Indeed, it might be all that you know, and thus that you think it is acceptable is not entirely your fault. Its a degenerating, dying culture. We scour the gutter for our "art" and our values these days, what other result can we expect? I won't say we have devolved to the level of a savage with a bone in his nose...because in many ways, our American popular culture is *more* degenerate.
However, do not expect me to pat you on the back for failing to swim upstream against the tide of societal garbage.
There was a time when you could find yourself looking at the person you insulted over a yard or so of cold steel or the barrel of a pistol, often for remarks that would be considered trivial today. Dueling was perhaps a brutal custom, yet one wonders if it didn't provide a valuable social check on the boorishness that can otherwise run rampant in a society where one is free to speak their mind. A social check we currently lack. Obviously, no one has ever gotten so much as a broken nose via the internet, and that may be its major downside.
Very spot on. Anyone who belittles another without true provocation, for any reason (and anywhere), only fortheir own pleasure and entertainment and thinks that this is in anyway "good", "proper" or even "necessary" behavior, has both a weak ego (for he's put people down, only to lift himself up in his own eyes), and an extremely warped social compass.
And the internet is a most horrible enabler of this kind of behavior because of it's supposed anonimity, which means to the weak and evil of character, that they won't suffer any consequences for extreme anti-social behavior and bad manners. And their only lame justification is... "it's only a game".
Got news. You're spending real life hours out of your life to play this as others are, and this is a social interaction activity. It may be a game that you're playing, but you have real relationships of all types with many real people and they with you. They're just far away, and you may not even meet them face-to-face.
And the only good side of that is it keeps the real losers in life, from regularly having to go to the hospital for a bloody nose. And it keeps me out of jail for beating to some sense into a loudmouthed yahoo who has the social conscious of a paramecium, and thinks he can say just any derogatory thing to my face.
Enjoy the anonimity of the Internet while you can. I suspect we are only a few years away from when it will be gone forever. The punishment is coming.
