Wednesday, August 15, 2007

illumination: jonathan gabriel's famous theorem

3 comments:

Brian Lawley said...

I think you either are or aren't, regardless of audience or anonymity.

bob said...

Now this is a fascinating question to me.

Does bad behavior under certain specific, limited conditions that is not displayed (or even contemplated) under normal conditions mean that you are a dickwad?

I used to come across no end of bad behavior on a certain Online Customer Community I had to peruse on a daily basis at work.

Curiously the same people who would write the most eyeball searing rants from behind a cryptic user name would be as nice as nannies in person. I know, as I could match them up by virtue of what they were talking about. It was an odd experience.

Remove all the visual, aural and other cues, and the worst aspects of our natures take over. I think this alone drives bloggers to abandon their work - it takes a certain sort of person to communicate into the void without feedback for months or years on end.

Christopher Painter said...

I hope I was never too mean in that Online Customer Community.

Oh, I see. Ummm, I'm sorry.

It's funny, I've been `online` since the beeps of 300 baud and it never has failed to amaze me how mean people can become online (myself included ) under the guise of a handle. I try to always use my real name when posting to help keep this in check. Unfortunatly, it sometimes still gets the better of me.