Gohan blog post

A few more observations...

I was just reminded of a couple things while talking with a new friend here that I find to be strange about this online world of ours and I wonder if it's really good for people.

The first thing is that what is considered to be objectively rude behavior in real life is considered perfectly acceptable online. For example, if you walk up to someone in public and talk with them, they will generally engage you in conversation even if just briefly. I'm not much of a social butterfly, but I would never ignore someone who talked to me in public.

Online especially dating sites like this one, it is perfectly acceptable to just ignore people even when they're being nice and you invite people to message you in your profile. Just for the record, this is not about bitterness or anything, but I just don't understand it really. I am far from perfect and have inadvertantly been rude to people, but generally if someone messages me, I will engage them in conversation. It's not that anyone should be forced to like someone or whatever, but to just flat out ignore people as common acceptable behavior is just weird to me especially on a site that is designed to help people meet each other. It is not acceptable at all in real life situations to do that and it will be frowned upon, but here? Ignore all you want. Be rude all you want and everyone is cool with that.

I think this is a problem in general with online interactions. You really find out what someone is about when there are no consequences for their actions and all too often, the behavior people exhibit when they can hide behind the shield of anonymity that the internet provides is often less that flattering to say the least and reflects poorly on them, but hey! There's no consequences, so who cares, right? Personally, I don't think people care enough.

This is why the old chat room was so good, but again, because people can't behave themselves and act like mature adults who don't bully and harrass other members, we can't have a nice chat room here anymore. If the chat room ever came back, it would need moderators. There would have to be significant demand to bring it back and I'm not sure such a demand exists which is unfortunate.


The second point I wanted to address is that a lot of people seem to have a great deal of trouble or a complete inability to accurately assess themselves. I think people put things on their profile about themselves that describes a person that is not them. Maybe it's the person they want to be. Maybe they put things on their profile that they think other people want or maybe they really think they are things that they aren't. It's obvious after sending just a few messages that this is the case sometimes or maybe, it will take a few days or weeks for the facade to come crashing down. On the other hand, maybe people just have no idea who they are and just choose to idealize themselves and try to wear that. It works until you actually try to talk to them and see that the person they are is nothing like the person described in their profile. This is all too common IMO.

While you may be able to manipulate people into messaging you, it won't take long for people to see right through all that bullshit. Be serious and genuine when filling out your profile because it really doesn't look good on you when people discover you were lying to the entire population of this website VIA your profile before anyone even said hello to you. Not good.

IMO, both of these things are indication that people may not know themselves as well as they think they do OR they are just bullshitting people right out of the gate and thinking no one will notice. Either way, people need to learn how to act around others. What you do when no one is looking or you're not subject to any consequences says a hell of a lot more about who you really are than how well you can misrepresent yourself to others in order to deceive them... or maybe, the person being deceived the most is yourself.

-Gohan