One thing I find strange is that many people who have very strong opinions about some things on the internet don't defend those opinions in real life. It makes sense, but it seems to me if you believe in something in this community, you should defend your opinions in another one.
For example, I am a major gay rights supporter, and always have been, but I sometimes catch myself thinking "This is gay", and once I almost called something gay to try to insult it. It disgusts me I would think or say things like that, but I still do sometimes.
Whoa there's a born gay or not thread? Is it really necessary if it's kinda been proven what leads to homosexuality? Chemical imbalance and curiosity? Well whatever I'll just leave it to the thread for it. I usually defend my opinion in real life the way I do on the internet, and actually, I've been able to defend it more deeply and strongly now that I've been on more forums to talk about things and get more information relating to my opinions. I agree that some people don't defend their opinions the same as on the internet, but I do.
On the internet, people can hide who they truly are. In real life, they have to live up to the expectations of their families and friends, and they can't say stuff that they believe will ruin their public opinion. Personally, I try not to use words like sh*t or cr*p in public or online. Sometimes I will catch myself thinking them, but I try never to say them unless I'm quoting something.
On the internet we usually drop a lot of mental barriers.
The difference between a written message and a spoken one, is that when it comes to speaking, you have to deal with the other person's expression, with his/her answers, with your gestures, with your voice tone, you could be interrupted, you have to be witful enough to answer quickly, etc.
Here, like I am doing now, you can think about the message, write it, erase what came out wrong, and finally come out with the real *juice* of your thoughts.
I admit that I developed most of my philosophical theories on the internet, and even if now it's not a problem anymore, at first it was really hard to discuss about them in real life.
I am very quiet in real life and rarely enter into discussions out loud (I might mentally make points) so the forums are a bit of a release to say what I like. Also the intelect is very different. I credit everyone on here with a reasonably high inteligence (maybe mistakenly) but in real lilfe especially at school I tend to be surrounded by (how to put this nicely) idiots. An example from my General Studies class from last Thursday:
Discussion: Dealing with youth tensions and violence.
What we were actually talking about: Granola
First question was: What is Granola? (for Gods sake why even bother)
Teacher: I used to buy cereal from Tesco's and one morning I read the back. It said "50g contains 30% of your saturated fat intake for the day". So I decided to measure my portion. I was eating 200g every day!
Wow that's a pretty big tangent, and wow that student must not be good at math...Sometimes my Latin or History teacher go off on tangents, but nothing as stupid as talking about Granola. I agree that it is easier to "speak" on the internet since people can't really do anything about it and you can fix it before you say something, but I still join in debates in real life, or at least resonable ones that relate somewhat to what we were supposed to be talking about. I also agree that debating on the internet has helped me a little bit with public speaking, so I have to thank everyone I've debated with for refining my debating skills.
Dude you're such a spammer. I came into this section of the forums and your name was the last post for everything. Anyway, I can believe what I want, how much I want. You can't tell me how much I'm supposed to believe my opinion. With this kind of thing, can I really fully believe it? Have I seen solid evidence proving the cause of the beginning of the universe? No. How, then, am I supposed to fully believe anything relating to it?
While we are on the subject of gays, i am homophobic and i do not think gays should have any form of marriage rights.
They can, however, visit each other in Hospitals (lol) and do...whatever it is they do seeing they cannot really have actual sex (does that not startle you as odd). I just do not think that they should wed because that is holy and has much more meaning to it, as well as going directly against the law of God.
And of you are Atheist, well then, good for you have fun being *lawled* at by God when you get to heaven and find out you were wrong :]
Uh, guys (including you, Ricador!), I did say to keep it on topic. I mean tangents are okay but completely unrelated posts are not. Especially if those posts are better suited to pre-existing threads.
Consider that regardless of how you behave in real life, unless you personally know another user there's no way to know whether or not they actually hold the same principles online as offline. So posting about whatever opinion you hold is moot.
And before any of you ask me why I'm blabbing on because this is teh internetz, I'm just doing my job >_>
Oh I think I mixed some threads I posted in up with my last post in this thread. By the way Strop, this thread was asking our opinions on things, and the person who started this thread specifically said something about gay rights, so I think they're actually on track, just really prejudiced against homosexuals.
Dude you're such a spammer. I came into this section of the forums and your name was the last post for everything
im not a spammer. if you look at must off the stuff i write its not just 5 word sentences most of the stuff is full on paragraphs there are very thought out. See this is what makes people not want to express there opinion. People determine by there own standards that you express yourself too much or that you have two many opinions. I think you should have an opinion on everything. And that you should express your opinion openly and not be "scared." Now everyone look at dragonball05. Now he is what we call a cynic Hater. Thankyou dragonball05 for giving me an Example of someone who dosent like others expressing there opinion.
Alright bobitho. I'm sorry, it's just the few threads I did look at that you posted in, were pretty short comments. Granted they weren't 5 words, they were short. I'm not gonna go through all of them and see if they are all thought out, and I'm just gonna take your word for it. And I could care less if people expressed their opinion or not. They can say what they want. I just didn't think you were completely saying what you were thinking is all. Again, I am sorry for saying you are a spammer. I hope we can get past this and start talking about the thread in general instead of directing it at me for saying something, which was my opinion of you based on how many threads you had posted in in a row.
