Does it make a difference

JKSM · Post by **JKSM** » Tue May 18, 2004 10:32 am

Just asking something out of curiousity. When interacting with others in the internet like posting in a forum or chatting in IRC, does it make a difference to you / matter to you / make you react differently if you know the following:
- the gender of the person (male / female)
- the country the person is from
- the ethnic group the person is from
etc

or do you like suspense in not knowing

or are indifferent to whether you know or not?

Ro@m · Post by **Ro@m** » Tue May 18, 2004 2:17 pm

does it make any sense if you know that?

x86_Game-Junkie · Post by **x86_Game-Junkie** » Tue May 18, 2004 5:40 pm

not really, it only matters if i'm personally offended and others in forum/chatroom become offended by what is said. Normally when an argument gets out of hand, the owners and creators of a particular forum have the right to close/lock the thread or incoming posts to that certain thread.

If you respect people, and treat people how you would treat yourself I don't think you will have any or many problems.

JKSM · Post by **JKSM** » Tue May 18, 2004 6:32 pm

Ro@m wrote:does it make any sense if you know that?

It's not really a matter of making sense or not. Just a matter of curiosity. It definiately won't affect me in any way.

x86_Game-Junkie wrote:If you respect people, and treat people how you would treat yourself I don't think you will have any or many problems.

I wasn't thinking on this line. If you're thinking on this line, not to worry, I always read all the rules before joining something even if it's 101 pages long.

Back to subject. What I observed from many forums is that the same kind of discussion threads appear and when people give there views in it, there seems to always be a certain kind of perception / biasness. For example, one topic is there are too many people of a certain ethnic group. Then I've seen certain topics where when people reply, they tend to generalise that people in USA or Australia behave in a certain way. Another quite common topic is whether girls play games / recommanding girls to a girl and at least 50% of the posts have the perception that girls like only certain kind of genre games.

I don't fall in the above mentioned topic nor have I debated in those thread, only read them. Thus I can stand from a 3rd party point of view to get an objective opinion.

As I said before, just wanted to know for interest:
How objective can we all be after knowing certain information?

Free free to debate on this. After all discussion always make a forum interesting.

x86_Game-Junkie · Post by **x86_Game-Junkie** » Tue May 18, 2004 7:10 pm

that is so true discussion does make an internet forum interesting, but I believe most people in here no matter what country they are from have a right to freedom of speech...plus we don't all tend to stick to our own countries, some of us try and mingle with others from far, far away lands!!

Post by **Dogbreath** » Tue May 18, 2004 8:15 pm

I only know the sex of 90% and race of 10% of the people here so that leaves nationality as the primary factor. Other than making fun of Canadians I really don't find it to be much of an issue, as most people are basically the same no matter where they live. While some people may make stereotypes, like Wally*Won_Kenobie's ridiculous claim that all Australians have poor grammar, such insinuations can be easily disproved in practice. (For instance, all the intelligent Australians here who can write fluent English perfectly)

On the other hand, there are some people who sign on an internet forum and, because they can't directly see or here the person they're addressing, act like total jackasses and presume that because he interacts with us through his computer, we are somehow part of his computer rather than real people and he can say or do whatever he wants without consequence. Such people tend to bother me more than those who are overly preoccupied with superficial human barriers.

Kazer0 · Post by **Kazer0** » Tue May 18, 2004 8:36 pm

Ya, the racism against Canadians is at an all time high, while us Canadians sit back and don't need to fight back, because the Middle East loves us. (For the most part)

And don't forget dogbreath that they talk with absolutely no punctuation so therefore they speek monotone run on sentances to each other all day mate

Post by **Dogbreath** » Tue May 18, 2004 8:41 pm

My sister was at an improv comedy in Toronto yesterday... when they found out she was from Indianapolis they spent 15 minutes making fun of my city. "Hey man, whaddya you say we drive on down to Indianapolis so we can eat cheeseburgers 24/7, eh?"

Thunderdog · Post by **Thunderdog** » Wed May 19, 2004 8:56 am

x86_Game-Junkie · Post by **x86_Game-Junkie** » Wed May 19, 2004 5:58 pm

Dogbreath wrote: On the other hand, there are some people who sign on an internet forum and, because they can't directly see or here the person they're addressing, act like total jackasses and presume that because he interacts with us through his computer, we are somehow part of his computer rather than real people and he can say or do whatever he wants without consequence. Such people tend to bother me more than those who are overly preoccupied with superficial human barriers.

