It seems like anonymity of the Internet magnifies everything that's bad about people, even when it's absurd. A fairly casual observation of any large-ish online community would tell you that people tend to hate each other, or at the very least, have irreconciable viewpoints, whether it's what game systems you think will win, whether you eat at Chick-Fil-A or not, or who you're voting for the next president. But even though most online community would make you question the worth of humanity when you see people attack each other for seemingly trivial stuff, don't ever attempt to point this out because clearly everyone is all supposed to be super civil and open minded even though the guy you talked to probably had a post somewhere that told you to jump off a cliff somewhere. There was a passage from one of Gu Long's book where Grandmaster soandso of the Wu Tang clan was reflecting on his friends, and it was like "XYZ, he teaches young man the value of abstinence but he'd be better off as the owner of a brothel. ABC teaches the value of tolerance even though he has voodoo dolls of everyone who has ever crossed him. And I'm here, terminally ill and likely to die today, about to give a speech about how the Wu Tang needs to stand up against evil even though neither I nor anyone who is listening actually cares about that since we all know people only care about who is about to succeed me as the next Wu Tang Grandmaster."
A lot of time it feels exactly you're talking to the guy described in the passage, i.e. the guy talking about abstinenance when he should be running a brothel. I don't care too much that people can literally hate you for just about any opinion you may have on the Internet, since that's just what anonymity does, but nobody is going to take mistake any large-ish Internet community as an intellectual gathering of like-minded indivduals. Even if you go small it usually just means you found 5 guys who totally agree with you so you don't have to worry about anyone with an opposing opponent.
One of the quote I really like from Gu Long is: "If you know you're hopeless, there's hope for you because most hopeless guys don't know they're hopeless." I think you can say that about haters too. If you know you're a hater, you're at least an okay guy because most haters don't know they're haters. So for that matter, I like this community since our haters are clearly defined in their roles and there's really no confusion on who hates who on what topic.
A lot of time it feels exactly you're talking to the guy described in the passage, i.e. the guy talking about abstinenance when he should be running a brothel. I don't care too much that people can literally hate you for just about any opinion you may have on the Internet, since that's just what anonymity does, but nobody is going to take mistake any large-ish Internet community as an intellectual gathering of like-minded indivduals. Even if you go small it usually just means you found 5 guys who totally agree with you so you don't have to worry about anyone with an opposing opponent.
One of the quote I really like from Gu Long is: "If you know you're hopeless, there's hope for you because most hopeless guys don't know they're hopeless." I think you can say that about haters too. If you know you're a hater, you're at least an okay guy because most haters don't know they're haters. So for that matter, I like this community since our haters are clearly defined in their roles and there's really no confusion on who hates who on what topic.
