Originally Posted by
goldfinch
Until this post I've agreed with a fair amount of what you have said in this thread as I really don't have much of a problem with pointed, challenging discussions. I may be biased though because you have given me helpful advice over the last few months.
But, it is about relationships. Forums are human interaction. You may never meet a person from the forum but you still can have a relationship with them. You
may get to know them and have a feel for what they are like. I have met people from bike forums and I have met people from other forums. For the most part it has been what you see is what you get.
This is an interesting point.
Forums are, of course, human interaction. But they are an extremely limited form of human interaction. All you have to go on is the blocks of text that those humans enter into the discussion. If you choose to form an opinion about the likely nature of the person who is entering that text, you have to understand that you are proceeding on the basis of very little data.
To put it another way, the "me" that you have in your mind exists only in your mind. That person is your construct, based on your reaction to my posts, not on your knowledge of me as a person. Your reaction to my posts has tended to be positive, therefore you tend to be prejudiced in favour of the idea that I am OK. Others have reacted negatively, and are therefore inclined to believe that I am not OK. What I am actually like is moot, however. I could be Albert Schweitzer, I could be Hannibal Lecter - you are all proceeding on similar evidence but drawing utterly divergent conclusions. It is the classic example of how we see the world not as it is, but as we are.
To be fair, this isn't only true on-line. Being on-line accentuates the phenomenon, because we have so little to go on and it is so easy to dissemble. But if one thinks about one's reactions to people in real life, it takes very little thought to determine that those reactions owe more to our prejudices than to any objective assessment of their merits. We all have friends who are annoying in one way or another. When they behave badly we shake our heads and excuse them, affectionately saying "don't mind Harry, he has always been a bit of a jerk but he has a heart of gold". But when a stranger behaves in the same jerk-like way, we recoil and say we can't imagine liking such a person.
The scope for subjectivity and misinterpretation is huge in real life, and simply vast in a place like this. I therefore don't bother speculating on what the people behind the posts might be like, I merely respond to what they post. When those posts seem to me to be interesting, I react accordingly. When they seem to be stupid, I react accordingly. It is often the case that the same poster can be interesting and stupid, by turns. In that way, at least, this place resembles real life. It is the human condition.