Forums

I love forums. I think they are fun ways to meet people who share a common interest with you. You can develop long friendships with people that in 2001, you never would have met at all. I know I'm repeating myself and I apologize, but so many people just bash social media and the internet because they don't understand it or worse, feel like it's "beneath" them in some way. It's both frustrating and total garbage that they thing that way. They'll pick and choose the bad stories (and yes, there are bad stories of people meeting up to commit heinous crimes) but they ignore the thousands upon thousands of people that don't do that. 

So how do you act in a forum? In my view, you should act the same way you do in real life. Again and again, I am stunned by people being overly argumentative, rude or condescending in forums. There is no way they would act like this offline or they would have absolutely zero friends, much less a spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend or even a friend with benefits. 

So why do people act in ways that would get them ignored or punched in the face? In my view they use chat rooms/forums as a place to unleash their suppressed aggression. They might very well act surly or unpleasant in the real world and are lonely. Because of that, they don't know how to interact with others and simply haven't been taught that their behavior is wrong. The other alternative is much worse-they know they are being repulsive and "don't care". They might have nothing better to do with their time than try to spread the sadness and anger they have inside them. Happy and adjusted people can go online a lot (that's a huge misconception about us online cats-that we are all social misfits in some way). But happy and adjusted people don't act obnoxious to everyone else while doing so.