Wrong!
It IS real life.
You post on here and upset someone with your words then you have upset them for real! They aint pretending!
You insult someone on here you insult them for real.
You offer an opinion on here people will correctly assume that is your actual, real life opinion.
You act a arse on here I will consider you to be an arse because all evidence will point to you actually being an arse!
Just because you communicate via a forum does not mean you can distance yourself from what you say or ignore the fact that what you say has a real effect on the person at the reading end.
For me, if you are an arse on this forum then you will have your work cut out to convince me you are anything but an arse in the real world. I despise people with ‘online personas’. Your actual persona not good enough? I have one persona. You insult it online and it’s also insulted in meat space, so if we ever meet I will remain insulted until you apologise whether you have one or a whole collection of ‘personas’ online.
You are presupposing that I, or indeed anyone on here, is exactly like their online persona.
Now most people are probbly quite like their persona on here. And then there are those who create a myth, and illusion, of who they really are, to protect themseves, possibly, or simply to appear in a certain way. Take CFH, for example; is he really the upper-class toff that he would have us believe? Or is there actually a ‘real’ CFH, with a ‘real’ name, life, personality, etc?
I can’t tell that, simply from just reading what a person posts. I can’t tell if they are actually being genuine, or if they are just winding someone up.
See, STW can be seen as a kind of ‘stage’, where individuals can act out who they want to be, as opposed to who they actually are. Many probbly woon’t do this to any great degree, whilst others might create a persona specifically designed to wind people up, or as a way of attacking someone else’s character, as ‘Avocado’ seems to be.
Take WCA; he sits there bored, sometimes, and thinks up hypothetical situations/questions, then forms an elaborate ‘trolling’ post around that. And usually gets many ‘biters’. I get taken in by it quite often!
But is that the ‘real’ WCA? No. I know him personally, and can categorically say that he is actually far worse a lovely bloke, who wouldn’t dream of being deliberately nasty to anyone.
And then you’ve got yer Hora, SFB and Smee, who seem to revel in the fuss they create.
But actual testimonies about these ‘characters’ reveals they are actually pretty decent people. And I think there are only a very few people who deliberately set out to upset people. There have been one or two nasty characters, that have deserved being slagged off on here; fortunately, they usually bugger off or get themselves banned. I’m talking about people who make bigoted, prejudicial and insensitive comments on a regular basis. Not someone who may play Devil’s Advocate, or be deliberately obtuse.
So, you might think someone’s an ‘arse’ based on what they post, but my point is, that you are only seeing what they want you to see, whereas in ‘real’ life, you will see them much more, as they truly are.
Anyone who sees me as a gobby, obnoxious, contrary and cantankerous little bastard is…
…probbly right, actually.
But I might buy you a pint, in real life. And you never know, you might actually end up thinking ‘You know what? He’s not such a bad little bastard after all’.