They are normally the ones who get banned from forums!!

JKSM · Post by **JKSM** » Wed May 19, 2004 6:42 pm

x86_Game-Junkie wrote:that is so true discussion does make an internet forum interesting, but I believe most people in here no matter what country they are from have a right to freedom of speech...plus we don't all tend to stick to our own countries, some of us try and mingle with others from far, far away lands!!

That's true and that's also the fun part of it as we can get a vary of views from people from from backgrounds, cultures etc and view from different perspectives. Personally, the forum is the olnly place where I could get to meet so many people from different countries and sometimes it's quite interesting discussing things unique to one's country like festivals, special laws etc. In real life, I have only talked to Americans, Australian, New Zealanders, someone from Spain and Turkey - erm not that many

. Thus some generalisations about certain country I know is not totally true.

Talking to these people in real life can be fun too as we try to figure out one another's accent.

Dogbreath wrote:I only know the sex of 90% and race of 10% of the people here so that leaves nationality as the primary factor. Other than making fun of Canadians I really don't find it to be much of an issue, as most people are basically the same no matter where they live. While some people may make stereotypes, like Wally*Won_Kenobie's ridiculous claim that all Australians have poor grammar, such insinuations can be easily disproved in practice. (For instance, all the intelligent Australians here who can write fluent English perfectly)

Stereotyping still exists in our world today. I wonder if it's due to people haven't experience other events or seen for themselves other kinds of events in order for them to see the wider picture. All of us at any point of time will have some bias perception, it seems it's only the degree of how swayed it it.

The only thing is how willing is only individual willing to find out / accept there's a broader side to a picture.

A simple example, as a kid, I found a stick of chocolate ice-cream that cost like 30 - 50 cents very nice, probably one of the best. As a younger adult, after tasting many different brands of ice-cream, I find that some other brands like "Hagen Des" (not sure on spelling), a more expensive brand has a richer creamer taste and is one of the best.

On the other hand, there are some people who sign on an internet forum and, because they can't directly see or here the person they're addressing, act like total jackasses and presume that because he interacts with us through his computer, we are somehow part of his computer rather than real people and he can say or do whatever he wants without consequence. Such people tend to bother me more than those who are overly preoccupied with superficial human barriers.

True, on every forum, you'll get a few of these kinds of people. However, they're easily spotted by everyone.

x86_Game-Junkie · Post by **x86_Game-Junkie** » Wed May 19, 2004 11:12 pm

Australians and New Zealanders are pretty much the same, except the New Zealanders have a more european accent than Australians...but the NZers have a good Union side which is better than the Ozzies, but the Ozzies have better Rugby League side then NZers!!

Dopefish · Post by **Dopefish** » Thu May 20, 2004 8:21 pm

It makes no difference to me.

I'm not a racist and I don't fantasize about women who live hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Bobo · Post by **Bobo** » Thu May 20, 2004 8:27 pm

I really don't care. Well, as long as you speak my lingo

x86_Game-Junkie · Post by **x86_Game-Junkie** » Thu May 20, 2004 8:49 pm

Bobo & DF, most people don't care who they talk to as long as they feel welcomed!!
So we should all try and make an effort to make people feel welcomed...no matter of race, sex or intelligence!!

Thunderdog · Post by **Thunderdog** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:03 pm

Blow me.

Post by **Wally** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:53 pm

TD: dont be soo racist...
there are plenty of nice aboriginals around, you should know it..

Dont start by bringing the KKK in here..

I DOnt care about their color they are people like we are

Kazer0 · Post by **Kazer0** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:55 pm

TD is color noob. He can't be racist.

x86_Game-Junkie · Post by **x86_Game-Junkie** » Thu May 20, 2004 10:35 pm

Still he shouldn't use that type of language, no matter what race, sex or age he is...
:Angry:

Post by **Wally** » Thu May 20, 2004 11:24 pm

agreed
its not fair to those peeps but thanks to the mods who blocked it up