Reese

I figure this will get a few people clicking this thread expecting to read something about how the internet knows everything about you. Well it does but that's not what this thread is really about. I remember first accessing the internet. If you wanted to know something you'd hit up a chatroom via one of the crappy browser chatrooms or IRC. Doing this you'd meet a ton of people. You'd break the ice by them helping you with your problem, or you helping them with theirs, You'd solve your problem and when you came back, you could discuss your solution. Heck, That's all it took to meet a friend. Today, If you ask a question on a forum your first reply will be "google it" and the second reply will be a link to the first result of a google search by someone that did google it. You've got no connection to either of these people. They're the extra step in the chain to getting information. The internet has killed one of my favorite forms of meeting people!

So, now you go to a forum, You try to interject yourself into an ongoing conversation or debate but you're too scared someone is going to pick apart your post bit by bit because you aren't allow to post anything that isn't certified, verified, or circumsized. This means every time you have a thought you have to check wikipedia to make sure you're right. Then you have to hope Wikipedia is right, but you can't admit you used wikipedia as a source because "You can't trust wikipedia!" By the time you check and recheck your facts your opinion on the topic has changed, but you're damn sure not going to admit that to anyone so you just close the thread.

This is what it's like for me every day. I come here almost every day. I read almost every new thread and I try to reply. I set here, typing out crap, re-reading what I typed, Fact checking, and by the time it's all said and done, I've wasted 2 hours RESEARCHING shit I really didn't care about in the first place. After all of this, I've pretty much countered every one of my own arguments, I've ran the entire discussion through my head and really there's no reason to post because I'm so bored of the topic, I really don't want to talk about it anymore and posting anything in the thread would require me to come back and actually defend the crap that just spewed from my fingertips.


Bleh.. I dunno.. Maybe I'm jaded...

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ShaniFaye

"google is your friend" is my number one most hated saying

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The_Jazz

The fact that this site exists pretty much proves your thoughts cybermike.

We don't get too many "google is your friend" comments here unless it's something blindingly obvious. Which is good. Then again, we do get lots of "the search feature is your friend" comments, especially in the quarterly thread about "my girlfriend might be pregnant because we were fucking/masturbating/fingering/webcamming" that we all know and love. We just had one of those, actually, so we're probably good for another couple/three months.

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Derwood

i preferred discussing politics with people in real time, as opposed to, say, this site, where people cut and paste 5000 words worth of articles to support their case. i don't have time to read a novel every time I want to counter argue

Cynthetiq

could you imagine?

you'd have people just flipping pages in books in front of you.... maybe even just holding up books to flash their titles.

I used to use the bart graphic from that site, then I realized it's a trollish picture to post when someone is asking a question. So now if I feel that need to post it instead of just answering it, I hit the back button.

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Hain

I find that the place where this really comes into play would be the T. Politics forum- one that I rarely venture into. T. Politics, despite great moderation, has the same feel to me as walking down a dark, dirty, locked-door-ridden alleyway and then hearing a noise behind me.


I don't think the rest of TFP is like this though. I like it here because people generally do explain what they mean and what they know, and if called on it use sources to back themselves up.


@ Derwood: I know what you mean. I wish when there are posts like that, the OP would use TFP's Hide feature on the article, and just put the facts they want in the ="..." part.

But you know... it's still pretty funny.

Derwood

i'm actually surprised that TFP allows the cutting and pasting of full articles. i'm sure there is some sort of fair use thing, but most other boards I frequent don't allow full articles to be pasted due to copyright problems

abaya

Hey, that sounds EXACTLY like my doctoral dissertation research/writing process. No wonder I'm so fucking jaded.

And yeah, I feel the same way that you do, sometimes. But that's why I tend to post/respond to more threads about relationships, sex, etc... because that's more about experience and opinions than heated debates about this or that issue (e.g. Politics). I get more pleasure out of that kind of internet participation than political bullshit, but each to their own.

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Randle2I

Perhaps you're visiting the wrong forums. I've found that every forum has it's own idiosyncrasies, some of them are very open while others are very closed. Some are laid back, friendly places, while others are cut-throat, rude and filled to the brim with sarcasm and dry wit. Being a car guy I mostly visit car forums and generally speaking they're as your first paragraph describes. You have a question, you ask and people help you out in a friendly manner. Sure you're going to get the dick head responses but you had that in IRC as well. In doing this I've met some great people, gone to some great car shows, and have learned more than I ever could imagine on my own. I don't want to say that this place is bad, because it's not, but there is an air of superiority with some of the regulars that I think can drive new people away. Perhaps if the places you're visiting aren't to your liking it's time to branch out and find new "homes". I know I've left a few forums because I've felt I had gotten as much as I could from them.

