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 Road rage on the Information Highway -- TheJudge || Post in the forum
Yes, it is here. I call it e-rage. It’s a totally new phenomenon that I have discovered. Well, not really. It was always there, I’m just the first guy to point it out.
We all know what road rage is. But what is e-rage? It’s very similar, except that you can’t just pull out a gun and shoot the person you are pissed at since they are not physically accessible. Instead of doing bodily harm, e-rage targets the mind. What else can you do to a person behind a keyboard located somewhere in the world? You can’t beat them no matter how much you want to. So e-rage happens when you intentionally try to crush a person’s spirit by attacking them with words. But why does it happen in the first place?
It all comes down to Netiquette, a term described by our very own Lacerda. Netiquette is short for Internet Etiquette. Read his article on the subject for more information. Some may argue that e-rage cannot all be driven by netiquette, or lack of it, because some people are just jackasses anyway. I’m often referred to one, both on the net and in real life. But that’s only because I suffer from e-rage and road rage.
Let me explain a concept: When we are born, we are neither good nor bad. We are neutral. We haven’t been around long enough to be corrupted, or to become morale individuals. It is only with time and experience that we form a personality. The same deal applies to the Internet. When we first get on-line, we have no clue. We’re all noobs. But with more surfing and more exposure to the virtual world, we learn new things and develop our own e-personality. I use this term because our real life personality often differs from our on-line personality, so it’s important to recognise the distinction. But typically, when we first get on-line and interact with people, we try to be polite. We try to make an impression and we try to fit in. Most of the time, we end up looking like idiots because we are not yet familiar with netiquette. And we get flamed. But that’s how we learn. But from this point, we can go in two opposite directions. We can embrace Netiquette, or turn to the dark side. Either path can lead to e-rage, but in a different way.
The dark side basically means we choose to ignore netiquette. We intentionally take actions that oppose netiquette principles. We are assholes and we set out to piss off as many people as we can on-line. We do this because we find it fun, or funny, or we are simply compensating for our failures from the real world and taking out our anger on people who cannot harm us. But then, over time, something happens. Everyone despises us. We get flamed left and right. And we fight back with no real chance of wining the war. And at some point, we start to take things personally. That fuels our desire to ignore netiquette even more, and we then develop a case of e-rage.
Those who embrace netiquette can also suffer from e-rage. It happens because of the dark side people described above. The two groups really clash since they oppose each other. So the Netiquette individuals will be insulted that netiquette is not respected by the other group. They will flame those who ignore netiquette in an attempt to lecture them, or educate them, or simply to encourage them to go away. Of course, a true dark side fellow suffering from e-rage will never retain anything from lectures, will never learn anything and will not go away willingly. Instead, he’ll provoke the netiquette guy even more. And the flaming begins from both sides. At some point, the netiquette guy takes things personally and becomes extremely intolerant to anyone who does not respect netiquette. At the first sign of netiquette ignorance, this guy will now strike hard. That includes directing aggression towards the noobies who did not yet have a chance to learn about netiquette. And the cycle begins again. The noob eventually learns, and then takes a position: Embracing netiquette or turning to the dark side.
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