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But you can't 'downvote' someone in real life. In real life, you can say what you want, and people have to hear. However, on reddit (and many sites copying its

But you can't 'downvote' someone in real life. In real life, you can say what you want, and people have to hear. However, on reddit (and many sites copying its pernicious site design), if your comment goes against the hivemind and gets hit with -5 immediately, your comment gets collapsed (and basically unseen). Imagine being out in public at a party and you say something slightly 'spicy' and someone walks up to you and puts duct tape across your mouth. You can move to another party (or comment thread in this example), but you already were basically told "your input is useless, now leave". I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life. Bonus: Moderators locking threads with a condescending comment like "Locking this comment thread since some of you refuse to behave". Reddit is the new Twitter, only the censorship isn't thinly veiled. It's not veiled at all.

hiatus 3y ago
> I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life People have lost jobs, college admissions, and more based on their posts online. I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life.
- qzx_pierri 3y ago
  >I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. Remove your real life attachments from the internet and you're untouchable. Just because people willingly 'dox' themselves doesn't make the internet anything more than a collection of webpages sitting on a blade server somewhere.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. That's all well and good if you never leave your mother's basement, but for everyone else going outside from time to time, hiding your identity is much more difficult. Herein lies the problem: We used to be 'hard' on online accounts because they were anonymous – everyone understood the account did not represent a real person and that was just for fun. That's fine. We maintained compassion for real people with real identities with a desire to treat them as being human. But over time we stopped recognizing a difference between a real person and an internet account, now treating the people out in the real world like they are anonymous internet accounts.
    - qzx_pierri 3y ago
      >That's all well and good if you never leave your mother's basement This is uncalled for. People like me live an extremely healthy and social life without any traces of our identity online (excluding voter registration databases, people search websites, etc). >But over time we stopped recognizing a difference between a real person and an internet account, now treating the people out in the real world like they are anonymous internet accounts. I see where you're going with this, but I'll have to disagree. Most of the people being behaving like animals online are some of the most soft spoken and shy people in real life. The article which sparked this discussion stands adjacent to my claim, as well. I've noticed a lot of people who are online a lot and using it as an escape are pretty socially awkward and neurotic in real life. Those people I just mentioned often use the internet as an escape, but don't realize it. If there were no separation between the internet and real life, then those people would behave the same way online (shy, timid, avoiding confrontation). These people just don't realize the separation thanks to the "Please enter your first and last name" trend started by Zuck in the late 2000s.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        > People like me live an extremely healthy and social life without any traces of our identity online With respect, I think you've failed to grasp what is being discussed here. 'Attacking' people who post ill-conceived content anonymously on the internet has most definitely grown tired (case in point), but is not really a problem. It's not a person, it's just an internet account. It doesn't matter. The problem is that the same behaviour has started moving out into real life, where you find real people with real identities. There is no hiding from it beyond an anonymous username. Your face is out there for all to see when you step outside. Certainly you may run in circles of older people who established that compassion for real people while the lines were still clearly divided, thus not feeling it as much, but there is a generation coming up – you know, the one the article is about – that do not know the world before Reddit. They fail to grasp that there is a difference, treating real people like they are Reddit accounts.
        circlefavshape 3y ago

hiatus 3y ago

> I should mention that I don't see it that way, but a lot of people don't know how to separate real life from the internet - Especially Gen Z. The internet is NOT real life People have lost jobs, college admissions, and more based on their posts online. I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life.

qzx_pierri 3y ago
>I understand the sentiment but what we do on the internet most certainly has an impact on real life Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. Remove your real life attachments from the internet and you're untouchable. Just because people willingly 'dox' themselves doesn't make the internet anything more than a collection of webpages sitting on a blade server somewhere.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > Because people make the mistake of using their 'real life' identity online. That's all well and good if you never leave your mother's basement, but for everyone else going outside from time to time, hiding your identity is much more difficult. Herein lies the problem: We used to be 'hard' on online accounts because they were anonymous – everyone understood the account did not represent a real person and that was just for fun. That's fine. We maintained compassion for real people with real identities with a desire to treat them as being human. But over time we stopped recognizing a difference between a real person and an internet account, now treating the people out in the real world like they are anonymous internet accounts.
  - qzx_pierri 3y ago
    >That's all well and good if you never leave your mother's basement This is uncalled for. People like me live an extremely healthy and social life without any traces of our identity online (excluding voter registration databases, people search websites, etc). >But over time we stopped recognizing a difference between a real person and an internet account, now treating the people out in the real world like they are anonymous internet accounts. I see where you're going with this, but I'll have to disagree. Most of the people being behaving like animals online are some of the most soft spoken and shy people in real life. The article which sparked this discussion stands adjacent to my claim, as well. I've noticed a lot of people who are online a lot and using it as an escape are pretty socially awkward and neurotic in real life. Those people I just mentioned often use the internet as an escape, but don't realize it. If there were no separation between the internet and real life, then those people would behave the same way online (shy, timid, avoiding confrontation). These people just don't realize the separation thanks to the "Please enter your first and last name" trend started by Zuck in the late 2000s.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > People like me live an extremely healthy and social life without any traces of our identity online With respect, I think you've failed to grasp what is being discussed here. 'Attacking' people who post ill-conceived content anonymously on the internet has most definitely grown tired (case in point), but is not really a problem. It's not a person, it's just an internet account. It doesn't matter. The problem is that the same behaviour has started moving out into real life, where you find real people with real identities. There is no hiding from it beyond an anonymous username. Your face is out there for all to see when you step outside. Certainly you may run in circles of older people who established that compassion for real people while the lines were still clearly divided, thus not feeling it as much, but there is a generation coming up – you know, the one the article is about – that do not know the world before Reddit. They fail to grasp that there is a difference, treating real people like they are Reddit accounts.
      - circlefavshape 3y ago