Navigating through Internet discussions, for various purposes

[Jim]

I’m starting this thread for discussions about challenges that people encounter in Internet discussions and how they respond to them. Different people have different purposes in the discussions, so there might be different challenges for different people.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I’m starting this thread for discussions about challenges that people encounter in Internet discussions and how they respond to them. Different people have different purposes in the discussions, so there might be different challenges for different people.

I don't know if I should call it a challenge, but he discussions change all the time, and many people change over time, so suddenly one can experience a "challenge" from a person we did never have any heated discussion with, to become almost too hard to handle because both my self and they change over time. But that is a very natural thing to happen. so even I could react bad or wrong at the time, it's not much to keep hanging on to. better to move on and be happy to have a place to discuss a topic as we do in RF.

If it gets too much to handle it is better to go offline for a short time, to we have cleared our mind and got the situation on distance, so we see more clearly where we might go wrong our self too.

 

[MNoBody]

I think it is much the same as how one gauges how a conversation they had with someone went.....if it was uplifting ..well probably that was known by all involved, so it wasn't necessary to figure out how....
I knew with my heart before I saw with my mind....instinctually we know how as we are all something more than we appear to be.... unless the BS [Belief System] gets in the way...that usually isn't nice

 

[Jim]

Most times when I start a thread it’s because I want to discuss some topic, which I try to explain as well as I can in the OP. Sometimes those threads are flooded with off topic posts, sometimes including some bait that is very hard for me to resist. One challenge for me has been hostile intentions masquerading as friendly ones, diverting me from the topic, and ending in grief when the hostile intentions are openly revealed. I’ve learned some ways of recognizing hostile intentions from the start, and not biting at the bait.

One time recently it was really hard for me to resist responding to some persistent harassment. I escaped from that temptation that by posting about it in a separate thread that I started some time ago for my off topic posts.

 

[Jim]

Sometimes a few people have stalked and harassed me, persistently jabbing and stabbing at me and posting off topic and in blatant and shameless violation of forum rules. When it kept happening I had temptations to lash out at them that were very hard for me to resist. One way I’m learning to resist those temptations is by taking time out to remind myself of what I’m trying to do, and what I’ve learned about how to do it, and to think creatively about what’s happening and what to do about it. One time some new thoughts came to me about possible reasons for the person to be harassing me, that helped me feel more friendly towards them.

 

[MNoBody]

forums are still relatively new IMO for people....for those over 50 well we grew up with grandparents who recalled the horse and buggy era...now we have cyberspace.... virtual conversations in our private spaces with personages unknown....despite avatars and bios and pedigrees.
people looking for connection find all kinds of other scenarios other than expected or hoped for.
computers were supposed to reduce paper usage and it kind of increased it in new and unexpected ways people were unprepared for, but muddle through.... and get somewhere worth getting to despite that.

typing text is much different than talking with people directly...in some ways it is better, and in other ways it is worse...the challenge is to work it to mutual benefit and i think everyone involved will know that when it happens.

i know that after working tools in the stone trade for decades has not really improved my typing skills

 

[Jim]

Sometimes I misunderstand what someone’s interests are in a discussion, and that leads to misunderstandings and sometimes grief for both of us. I’ve been learning to be better prepared for a person’s interests to not be what I thought they were.

 

[Jim]

Now I’m thinking about people’s personal feelings about other people, and their lack of awareness, knowledge and wisdom about those feelings; how all that affects the discussions; and how that affects my interests and what I might want to do.

 

[Jim]

One challenge for me has been discussions I’m in being flooded with off-topic and distracting posts. My response to that now is to post something on topic, and to ask the people who have been posting off topic if they have any ideas about the topic.

 

[Jim]

Another challenge has been feeling alone in some of my interests closest to my heart, in Internet discussions. Sometimes I see people trying to help make the discussions more friendly and fun for everyone, and more fruitful and beneficial, and that’s comforting, but even with them I don’t have all the common interests that I would like to have with some people in Internet discussions. I’m thinking now, instead of trying as much as I have to find that, to try letting it find me.

 

[Jim]

One challenge for me has been people persistently misrepresenting what I’m saying, and diverting attention from it. I’m learning now to respond to that in the ways that I respond to off- topic and distracting posts, and to misinformation.

 

[Jim]

I’ve learned that sometimes when people reply ro one of my posts, they aren’t actually talking to me. They’re just quoting my post to use it as a platform for what they want to say for other people to see. Keeping that in mind has helped me avoid some misunderstandings and grief.

 

[Jim]

A new challenge for me is some questions in my mind about the effects on Internet discussions and community life of people’s personal feelings towards other people in the discussions. In Internet discussions there are people that I like and people that I don’t like, and a few who actually look evil to me. How does that affect my behavior in the discussions, and how can I counteract any adverse effects it might have, for my purposes or anyone else’s?

 

[Jim]

I see that some of my challenges are things that happen in threads where I’m posting, that interfere with what I’m trying to do or my communication with others, or distract and divert me from it. My response to that is to periodically remind myself and others about the topic of discussion. I respond to misrepresentations with simple denials, saying “This is not about ...”

A new challenge for me now is to consider how people’s personal feelings about other people in the discussions affect our behavior and how to counteract possible adverse effects of that on people and on our discussions. My first idea for that is to try to remember that anything that I think about anyone might be wrong.

 

[Jim]

Another challenge is misunderstanding another person’s interests in their posts addressed to me, which sometimes leads to frustration and grief for one or both of us. All I know to do about that is to try to remember that it happens sometimes, so I can be ready to limit the damage if it does.

Another challenge is forgetting or what my priorities are, or failing to resist temptations to turn away from them. All I know to do about that is to pull myself back to them when I think about it.

 

[Jim]

Sometimes people live in stories about their lives and about the world around them. Maybe we all do that all the time. Sometimes people want to have villains in their stories. Sometimes some of their villains are people in Internet discussions where they’re posting. I’ve seen that happening with me, both ways.

 

[Jim]

Sometimes people’s stories about their lives and the world around them make it hard or maybe even impossible to communicate with them about some things.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

Sometimes people’s stories about their lives and the world around them make it hard or maybe even impossible to communicate with them about some things.

Not sure who you mean, but I do consider myself to respond in narratives, drawing conclusions about what may be or may not be and how it has affected me, rather than just responding in one-sentence filler. Only time I can recall when I ever regretted a small amount of story-telling is the times I spoke on ghosts and haunted houses. That's getting a bit too speculative even for me, even if I'm not exactly stretching the truth into what I thought. And all the what-ifs of that particular subject lead to mental gymnastics.

I think I've focused too much on things like the times I heard voices after working very hard and poor diet and caffeine overdose, and focused on the supernatural of it of sorts, rather than spending that detail describing just how hard I was working and how seriously I took it.

 

[Jim]

I’m doing research now in how to talk to people when they’ve been traumatized.

 

[Jim]

Now I’m thinking about how there are always new kinds of distractions that I haven’t learned to ignore, in thread titles and in threads that I‘m following. Just now I was tempted to look and see what was happening in a thread, knowing that I would hate it. I stopped and asked myself, “Do I really want to do this?” My answer was no, and I was able to stick to it.