Or maybe you're just jaded.

Shauk

stay the hell out of politics, and you'll be fine.

Reese

It's not just the politics forum. That is where you get your mudslinging debates but everywhere including these forums you'll see everyone going through the same routine in every thread. It's not so much the mudslinging, I liked debates, but as Derwood said, When someone replies to your post with a novel and 2500 source links to back up his post. You have no connection with that person. He's just become a link in a chain connecting you to information you could have found in 5 minutes on google or wikipedia. You have no idea what this guy is like because he's not using his own words. He's not shared his experience or his knowledge. He's given you nothing. It's boring.

Abaya also makes a good point, I also like visiting these threads where opinion and experience are valued more than pure facts. The threads in Tilted Life, Tilted Sexuality and some of the other boards have real people answering questions, telling their experiences, discussing their solutions to their problems hoping to help you with yours. Those are the places that I remind me of the earlier internet days.

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Baraka_Guru

This is funny. I like it. It's funny because it's true. It pretty much sums up what's wrong with certain thread formats.

This is the challenge of living in the information age. But we've got to remember...most of it is crap. One of my professors told me about the difference between publishing research papers and encyclopedia entires (of which he did both) and he said how pretty much useless encyclopedic knowledge was when it came to real debates and lectures.

You know what I'd like to see more of in certain threads (especially politics) is people quoting from sources other than news articles found on the Internet. You know, maybe use sources published from books (which are also available on the Internet). There are books that have been published for centuries that are still relevant today. Why don't we use them as sources if we like sources so much?

But seriously, why can't we do what would be most appropriate: gloss. Glossing is perfect for Internet forums, but we don't typically do it. The only person I can think of who does this extremely well is roachboy. But not everyone is as intense as he is, so we resort to other methods. I know my own thoughts get lost when I try to glean something from the clutter. I just don't have the energy at the end of the day to do so, but it would be a nice experiment...speaking in glossings to others' verbosity.

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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JumpinJesus

Here's one of my favorites.

Someone asks a question like, "How come there are no purple m&ms?" and the first response goes something like, "How fucking retarded are you? Don't you eat Easter m&ms? Jesus Christ, get out of your parents basement and buy a bag you stupid dumb fuck."

It's like instant hostility. The internet has bred fingertip bravado where people treat each other in ways they wouldn't dream of behaving to each other in real life. Can you imagine walking into Safeway and asking a clerk, "Where's your hot dog relish?" and being answered with, "Jesus Fucking Christ you retard, when's the last time you left your house. Too busy jerking off to porn to notice that the relish is in aisle 4 next to the mayonnaise? Get the fuck out of here, you waste of sperm."

Not only does the internet know too much, but it seems that most of what it knows is angst and anger.

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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Derwood

yup. Internet Tough Guys run rampant these days.

CinnamonGirl

That sounds like a bad sitcom...


I haven't noticed it as much here, but in other forums I'm on, "google it" always, ALWAYS gets used, and it drives me crazy. And I really don't get the hostility, either. Sigh.

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Tophat665

Not on this forum, but in some of the tropical fish fora I am in, I use just that phrase all the damn time. After about the 50th "How do I cycle my tank?" thread, it gets old. Particularly when the question ends, "K THX". And some of this isn't even a matter of google. It isn't even a matter of using the forum search. Many times, all it would take is a click on the damned scroll bar.

I think it's great how you can meet so many people on the internet, but in a way that it has never been possible before it brings home that fact that half of everyone you meet is below average.

One of the reasons I like to hang out here is, barring occasional forays into politics where there is such a divergence of opinion that one is tempted to question the sanity, sincerity, or intelligence of the occasional poster, is that we're all pretty much on the ball here. I think this has to do with the adult content precluding folks who believe text-speak is acceptable prose.

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Bear Cub

All of you need to get with it.



If it starts to burn when I pee, I don't need to see a doctor, I can just Google it.

If Obama gets elected, his inexperience won't matter. He can just Google it.

Just Google it. Everyone's doing it.

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Baraka_Guru

For the record, it's "just google it" not "just Google it."

Google is the proper noun.
google is the verb.

Baraka_Guru, editor, out.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

snowy

Hot.

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