NationStates Jolt Archive

Many people while online display personalities totally different from the preson they are in RL (whatever that is), they will often say things that they would never say in RL, they will "do" things they would never even think of doing in polite company in RL. This syndrome as now come under the attention of psychiatric proffesionals from all over the world, even some philosophers are wondering what happens to personality when it is left without the social checks and balances of the real world. And now a great majority of people with internet connections are spending a substantial amount of their life---online. There is help, people. First we have to admit we have a problem and then we can go on from there. Below is a link to a study on the various Internet Dissociative Personality disorders.

http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/disinhibit.html

to intelligent for 9:48 pm

It's 12:52 am here, but I guess my personality is pretty much the same as in real life. I don't have a problem. Unless you count denial.

It's 12:52 am here, but I guess my personality is pretty much the same as in real life. I don't have a problem. Unless you count denial.

Its nearly 1:00 am and you are still up nattering away on the computer and you say that you don't have a problem?

I ain't in school, so being up all night on the computer is no big deal right now.

1AM isn't so bad to be up until, when I don't have classes to keep me grounded in normal time, my clock gets all f'ed up. Last night I went to sleep at 7AM, cause thats when i got tired.

Sometimes I'm more honest in the internet, but thats because I'm to tired to feed people a line they'll believe/like and more likely to just say what I think.

I act the same way I do in real life as I do online, so I've not been having any problems.

Man, I've been watching this for the longest time. I'm glad people are starting to realize it's real.

"An armed society is a polite society" is such a wonderfully true aphorism and it's applications are plentiful. The traditional use of it as an argument in favor of the ownership of guns is reflective of many similar aspects of the social environment. The statement can be reduced to: "People will be polite if they are given a good enough reason to do so." In other words, if everyone had a gun everyone would be polite for fear of being shot. Because not everyone has guns, and even those who do are not likely to use them just because someone is impolite means that people are often rude even in public. However, people are not always rude in public because there are other possible consequences for their actions. For instance, a person is not likely to be rude to their boss unless they are willing to accept the consequence of losing their job. On the other hand, if a person and their boss met anonymously on the internet they would have no problem being rude because they know that there is no chance for recompence, even if they know that they are talking with their boss.

The same basic rule applies to internet forums, if consequences are high enough people will follow a set of rules (this can be universalized, if the percieved cost of doing something is greater than the percieved reward a person will not do it, while if the perceived cost is lower than the percieved reward they will do it). Certain broken rules bring only a warning, which for some people is enough (and for some just having the rules is enough to prevent those behaviors). Others result in temporary or even permanent bans, which for more people will prevent the undesirable behaviors, but for some people even a permanent ban is not a strong enough disincentive to prevent the undesired behavior, and in some cases it even provokes that behavior. People are much more likely to break rules like "no posting pornography" just because it's against the rules than they would be willing to break a law that might get them put in prison in real life just because it's against the law.

Fundamentally there are 3 classes of people with relation to rules obediance. There are those who follow the rules because they agree with the spirit of the rules and wish to further the efforts of the creators of the rules. There are those who follow the rules to avoid the consequences of breaking them. And there are those who break the rules because they want to be punished on a limited scale and find forums a safe and easy way for them to bring punishment upon themselves while being able to step back and be free from those punishments at will. In other words, the spammers and porn posters who show up around here periodically are essentially indulgent masochists who are seeking the pain of osricization without being strong, or stupid, enough to bring that wrath upon themselves in their real communities.

In conclussion, it is impossible to create a set of rules and punishments for an internet forum that will prevent all people from behaving in undesired ways because some people would behave that way if there were no consequences and some behave that way only because there are consequences. It's a lose/lose situation for a person seeking to enforce a strict set of behavioral modifications onto an anonymous and ever-changing group of internet users.

I act the same way I do in real life as I do online, so I've not been having any problems.

Me too, it's a lot easier, unless you're rping, then it's fun to create a new and radically different persona.