My addiction to the internet is ooooold... I was going to write about that today but it would bore you... And yes, I am still reading and vastly enjoying Minette Walters' books, and when I have finished Fox Evil, I am going to get on my broomstick, fly to the library and find the ones I have missed!
But I did love (and was distracted by) this cartoon.
Sort of says it all.... Manners are just as important on the Net as off it.
I've been hanging out on a forum, lately, where the game of "bait the n00b" seems very popular. I don't think I am very happy with it but there is information on this board that is useful to me, so I lurk, often in dismay as I see people attacked, for no offence other than asking a question that is obvious to the other, more experienced members of the forum - the "ruling class" members in particular.
I was wondering what drives people to do that... the only answer I could come up with for ages was pecking-order. On the lines of "If I can make you feel worse, it makes me feel better"... Sad.
How about a little helpfulness instead, or as my father would say, "if you can't say anything nice or useful, keep your mouth shut" (in this case your fingers still?)
Maybe there is more to it than that. Maybe the "ruling clique" of members on this forum feel that by knocking down some poor n00b they are raising themselves up, but more - they are establishing a level of dominance that reinforces THEIR "right" to be there; any remaining n00bs, or timid people like me, dare not post at all... (By the way, I should point out that most of these people are not mods of the board, just regulars.) So yes, this looks like pecking order in its nastiest form. In fact on one part of the board, one regular member who is reliably helpful and friendly to ALL, is repeatedly maligned and lambasted by the ones who are not... something I have seen on another board as well. A traitor to her class?
The thing to remember about newbies is that although he/she might appear to be a total idiot, asking the most stupid questions, and maybe not speaking the flavour of English we would prefer, we were ALL there once. Once every one of us was a newbie; and the people we remember most kindly are those who helped us bootstrap ourselves up, patiently assisting and answering or referring to somewhere we could get the answers we needed.
But this issue of the "ruling clique" bothers me. It seems to be a way of establishing territory, and the net-word pwned" roughly translated owned suggests territory again...
I played a MMORPG (translation: multi-media online role playing game) for two years or more, till it became very clear to me that what was going on was that the "aristocracy" of older players, who were by far the richest (in game wealth) were quite determined to keep the less aristocratic players "in their place". There was no chance of a newer or casual player EVER passing some of the tests in this game as the aristos would cheat in any way possible to keep them from anything that might give them a chance to join their class. While complaining bitterly about OTHER people cheating.
Is this really the kind of world we want our virtual worlds to be? Don't we have a chance to do something BETTER?
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