Saturday, November 29, 2008

Ningen Interaction?! *sigh*

Hello all once again, I hope you all had a great thanksgiving. While at the dinner table, my family and I were talking about random events and how some people acted according to it. Which prompted the thought to me, "What would force the whole Internet civil, and why does everyone act as they do?" Obviously, the real world and the online world both react differently and interact differently form the same person, but why exactly?
I've pondered this myself for years now, and more than three of my older posts can be linked to this for support. Whenever someone engages another in the real world, it's a nice conversation with introductions and polite and proper English (most of the time...),but when a human interacts with another human in the virtual world, the reaction more than 90% of the time is different. In the virtual world, the people will normally attack the most crucial area of the virtual world they are in and say something vulgar and then a flame war will start.
Most people want to interact with those who use the former method on the Internet , rather than the latter. The reason I think most people act as they do is that it's not the person who is using the words, it's their avatar. After the avatar's reputation is destroyed, the person may just discard it and create a new one and have a clean slate; while in the real world, a person must be cautious of their word choice since they cannot shed the labels that an avatar can. Therefore, the person must choose how people will see them and then must act accordingly.
Though most are filthily mouthed people, some can actually hold a decent conversation, which I found on Second Life. If you've read some older material from me, you'll know I look at the code and construction rather the completion. I was wondering the area one day and came across a place which didn't shelter the same attention grabbers that most places do. This land had many areas that used many effects and scripts which gathered my attention (Yeah I fell for a buried key jiggle...). As I was marveling over everything, a co-owner came to me and noted I liked what I saw, and we conversed for nearly 20 minutes about his sim and all the great figures that I drooled over. The matter of speech was astonishing, the man was easily pegged as a gentleman, his grammar and spelling perfect.
After a while I had to ask why he was so perfect in his spelling, and his responds startled me! He acted that way because that's not only how his avatar was built but that if he did like all other people, his avatar's reputation would be tainted. My only response I could muster was that if it was bad he just create anew and transfer most of his stuff, but without a beat he replied that was the cowards' way and that there should only be one true avatar. I was so awe stricken I couldn't ask him a single other question.
But in a whole, most people aren't to active to talk in an online game. Of course if it's a role playing, then the conversation will hit off but only to the game/quest/toilet monster each are interested in. If it's just for making conversation and having a royal good time, it will most likely " only be found within chat rooms and programs designed for that", as will most people tell you to go when you ask them, "Dum---!"...

No comments: