I belong to a variety of forum sites, with a fairly broad scope of interests. I joined Crackberry because I bought a Playbook and hoped I could glean some useful information and insight about the device - and I have, and I'm grateful.
But I also found it very interesting to compare the various behaviours that people display on forum sites - especially the hierarchies and roles that people play and the traits they display. So, this morning I went poking around in Google, and ended up at this article:
If you are curious about some of the stuff you read here (and elsewhere) this is a fun paper to peruse. It clarifies a few points about events that we see on forums, and might even help some of us to see ourselves a little more clearly.
Just think of the Forums as sports for tech geeks. How many sports team opponents do you see getting along? Mine is better than yours and you think mine is a load of fermented bull pucky?
This only became an issue when the states could no longer fund and support asylums for the criminally insane, pervs, and assorted other deviants, they had to close down these asylums and dump this auguste crowd into our cities, towns, burgh's, villages, and hamlets. Since most of these miscreants were/are lovers of all things Apple, they have gravitated to this forum to stir up some mayhem.
This only became an issue when the states could no longer fund and support asylums for the criminally insane, pervs, and assorted other deviants, they had to close down these asylums and dump this auguste crowd into our cities, towns, burgh's, villages, and hamlets. Since most of these miscreants were/are lovers of all things Apple, they have gravitated to this forum to stir up some mayhem.
Oh I thought it started when those in prison got Internet and have more things other than freedom that people who follow the law and work.
Oh it's been around for ages, MUCH longer than there was a public internet. Back when BBS's were popular, it was rather rampant then. Then along came The Source and Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL and other public forums with hundreds of sub forums.
Then as the internet became more and more public, thousands of forums, IRC and other forms of nearly instant feedback type forums, it got even crazier. I saw a lot of this on many of the computer hobbyist BBS sites, internet and online service forums.
It really came to a head once people figured out, that even using your real name, you could say anything and no one could keep you from saying it. And even then there were trolls using and often paying for extra accounts, to pretend to be someone else, to add "spice" to a conversation. So in my opinion, anonymity does not really bar people from acting as they do online... sure at the start of their online life they might what others think of their opinions, but over time, most that "act out" really don't care what others think of their actions and most do not even try to hide who they are from others.
I for one avoided the nuttyness but read quite a bit of it most of the time I was online starting from AOL and on from there. It was quite the insane timeline that Is for damn sure.
Speaking of nuttyness, my nuts went numb today after having TOO MUCH COFFEE. So that is quite nutty considering the cup smells like week old coffee regardless of what I used to wash it out with!
The mods were probably cleaning up the mess, I saw too much today in the playbook forum!