Internet Anonymity and Stereotypes

We've all heard the commercials. The one where a lady starts off by complimenting someone's makeup, then instantly turns around and starts making disparaging and very demeaning remarks about anything and everything under the assumption "these are things that none of us would ever actually say to someone's face, so why would we say them on the internet?"

Having a life that revolves around the internet makes the vast majority of us guilty of this to some degree. That degree of guilt may not be felt by a specific individual, but someone else's opinion may make you guilty of it in their eyes. As the internet has grown more and more interwoven into our daily lives, it's given voice to a large number of people who normally wouldn't have had one for various reasons. Age, self-esteem, inability to articulate in a normal conversations, too emotional, etc. The list goes on and on.

Before I continue, I want to point out that my next few paragraphs are not meant to encompass everyone that's ever accessed the internet. I write operating under the thought process that this is the way a majority of people operate and that the vast majority of us fall victim to some of this stuff at some point, including myself.

En-Bold

Stating the obvious, being almost completely anonymous will cause anyone to feel safe saying anything they want. It speaks to several levels of a person's personality when this happens, but you can generally sum it up in a couple categories. The first being that they can be a rotten person at times. The second being they are a coward. I tend to include people who have no qualms speaking their mind in real life in the first group. I tend to include the shy, walked-all-over-by-significant-others/family members, low self-esteem person in the second.

The first group doesn't bother me at all that much. The second group is where I take up issue. Generally speaking, when an opinion is given, it's related specifically towards trying to make the end result of something better.

Do you like this cereal and why?
What do you think of so and so?
What do you think is the best approach to this?

Everyone's opinion counts for something, but it gets discredited a lot if a person doesn't even have the strength to fix the wrongs in their own lives. Or worse yet, won't even try. The internet provides an outlet for a lot of these people to take out their real life frustrations on other people who may or may not trigger emotional similarities to current circumstances they may be experiencing. Again, this doesn't apply to everyone, but it's very hard to avoid thinking that this is the case when I read various posts where someone is telling another person to "kill yourself" or "I hope you get run over by a train". Telling someone these things online is nothing more than an admission of defeat, ignorance and cowardice. It says that you, as a person, do not possess the intelligence level necessary to make your point in a constructive manner.

I have zero patience for what I perceive as cowardice. I simply cannot view an opinion given to me through someone else (girlfriend's opinion given through the boyfriend, friend's opinion given through another friend, anonymous account, etc) or through a means of violent expression as any form of a respectable opinion. More often times than not, I'll just completely disregard whatever was said (which usually just pisses a person off more), but I'm guilty of being sucked into the drama vortex (stooping) from time to time as well. This holds especially true when I perceive cowardice being present in an area I consider "home".

The logic behind it fails me. Online relationship from years and years and years ago is case and point. When I started dating this girl, she had some rather colorful opinions that were only expressed online. When on the phone or face to face? I couldn't get an opinion out of her to save my life. There wasn't a language barrier or anything like that. She was a product of the internet age and had no clue how to express herself person to person. She could only express herself with a keyboard and an IM or Forum. Needless to say, that relationship didn't last too long.

The desire for a person's life to have meaning or importance is the main force behind it. Fear is a main force as well. A person may fear taking the steps in their real lives to say/do the things that would give their lives meaning beyond the day to day routines they go through wishing for something better. Fear of change, fear of non-acceptance, or, mostly, fear of reprocussions. The only reprocussions a person experiences online are words and the occasional mail spam from beastiality sites. There is also the fear of turning out to be villified (and rightfully so in some cases) to the point where no matter what character or identity you create, you've given so much of yourself away that you can be identified and alienated almost instantly.

Bottom line is...in order to gain respect, you have to earn respect and if your real life personality or circumstances aren't all that respectable and you like to place the blame for your current lot in life on everything else but yourself (there are exceptions), then what you say/do in your interactions with others are going to follow suit. These things make themselves very apparent in more ways than one.

Stereotypes

I make a lot of stereotypical jokes and integrate stereotypical references in a lot of my discussions. Some people will get offended by any stereotype that's mentioned, but most people will see it for what it is...a stereotype I'm making fun of.

Stereotypes are simply fodder for comedy to me. I don't buy into any of them nor do I think they apply to the entire group of people they're poking fun at. A quick run down of the Cast of Characters along the side of this blog will show you that most of those nicknames are stereotypical of some real life facet.

Stereotypes also serve another purpose though. They will tell you how comfortable a person is with theirself. I can make any Cuban joke I want to Cuban and Cuban will return the favor. This means Cuban is comfortable with the fact that...he's Cuban and comfortable with everything that goes along with it. If I made the same Cuban jokes to another Cuban and they got pissed off...then they're either targeted for deportation or they got bit by a shark on the way to the US.

I'M KIDDING!

Seriously, if I made the same Cuban jokes to another Cuban and they get pissed off at me, I can only assume this person is ashamed of who he is. That logic doesn't apply to a handful of stereotypes as there are some that just really cross the whole humane line (the n-word and body weight being two of them).

This situation makes me ask three questions:

1. Do I change my personality to accomodate what I perceive as a person's shortcomings?
2. Do I poke and prod my way around someone's head until I figure out why the shame is there to begin with?
3. Do I just avoid said person and go about living my life the way I want to live it?

The answers are simple and not simple:

1. I'll respect the fact it makes them mad, but they have to meet me in the middle. While I won't make jokes at their expense, I'm not going to stop making jokes at someone else's expense if it doesn't offend the target. If they happen to be in party or in linkshell with me, they have to understand this if I'm to understand I can't make jokes at their specific expense.

2. No. Poking and prodding tends to make things worse and cause barriers to be formed. There are better ways of dealing with this, but it's on their schedule. I have to be accepting of what I feel are their shortcomings and determine if I feel like dealing with it.

3. Sometimes this is the better course of action. This will go back to my perceptions about a person.

People tend to get too worked up about these things though. It's almost as if people are just looking for things to pick fights with and nothing has a more obvious trigger than a statement made about someone's race, heritage, nationality, etc. I have the same respect for Tentacle that I do for Inbred. I have the same respect for Old Man that I do for Hot Chocolate and I have the same respect for The Girlfriend as I do The Cuban. Yet in those 6 people, I can make fun of British people, women, aneurysms, deportation, rafts, old people, black people, rednecks, Arkansas mutants, and inbreeding.

It's entirely silly to think that because a stereotype might apply to a portion of your skin color that I respect you less. Yes there are people out there that are dumb enough to let that be a factor in judging someone, but a person has to realize intelligence from ignorance. Become outraged when a statement is made in ignorance. Just chuckle or laugh when it's made out of intelligence.