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Redsoft
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Member Since Dec 2012
Location: The West Coast
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Default Feb 27, 2015 at 03:44 PM
 
Ugh, YES. Barely-suppressed dismay incoming:
I used to check facebook multiple times a day. What can I say? I was a member when it was beta and/or just up, when it was still cultist and you could only sign up when you declared the college you were CURRENTLY going into. Ah, the days. ...And thus, professional procrastinator via it all through school. XD

Anyways, because of this, it took me a long while - too long - to realize every time that I finished taking a look at it recently, most of the time I'd end up super irritated or another unpleasant flavor. ...The psychology going around is that fb can depress people when they start comparing their lives to the unrealistic facades that so many project to each other. ...Nope - that is, not for me. ...It's everyone **tc*ing at everything and everyone so vehemently that they've beaten dead horses and revived them all so many times that there is now a horse-zombie invasion stampeding barbarously feral and unchecked across the Internet! (top ten weirdest metaphors I've used?!)

I also have a compulsive comment-reading habit for articles and such...just plain curiosity. It used to be for perusing unique opinions, ideas I hadn't considered, with the occasional naysayer/kid with a keyboard...Potential education. Now, everyone is hackles-up with bated breath, just aching for an opportunity to perpetrate a textual lashing. Convicting, hopelessly serious devil's advocates and arbitrarily politically-correcting super-analyzers abound, many wearing the guise of humanitarians watching out for the every-person via intense judgement and poor reading and comprehension skills. Some of my "favs" are when someone chews a user out for being judgmental, then negatively judges that user in the last sentence. ...If people over-analyzed words and phrases and reacted as disgustingly and nastily as they do online in "real" life, Earth would be little more than a radioactive gas giant by now.

I've had to give myself a personal rule to almost never cruise comments anymore on articles. I've stopped going to certain sites entirely, because the rabid users have actually battered the site into changing things for that one collective opinion. It's sad. Just this morning, I read an article no longer than 150 words featuring simply a massive fish that was caught and released by a guy. A living marvel. ...A single comment. Paraphrasing: "A**h***. It should be released." . . . . .

As a somewhat unrelated aside, and ironic considering it is nitpicky: As an anti-social and stereotypically geeky human that has lived inside of the internet as much as "irl" at this point (:P), I am driven hyperbolically insane that everyone uses "troll" incorrectly now, too. I guess this isn't really off topic now that I've gotten going here, if you stick with me til the end, I promise this nitpick has a reason... XD

"Troll" started out meaning someone, a user, that purposefully incites a reaction in a conversation, OR someone that sort of digitally pulls another user's leg, gets their goat; the latter, if done "correctly", being unbeknownst to the targeted user to start. These are meant to be pretty much harmless interactions. A practical joke where no one gets hurt - an "I see what you did there..." gag. A silly example would be: Q: "Has anyone read [this book?]" A: "Yes. It really got to me when John Doe dies in chapter nine." (...When John Doe doesn't actually die.), and the answerer keeps posting bogus info. ...In a way, it's almost a sideways tactic to weed out the flamers...("Flaming" is quite different from trolling, albeit only a marginally different topic.) Of course, there are bad apples - those trolls would be folks that might respond to that question "jokingly" with "Wow, you must be dumb, under twelve, or both if you like that book. Are you serious?" It's also a flame, if meant truly. This is also just being a meanie-head.

With this original (ahem, PROPER ) definition in mind, it is frustrating but apt that the trend is anyone with a genuine contrary opinion or argument than someone/the majority is labeled "troll." (All flamers are labeled trolls too - again, likely wrong.) "What? You don't agree with me? TROLL GTFO THE INTERNET, [debasing insult]!" After all, if someone doesn't agree, throwing them under a fairy-tale bridge fixes it, right? It's public school lunch tables made binary.

Argument and debate do not a conversation make.

I mentioned it briefly above, but COMPREHENSION is getting worse and worse. And, I'm sure a lot of it is not just "lack of comprehension" skills per se, but instead/also poor or too-fast reading. The amount of opinionated conflagration would drop instantly if people actually read, and really read what they were attacking so ferociously instead of snapping at trigger-words.

...I haven't used facebook for months.

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Thanks for this!
Koko2