When I stop and think about sociology as applied to Internet gaming communities, my insides cringe but I still have to laugh.
If someone is displeased with an opinion column in a newspaper, they might write a brusque response intended for publication in the Letters to the Editor. When a games writer publishes a widely-read blog post about the annoyance of wait times or games that require excessive patching, the best they can hope for from commentors is to not have "your mom" and "goat fellatio" in the same sentence.
I read an article today that was published through N4G.com. It drew riffraff to the original site like bugs to a food spill. One comment in particular made me think about why anyone would take the time and effort to register themselves as "suck my dick" just so they could leave a comment that says "suck my dick."
You really just have to roll your eyes, and, if you're immature like myself, giggle over the absurdity. But at the same time it's kind of troubling. I know not everyone acts like orangutans in the vast online gaming community; you people who read and comment on 61 FPS are like the family I was deprived of when I was harvested out of a bottle and raised in the art of space war. Still, I wonder what drives someone to add "stupid" and "moron" and worse to otherwise welcome criticisms.
Part of the answer no doubt belongs to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory: Normal Person + Anonymity+Audience=Total Fuckwad. I'm kind of an optimist, but I'm afraid that we're a generation so steeped in big noises and shiny things that we strive to gain recognition by any means necessary. After being told "You're Special!" for our growing years, it's a shock to end up behind a food counter as a number instead of a name and we have to take it out on something. Ironically, the Internet lets us do that because we can disguise ourselves.
Or maybe the Youth of the Nation are stupid, and will continue to be stupid because it's just the nature of things. I do not, by any means, subscribe to the philosophy of "Damn Kids Today". Growing up, my father and his friends antagonised their teachers until they ended up in the hospital with heart conditions. These teachers, I should add, survived the horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau, yet they ended up in the hospital completely broken by their attempts to teach the subsequent generation. But my father grew up okay and I imagine this generation will too, despite our irrational fears that they're going to remain a pack of hormone-driven wildebeests for the entirety of their lifespans.
So in a way, our lack of Internet manners might be the sign of a society that's staggering like a plague cow, but if social behaviour is any indication, society has been on its last legs since the birth of, uh, society. I guess all that's left is to endure the "FUCK YOUs" lobbed my way and nod in wise satisfaction at the Circle of Life.
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