Rude Online Behavior in Mormon Discussions

[_Yahoo Bot]

"Mormon Discussions" generically, and not specifically here.

There's an interesting Wall Street Journal article today, entitled "Why We Are So Rude Online."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030351784405148.html?KEYWORDS=rude+online

It talks about aggression, anonymity and stuff like that. One quote was interesting:

"People who spent more time on-line and who had a high percentage of close ties in their network were more likely to engage in binge eating and to have a greater body mass index, as well to have more credit card debt and a lower credit score," citing a to-be-published research study from Columbia.

Also, in IQ tests, people who spent more time on Facebook "were more likely to give up on difficult tasks more quickly."

Lots of discussion about uninhibited behavior when posting anonymously, material I've discussed before.

There's even an account of a religious debate involving a TV announcer in Thousand Oaks who talks about debating the question of whether Mormons are Christians, and how he was called an idiot.

It seems that people who spend a lot of time in front of computers for entertainment are more naturally the type to not be likely to hang out in gyms, not likely to have lots of attraction from the opposite sex, more likely to be overweight and not interested in being attractive, not be outdoorsy, not go to parties to hook up, not to exchange a roach with a friend, not read a book, more likely to have bookshelves full of videos rather than books. Likely they turn to online entertainment as their only available avenue for social interaction. So stereotypical but it must be true; see Kevin Smith's character in Live Free and Die Hard. Wayne Knight's ("Newman") character in Jurassic Park. Or so this pending Columbia report suggests.

My recent more active foray into the other board showed me that faithful defenders of the Church can be just as nasty as critics of the Church here, except the faithful defenders tend to use fewer cuss words, sexual references or rely upon excretory references. It is also evident to me that both critics and defenders might attempt to attack a person's real life relationships, jobs, or church connections. The faithful defenders board, however, has lots of "nicer" people, in the sense that they seem to be good Christians and behave such way, but there are also people who think they are good Christians who behave inappropriately. (Just so that I am not accused of being hypocritical, I certainly put myself in the latter category.)

Interesting stuff. I use the DSM-IV manual in my work and know that there is a draft mental disorder diagnosis which has been pending which relies upon anti- or non-social online behavior as a means to declare a new mental disorder. It hasn't made the manual, however.

[_Themis]

Lots of discussion about uninhibited behavior when posting anonymously, material I've discussed before.

I agree that people who are anonymous tend to behave worse then those who are known. This is true outside the internet as well. It doesn't do well for those who post by their real names yet still behave poorly.

[_Cicero]

You are certainly a unique case Bot. I doubt there are very many other successful mega-firm litigators participating in these fora that also somehow find the time to run marathons and actively participate in Church. I consider myself lucky if I have enough time to get to the gym for an hour three times a week. Do you sleep?

[_Yahoo Bot]

Each day starts with a ten mile run unless I am catching a plane.

That sums it up.

[_RayAgostini]

Most here will probably not be aware of the recent case of Charlotte Dawson:

Charlotte Dawson: How the cyber trolls beat me.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph, began a public campaign to force Twitter to act on online abuse in Australia, and it appears to have been successful:

Twitter makes moves to prevent online trolls:

INTERNET giant Twitter has moved to ban online abuse, as the Federal Government called on it to establish an Australian outpost to deal with community concerns.

The development came as still more victims of cyber hate campaigns came forward yesterday, including top surfer Laura Enever and TV personality Nathan Jolliffe.

This is not just a Mormon-related boards problem.

[_moksha]

These stories that help us pass the judgment of stereotype upon others is most edifying. Keep them coming Brother Yahoo Bot. Encourage them to furnish us their names so we can enable them to cease posting, not with force, but so they will be able to hook up at parties successfully.

[_Yahoo Bot]

These stories that help us pass the judgment of stereotype upon others is most edifying. Keep them coming Brother Yahoo Bot. Encourage them to furnish us their names so we can enable them to cease posting, not with force, but so they will be able to hook up at parties successfully.

I don't have a dog in this race. I'm as much of a nerd as anybody else.

[_sock puppet]

Each day starts with a ten mile run unless I am catching a plane.

That sums it up.

How many years have you been doing it?

[_Gadianton]

It seems that people who spend a lot of time in front of computers for entertainment are more naturally the type to not be likely...

These are startling findings. Who would have thought back in 1993 when people were talking about a possible new mental illness called Internet Addiction, that one day, nineteen years later, experts would discover that people who spend massive amounts of time online are more likely to suffer from stereotypical social challenges associated with a recluse then people who don't spend time online.

I haven't read the article, but tell me, did it say that people with shelves full of books tend to be attractive and in-shape compared with people who watched DVD's or "videos" (VHS, bot?). I'm just not seeing it. Wondering if this was really part of the study or if you read that into it, to give book reading a free pass, since Mopologists think books are so cool.

[_Sethbag]

Each day starts with a ten mile run unless I am catching a plane.

That sums it up.

That's really good stuff. Does a body good. Since I came back from my recent military training, I've been riding my bike 25 miles three times a week and running 2 miles twice a week. I'd run further, but at this level my knees are doing fine, and I am hesitant to push them too much too soon. I did that three years ago and it's taken my knees the last three years to recover. I've found that running is the worst way to spend what health my knees have. It's far more fruitful for me to ride, swim, or go on 10 mile ruck-marches with a National Guard buddy of mine in the desert hills.

As far as the correlations go, did spending so much time online cause the health and other problems people have, or were they the kind of people who weren't going to exercise anyway? If being outdoorsy is a personality type, perhaps so is being onlinesy. Perhaps it's not so much that going online represents a danger to peoples' beltlines so much as it is that some people are simply drawn more to the online world than to the gym or the sidewalk.