Does anyone find it ironic (or even a little disturbing) that we all worship these shows where people who care about each other can be completely ruthless towards each other, making the most snide and disparaging comments at will, yet if someone on the board were to even sneeze cross-eyed at someone else, they have to apologize six ways from Sunday?

... Schmoker, is that a chip I see on your shoulder?

IJS. I find the death, for example, of a loved one occasionally quite interesting and useful as a fictional device for tension. That doesn't mean I'm going to go off my sister because my life's too boring.

That doesn't mean I'm going to go off my sister because my life's too boring.

Well you are obviously just no fun then.

And you don't think that equating killing your sister with having your feelings easily bruised might be a tad apples and oranges?

Not a chip. Not a fight. I'm just curious what people think. I'll act appropriately to stay on the site, but I do think that in our society their is a tendency now to let the minority rule, which kind of scares me. One person sues McDonalds for being a fat ass, so now McDonald's fries suck. That type of thing.

One person out of 600 gets offended, so speech is limited to accomodate the one over the many. That type of thing.

It's slippery slope, Schmoker. People here are many of them refugees from sites where discussion devolved into name-calling and pettiness, because the line between "don't be so sensitive" and ""I'll say what I please and don't care if I make many people uncomfortable" is a thin one, especially online. I think the cocktail party rule applies here. If I am chatting to a friend at a party and I inadvertantly offend them, I apologize to that person. I don't have to agree with them, but I do value their happiness and I want to keep the tone of the party easy and fun. We try to be as polite here as people are in real life--and sometimes, due to the flatness of posting we tend to be extra careful.

But I like being part of a community where respect for everyone's feelings and opinions one on one and not just in the aggregate is a cornerstone.

Heh. Scrappy said "cum" t /Butthead

edit: damn! She fixed it! I shoulda snagged it while I had the chance.

And, like I was saying before, the better you know someone, the easier it is to crack on them and have them not get offended. There's a lot that goes on in Natter that could seem terribly offensive, but everyone participating knows it's a joke. If you're not sure that everyone will get the joke, don't make it.

If you're not sure that everyone will get the joke, don't make it.

t I'm not sure it's possible to make a joke more sophisticated than a knock-knock joke and have 100% of the people get it.

I don't mean everyone in the world, I mean everyone in the conversation. There are things you'd say to some people and not others, right? In general, I mean.

And you don't think that equating killing your sister with having your feelings easily bruised might be a tad apples and oranges?

Well, no, that's an extreme example; but the same thing. I may like unpleasantness in fiction, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want unpleasantness in real life. In real life, I'd like to have everything go very nicely with minimal effort and maximal payoff and while I'm at it I'd like my toes to never be cold again. These things are not likely to happen for me. But if I can help it, I want my social interactions to make me happy (whether it's listening to and talking with people being clever, or flirty, or funny), rather than cross and cranky, because after all it's only social. I'm not being paid for it. And I want the people around me to be happy, too, because if I made them cross and cranky they'd leave and I'd have no one to be social with!

Those are my feelings on the subject.

Which is not, of course, to say that everything must enforcedly be all sweetness and light and no disagreement; that would be very boring. Instead, I mean, have some kind of consciousness of the people around you and how they feel; and if you accidentally offend someone I still think it's possible to apologize for their upset while you still feel you'd done nothing wrong, and it's possible to also politely continue talking with them about your different points of view on the world.

Ah fuck I'm not making sense anymore. I'm going to shut up.

Schmoker, I get the feeling that you have been put on the defensive, and that this fact is coloring your interactions. It takes everyone a while to get integrated into the community, but if you are truly interested in becoming a part of the community, it *will* happen.