Hello,
I have been on this board for around four years.
At first I took what went on here quite seriously, well for about three weeks, but it then became quite obvious to me that the depth of role-playing that went on on these boards was so deep-rooted that it would be a foolish waste of time to do anything more than to read some of the more informative threads and delegate the rest to entertainment.
I hope Narkissos forgives me for quoting something that he wrote yesterday, but his thought clearly encapuslates the reason why it is foolish to presume that you know, or will ever know the person who is posting by what they write, and why judgments on a persons character are more than often fatally flawed.
Any of our social commitments in "real life" implies some role playing. Perhaps posting on a db involves just a little more of it.
Role-playing imho *does* reach very deeply on these boards. Skinny, pimply young men can play the role of Don Juan, homely housewives, Mata Hari. People lie about themselves and their achievements in the hope of impressing those who cannot test their claims. Those deleted or edited by moderators become Amnesty International in their own minds, fighting spit for spit, blood for blood, with their brothers at the barricades. Many posters seem so sexually aroused, that the mere mention of phrases like 'oral sex' can throw them into a seventeen page, 10,000 view frenzy. We have seen it so often, again and again.
As Narkissos profoundly noted, we all role-play in real life, we are all driven to do so by the need to function socially, as well as peer-pressure, to deny that would mean that we lie to ourselves. On these boards the role-playing is at a much deeper level. In real life for example, I trust people only very gradually. I do not love anybody unconditionally in real life - imho that is a ludicrous phrase born from 60's California and so far from healthy living that it suprises me that people cannot see how it demands what it should not from people. On these Boards I trust nobody but those that I have met, or have come to know from off-board communication and most of these would not recognize me from my posts. My privacy is important to me.
Our board personna is often, due to what Narkissos notes above, so far from reality as to render judgments on anything but words, impossible. For example many of the men may not want their wives to read their posts, and visa versa. I have known of one marriage that involved children that was shattered when her husband read her posts here, obviously not understanding the depth or role-playing that does take place when people cannot read the language of our body.
So I ask, apart from the information gathering that takes place and is often useful, do you think that many of us take what goes on here *far* too seriously?
Best regards - HS