Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Watching Butterflies

Comments! Annsie: *hugs* Thank you ^_^ Josh: *nods* I know, I should be on more often. It's not like I haven't tried ^_^; Kei: I keep meaning to try sending you a text message and seeing if you'll be able to receive it. I must do that sometime, heh. And I do remember ^_^ Azure: Well, we all have the potential to be cannibals, but it's not as if it's a regular occurrence. In some societies that's an acceptable behaviour, too. I don't really see what you're trying to get at. But why, then, given that you can phrase things in any number of different ways, can personality not whine through in text? Granted, you can never be sure what's being typed is necessarily accurate bearing in mind the anonymity barrier that the internet provides, but if people are typing as themselves how is it irrelevent to who they are? Take this example: Person 1 IMs Person 2. Person 2 doesn't want to speak to Person 1, and has the choice of numerous different decisions. A: Continue the conversation, then quit halfway through claiming it was 'connection problems', B: Say 'F*** off, I hate you' C: Ignore them D: Say 'I'm sorry I can't talk now, I'm busy' And they aren't even limited to that. It's not physical, spoken conversation, but everything you choose to do has a basis in your behavioural type. If you want to be aggressive or rude, or simply don't care, you could go for option B. Or if you're a sucker for being poilte to people you don't even like, you might drag yourself with option A just because that's who you are. And if I tried typing in French I'd come across as retarded too; you can only accurately reflect yourself in text you can understand. If a person whose first language is Chinese types in perfect English and can phrase everything in the way he wants to, does that mean he isn't showing what he represents because he's not typing in his native language? Even English-speaking people who can't type English can portray a degree of personality, but where you're using abbreviations you aren't making use of many, if any, of the subtleties language provides to be able to communicate exactly what you mean, and hence, what you feel. Like now, you're expressing your opinion, and I'm expressing mine. That opinion makes up part of who we are, correct? If someone made a passing comment about either of our arguments in person we may not reply to it in as much detail as we can here; because we are here it provides an impotus to break down each other's comments in detail. If we were sat down together in person and this discussion came about, I'm sure we'd have pretty much exactly the same conversation. Gaming and the internet are different activities- in an incredibly broad generalisation, you aren't limited with what you can do on the net, but in games you're limited in doing what the designers want you to do based on the content in the game. And not everyone plays every sort of game. I don't like Grand Theft Auto, The Sims or The Playboy Mansion because I don't like the content, regardless of whether it's real or not. And yes, I do think that people who buy these games do feel a sense of glorification about it to a degree- either shooting policemen or running a pornographic magazine. It may be they simply enjoy the character situations and/or enjoy putting together magazines but haven't come across another game that provides a decent enough simulation. So yes, it does represent something to do with theur personality, but not necessarily that they enjoy the situation the game's putting them in. My sister bought the GameCube version of Reign of Fire because she liked the dragons, not because she has an innate desire to drive a minigun-toting jeep around a post-apocalyptic England. I'm not saying all people on the internet are genuine. But every action you make will be made as a result of your personal preferences, stigmas and ideas, and hence reflects on your personality as a whole. That's my point. Sara: I see what you mean ^_^ I know there's always something about myself I'm striving to change; it's just a case of getting up and doing it, hehe. And I'm happy with who I am and the friends I have. Sometimes you just lose sight of where you need to be. I'm almost running behind ^_^; It's a friend's birthday party tonight and I'm leaving in about half an hour. For some weird reason I'm really nervous about it >.>; I'll grab an apple, drink a smoothie and then disappear, methinks. See you later. Don't wait up ^_~ EDIT: It's snowing outside...

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