Binary Balance

In my younger days I used to find that during social interactions online I would end up in a lot of Someone is wrong on the Internet kind of debates. I’d be arguing with some anonymous stranger(s) about some relatively pointless issue. At that time I almost exclusively used a pseudonym, so the other person would be doing the same thing from their point of view. One afternoon, after what turned out to be a particularly uncivilised and ultimately unsatisfying exchange over an online forum about the merits and accuracy of using the acronym ‘DHTML’ in today’s modern web industry, it hit me that this anonymous person looking out of my eyes who is so intent on proving themselves correct across the Internet to someone they don’t even know is really doing this primarily because of a largely unacknowledged fear that he’s not good enough, that he’s not smart enough, that he doesn’t know enough, and so he needs to prove that he is worthy to anyone he can. The anonymity that can be afforded by the Internet means that I could be far more aggressive in pursuing online arguments than most people would dare to be in the offline world and in a funny way, this seemed to offset the fact that I was trying to prove myself to a person I don’t even know and whose opinion should objectively mean very little to me. But that day, I decided to stop. I’d stop the pointless arguments, I’d stop with this driving need to prove myself correct to anonymous strangers and I would try and stop similar (though far less pronounced) behaviour in the offline world as well. I like to think this was one of those relatively rare, palpable moments when you actually see yourself growing up a little. I kept travelling the Internet under a pseudonym for some years after that (and in some places I still do) but generally I would lurk more, comment less and try and be civil when I did comment. I still occasionally, almost inexplicably would find myself getting drawn into pointless debates but at the least, I would realise what’s happened and disengage more quickly.

I’ve recently come to the point where I believe another small yet palpable positive shift is to start using my real identity more online. I realise that for any extroverts out there, much of what I’ve just written may sound sort of ridiculous, but for those of us of the more introverted persuasion, yes these can be the kind of issues that occupy our mind. Read more...