🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BZS.90Dec28005909@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>People see this behavior, tack the word "rude" on it, remember that
>"rude" is a no-no, and proceed to propose cures...whoa! Let's step
>back to definitions and descriptions.
>
>A lot of what people label "rude" is in the eye of the beholder.

Yah.  I'm certainly a lot more easily offended than a lot of people.
The fact that *anybody* is more easily offended than anyone else
implies that at least part of the phenomenon is on the part of the offendee.

Not all of it, however.  While I'm quick to jump to the defense of
what I see as normal behaviour on the net, that's not to excuse truly
rude behaviour, on the net or off.  Just because someone is more easily
offended than the offender, or anyone else, does not automatically mean
that it's all their own fault for being offended.

Your tale of the innocuous message being blown out of proportion
is common enough.  Actually, I'm surprised that it's not *more* common.

>I've seen this kind of thing elsewhere, not usually that dramatic, but
>someone seeing something, some emotional intensity, some accusation or
>threat, in a fairly innocuous e-mail message, that just wasn't there.

My experience exactly.

>That, to me, is far more interesting. 

To me as well.

>And might well be the problem.

I wonder if what happens is that the reader, lacking clues to emotional
content, infers hostility just from the lack of explicit warmth.
This could be similar to how a radical right-winger sees a moderate as
a flaming liberal, or how a radical left-winger sees a moderate as a 
fascist.  Or again, how to a western ear, a 'typical' (stereotypical?)
Japanese pronunciation of the letters 'l' and 'r' always sound backwards,
when in fact they are being pronounced the same -- the neutral sound
comes across to the hearer as wrong either way.

Perhaps there are people who confuse the fact of someone being live and
in person with that someone being friendly.

Perhaps some people are projecting their own (unconcious) hostilities
onto the otherwise neutral and innocent lines of incoming text.
When you read news or mail messages from someone you've never met,
whose voice do you hear?  Your own?  Whose emotions do you hear?

BTW, I for one think that this is an appropriate discussion for this
newsgroup because the issue of how people interact differently via
computer vs how they interact face-to-face (or voice-to-voice, or ...)
must be addressed in the design of software, or at least accounted
for in any attempt to use software as part of group efforts.

-- Kenn Goutal
...!linus!intrbas!kenn
...!uunet!intrbas!kenn