The Perpetual High School

I was first introduced to a BBS in High School. My friend gave me an old 2400 bps modem, and in no time, I was hooked. I met some of my best friends through those boards, some of whom I still hang out with to this day.

It was also a wonderful learning experience. One of the lessons that I learned came up this week. It's a lesson in psychology. It's a lesson that most likely has affected anyone who has spent any time on a BBS, news group, online forum, or any other iteration of the medium. It could possibly considered a truth:

People act completely differently when they are interacting with each other under the guise of anonymity.

People who would never act belligerent and domineering in real life are suddenly at each other's throats over the most trivial of matters. Even in situations where people know each other and hang out in the physical world, where there really isn't anonymity between two people, their interactions are still different.

16 years later, that lesson hit home again. As Gwraig found out: even people with a deep, strong, common bond are still subject to this phenomenon. She offered to help run a forum that had helped us both through some really tough times. As it turned out, the moment she became a forum overseer, she started getting harassed. Ridiculously harassed, by people who she would normally commiserate with.

My Comp Sci teacher, and friend, talked about how human communication goes far beyond words; about how broken communication can become when you can only use words. We apparently employ additional tools, like intonation and body language, to convey the meaning behind our words. That might explain some of the behavior that goes on within this medium, but it doesn't explain it all. I think it might also be the lack of societal restrictions. If the "society", so to speak, is confined to that particular forum or BBS, the rules of the society are as well established as that medium is. Considering most of these forums have a lifespan measured in years, their own societal rules aren't that evolved. For whatever reason, the rules of the society that those people physically live in don't apply (perhaps as a consequence of the anonymity).

Now, it so happens that on Gwraig's forum there are rules, established by the forum's owner. From what I understand, these rules are consistently ignored, until it becomes convenient. These rules have essentially become a tool, a weapon, that participants in this society occasionally pull out. Perhaps they pull them out when they've come to the end of their ability to reason.

The kicker in this situation is that the people doing the complaining about Gwraig's forum are the reason why this forum was created in the first place. It was intended to be a place of refuge for people who had gone through so much that they felt they could no longer interact civilly with the people in the other forums. It was a members-only club, hidden in the back of the library, where they wouldn't have to hear the ridiculous cruft that spews out of the average newb's mouth.

One of the newbs found the club. That newb most likely realized that he was, in fact, acting ridiculous. In the real world, he would probably walk away, muttering to himself, and later on, complain to his friends over a beer. In this imaginary world, however, he pulled out his weapon, his gun, the rules, and started firing. An all-out brawl ensued. Keeping with the metaphor, the civilian militia was called in, and they're still sorting out the chaos, Katrina-style.

Ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous when you realize that the forum was, for all intents and purposes, a support group.