Why is everyone online so rude?

[Andy E]

I am sure it is fantastically irritating for more advanced/experienced users to have the same discussions again and again or to have their long experience ignored by someone coming in new.

I find this forum consistently less irritating than the old forum where the endless revolving debates about the same topics (for example, the definition of "fluency") year after year drove me spare. I don't post as much as I used to and that's mainly because I feel a bit like I've said everything once already.

I find the people here generally more polite and less dogmatic - there were a number who quite rightly got banned from HTLAL and a number of valuable members who stopped posting because of the attitudes of some.

[Cainntear]

I am sure it is fantastically irritating for more advanced/experienced users to have the same discussions again and again or to have their long experience ignored by someone coming in new.

I think this a bigger issue for Facebook groups than forums, which is why I much prefer this site to any of the Facebook polyglot or language groups.

On a Facebook language group, you get the same questions again and again and no decent facility for looking through old threads. Then you have the problem that there's no indicator of any expertise, and you get people spouting absolute nonsense and being thanked for it by people who have no idea how wrong they are.

It's very, very easy to get wound up when you see this again and again and again.

So we're kind of lucky here.

[Nico546]

I think people are rude online because we don't always realize, behind a screen, that we are dealing with humans
The other reason might be that internet is seen as an anonymous trash bin where anybody can release its hate and anger
without any fear of being recognized. And they know nothing will happen, so if they are irritated by a comment, they tend to easily insult. (It concerns only the internet, not really this forum)

I'm not the worst online (as I read people asking others to suicide themselves, these people are crazy ), but I need to admit that
I am more impulsive and irritable online than in real life.

The other thing I noticed was that I'm often bad tempered when I speak english.
Maybe it happened to some of you, but languages tend to change my mood, my behaviour, my feelings...
I don't know why, when I speak english, I get easily angry and I have a bigger self esteem

I also criticize and give orders much more in english than in any other language (Sir! Yes sir!) , but in fact, I don't care if people listen to me or not, so it's totally useless actually

I wonder why I act like this. Maybe that a lot of english speakers/contents I learnt with were like that, and by imitating them to learn,
I appropriated their defects.

[Φιλόσοφος]

I'm not a regular contributor here but my disinvested opinion is that what this forum desperately needs is more debate, disagreement, polemic, rudeness and incivility. Regulars obviously thrive on the anodyne conversation here so there would be no need to change it to appeal to outsiders, however personally I don't find it stimulating in the least.

edit: I see you went ahead and censored my post too. Oh well, let's leave it at that.

[MacGyver]

I haven't found many people rude on this forum. To be honest its quite a vanilla place.

Though I do find some posters come across as quite arrogant. I am sure they aren't really, its just their writing style, but still .

[lingua]

While I think some people can be a bit abrupt and/or argumentative on some threads, I've not not noticed much if any rudeness here. As someone who is direct in real life I'm used to people being taken aback or even offended when no offense was intended so my tolerance for others speaking and writing style is high.

[Adrianslont]

While I have said previously that this forum is a welcome respite from other less civilised places on the net, I think we could still do better.

I welcome Rick’s reminder that we should always be mindful of our language and other people’s feelings.

[Serpent]

I'm not a regular contributor here but my disinvested opinion is that what this forum desperately needs is more debate, disagreement, polemic, rudeness and incivility. Regulars obviously thrive on the anodyne conversation here so there would be no need to change it to appeal to outsiders, however personally I don't find it stimulating in the least.

edit: I see you went ahead and censored my post too. Oh well, let's leave it at that.

You were notified that a part of your post had been removed.

[tarvos]

Everyone is rude online because there's simply no way to receive any repercussions. If I cuss somebody out in public, I'm likely to get at least a verbal retort back, and if unlucky, a smack in the face. You know, because if you pick a fight in public, there's somebody who can pose a physical threat to you and punch your lights out if need be. Ok, most people haven't tried this with me, but that's because they have to be over 18 to reach my face first. And even then there's no guarantee.

On the internets, there's no such policing going on because we simply do not have the manpower, desire, or technology to survey every last corner of the internet. Which is why I take what people say on the internet with a truckload of salt. You know, because it's the internet. Unless they got sources. In which case, I'm going to check the sources. Bascially, on forums you're relying on social policing, and considering we have a nice group of people here, this works like a charm. But I've moderated other places and shite happens.

Now I do think people think some of us here can be quite... um... well, direct at times and I'm sure some people have pointed fingers at me for it in the past. Those people need to understand that where I come from cultural values differ slightly, and for those that have had the slight (mis)fortune of stumbling upon me in real life, they know that I am equally predisposed towards banter in real life because that's just what I am like personally. I'm not very politically correct in anything I do (and that's despite being queer), and I say 90% of what I do with a jocular, light-hearted tone that's meant to be tongue in cheek, firmly wedged there.

I don't find people rude here very often, and in fact I quite like this forum because of the conspicuous lack of drama which always occurs online and the associated shitstorms that erupt subsequently. I really have stopped posting on FB political threads because of it because I truly have better things to do, and I don't wish to waste my time on inane discussions that could be better replaced with a) dating cute people b) bantering with half the world c) learning languages like an amateur and d) trying to keep my failing health in shape.

[koolawant]

Throwing my useless two cents in as well.

I don't ever find people here rude. Compared to other platforms I actually enjoy seeing debates here because they're between two (usually) educated people!

I, however, think many people (not here particularly but in real life as well) have an issue taking constructive criticism, especially if it isn't dressed up in compliments of flowery language first. Many people prefer taking the roundabout way of saying something as people can be easily offended (especially over the internet where body language can't be interpreted) by blunt or direct language and interpret this as rude. Overall it certainly depends on the person how advice, criticism, and debates are interpreted.

I myself, can be too direct in my delivery and offend people. Sometimes it matters less about what you say or how you meant to say it, and more about how it was understood.