Yahoo Bot wrote:"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.
I suppose there is an additional discussion point about wether this anonymity allowing us the feeling of freedom to vent and challenge and assert and question and explore etc is a bad thing or a good thing.
I would suggest that discussions about Mormonism within the Church structure itself is something that is very carefully controlled, managed and restricted. That isn't a good thing IMHO, which is why members are leaving in droves and why message boards like this one flourish as an outlet for pent up discussion.