mantra wrote on Sep 17
th, 2014 at 8:30pm:
gone wrote on Sep 17
th, 2014 at 5:13pm:
If you open your mouth and have an opinion, you cannot expect anyone else standing up for you. We have to stand up for ourselves. The world is full of lowlife bullies. And the world is full of backstabbers who will take advantage of any bit of weakness you show. That's just life. Some of the best advice I ever received from an old wise man: "Folly must be laughed off". Bullies are fools. Laugh them off.
In theory that sounds good, but in reality it doesn't work so well. Bullies are fools, but they are nasty fools and make a forum generally unpleasant when it doesn't have to be that way.
Freedumb wrote on Sep 17
th, 2014 at 7:22pm:
If you can't handle being abused, ridiculed and all of that jazz you shouldn't be on a forum in the first place.
Why can't we expect civility instead of abuse and ridicule? Why does it have to be a condition of an online forum that we accept personal abuse? Most forum members would probably be quite polite in reality, but because they're anonymous they believe they can say what they please without boundaries.
What's the point of rules if people can't at least try to adhere to them? They are guidelines for behaviour and when they're ignored, a forum, home or workplace will usually become dysfunctional.
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing more in the world that I'd want; civility.
It isn't a condition, it's more of a self-preservation because even though we are taught to have morals and obey basic rules that would enforce civility, many people don't actually care about morals e.g respect for others and being civil, nor do they care for rules.
This isn't the real world, but a virtual manifestation of the real world. We take everything that we are as people and type it into a box, broadcasting it to others on this forum. Yes, anonymity certainly helps those "keyboard warriors" who act all tough and smug online when in reality they wouldn't do it half as much because they lack the balls.
Now in the real world, laws are always broken, on a daily basis whether that is killing somebody, drink-driving, stealing, etc. They have no regard for the law nor do they have morals, or rather they have their own which doesn't match up to the international, politically accepted moral that we are taught in schools and by our elders when we are children.
So what can you do? The next step is self-preservation, which is a training of the mind to care not what some fool on a different computer in a different state types to you. Have some self-respect, do not let the fool win -- or better yet, don't play the silly tit for tat game that they've initiated -- prove that you are better, or perhaps much wiser, by taking the abuse as simple meaningless nothingness that has nothing to do with you.
Now if someone is going to great lengths, e.g stalking/hacking you then it becomes a serious matter. But a trading of petty insults is reminiscent of the first year you attend primary school -- it matters at the time, but how often do you look back on that and think, how ridiculous? Why did I waste my energy even reacting to that?
What's the point of rules? I ask myself that on a daily basis. I see it in the workplace -- people continuously break rules but nothing is ever said or done about it because these rule breakers use their "rights" and become the victim rather than the prey. The scumbag element of this country are using the good-willed people's recognition of "rights" to their own sick advantage, and in the end it will ruin it for everybody, even the truly innocent. But this is going off-track here.
In a perfect world, civility is ideal. But it's very naïve and delusional to think that it can be achieved, unless of course you grab a group of like-minded people and disappear into isolation, much like the Tibetans, who, interestingly, suffered a horrid fate by the Chinese government because of their actions.
So the best thing to do is accept this -- you can still be peaceful, in your mind, and work towards civility -- don't give up on it -- but in situations like this forum, self-preservation is your best bet. It actually makes me a little sad, and peeves me that somebody can feel that dejected and ridiculed that they feel like they have to stop using a community like this.
mantra: if you are in contact with this person, please forward this post to said person.
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