience for someone who did it all the time. But sometimes we need this. Sometimes maybe this is less superficial of communities we belong to.
I can smoke to that!
You?
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