self examination and the Conflict Impulse

Goken wrote:

RyuJin wrote: generally i try to read things at least 3 times before replying...while i read through i take my time and read it with a monotone voice in an effort to remove emotion from it before i reply....

I do the same thing with my replies. Pretty much any time you see me post that post has been read and edited three or four times. Which is why sometimes it's a little late to the game. :laugh:

Same.....Though I still find myself with foot in mouth more than I care to. I am just, by nature, not a social person and I struggle both online and offline to get the right words to thoughts. Yay Earth Ox.......Mooooooooooo.......

Can you imagine what these conversations would be like if we had to write our responses on paper and mail them to each other? So much of the online world is driven by instant gratification and a downside of that is that people tend to have very little patience. We end up in a conversation where everyone is talking at once and trying to shout over the others. Maybe we should write our responses on paper first? :laugh:

Cyan Sarden wrote: In media theory there are the notions of cold and hot media.

You totally just took me back to Communications 100 from my Freshman year at the university! :laugh:

Working in radio now, I definitely see this in action. When producing advertisements or segments of a show, it's all about "theater of the mind". When you can't use pictures to convey a message, you have to be very descriptive. You need to give people enough information so that they can build the picture in their head.

My favorite example is the radio broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster. Although there is film footage of the crash, most people heard it over the radio. Few people were capable of creating an image in their mind as catastrophic as the actual event because most people had never seen anything like that before.

The fascinating part is that we all build a slightly different picture, so the reaction is different for everybody. The same applies to forum posts. Reading words will elicit different reactions in different people even though the text is the same. Some will react passive aggressively while others will run from the conflict.

Senan wrote:

Cyan Sarden wrote: In media theory there are the notions of cold and hot media.

You totally just took me back to Communications 100 from my Freshman year at the university! :laugh:

Yeah - spent endless hours in media theory lectures and seminars. I never worked in the field, but I guess I'm permanently damaged anyway

the part that i find facsinatig is the tendancy to be offended not just at comments directed specifically at the self but even at a generic "you" which in the context of an internet community any and every particular individual could theoretically interpret as meaning anything from "only me" to "everyone other than me" and any combination within that spectrum

not only to feel personally offended but to feel it to the extent that the impulse to return fire is triggered and acted

especially in the context of interacting with a particular person well known to intentionally instigate drama and conflict

like at what point does a person say "this has nothing to do with me or even us its purely an issue of one person playing a game and im just not going to participate"

whatever the nature or reasons of the game may be?

OB1Shinobi wrote: why cant we help ourselves lol ?

flight or fight seems to apply to even to silly things like internet trolling

thats the topic -why do we react when we know better?

Well firstly, 'fight or flight' is built into our nature - it's a natural biological/physiological impulse, survival of the fittest and all that...

Sometimes we're a bit hard on ourselves when we conclude "Yes but I have the ability to think logically and I should know better". There are biological processes that kick in and send our nervous systems into overdrive, making it more or less impossible to think calmly. Once in that state it's very hard to voluntarily drag oneself out of it again, so it can be helpful to maintain an awareness of one's triggers and early 'symptoms' so that we can snap out of it before adrenalin and whatnot has really had a chance to take hold.

I've learnt what some of my most common triggers are and nowadays the moment that they come up I mentally flag it up to myself ("V! TRIGGER ALERT! You're going to feel tempted to react to that!") and I take a step back and tell myself "Don't take it personally". The fight or flight response is our reaction to feeling threatened or attacked, which, when occurring in a verbal or written situation, more often than not translates to taking things personally. Other people's words can only affect us in that way if we allow them to. It sounds very simplistic, but for me it works. Mostly. :blush: