Why does it seem people online will openly degrade anyone but out in public everone runs from confrontation? Why is there such social paranoia in public and too scared to socialize with strangers but will happily insult everyone online? If people are so lonely, why don't they talk with people whil le they are out and exchange contact info? It seems more enjoyable talking with immigrants and better to avoid Canadians. I'm not bothered by dealing with someone talking stupid or if someone wants a friendly hug, it's quite easy to have a good time with strangers and I have no concrns about giving my number to continue talking.
Essentially yeah. If I call somebody an asshole to their face, they might punch me in mine :-)
But there's also an aspect that the internet is global, so troublemakers can be as well. The village idiots have a lot bigger village to interact in when online
What you're saying is people don't want the responsibility of their own words. Life has a way of punishing people for bad things nobody witnessed. I say that in the sense of "Death is coming for you, how are you going to get out of it?".
If you insult someone in real life in front of you, the reactions can range from someone walking away in disgust to someone stepping up to you and slapping or punching you in the face or worse.
Online, if you insult someone, they'll reply with a equally nasty note or they just disappear never to be heard from again.
It's like dogs barking at each other from behind a fence ...
You missed my entire point. I was driving at the exact opposite. Why can't people be good to each other in person, stop using internet to live out a delusional fantasy. I was ask why do people talk tough online and insult everyone, but that same person is a coward on the steet. I suspect if Canadian born people had a stronger sense of hospitality, speak with humility, and showed a gentle care for people around, there wouldn't be people spewing rage online.
Since it's clear that people are angry and lonely, if they want someone to care, there has to be a reason to care, but North Americans are a callous self indulgent people. They want change, want better, but won't put in the work to start changing the social dynamics. There really are cultures that will invite new people into their home, that's how I grew up, and those culturals don't have the same social problems when out in public.
I'm Indigenous Canadian and from my personal lifelong perspective ... things are getting better. They aren't a utopian level yet but we are moving towards that direction.
I think part of the problem that we notice about the internet and social media is that we all tend to gravitate towards rage, anger, hatred and fear way too easily because it is the most exciting and easy reaction that we can all understand and gain a bit of thrill out of. People do like to feel positive and happy with one another but there is a certain level of thrill and excitement at being around and seeing anger, fear and hatred. I'm guilty of it myself ... if I see a terrible car crash on the highway and I'm the first one to see it, I do have a morbid curiousity to want to see the gruesome real life details of what happened ... it doesn't mean that I enjoy that stuff or really want to see it - it's just the thrill and excitement of that curiosity because I would feel absolutely terrible once I saw and understood what I had just witnessed.
Hatred, anger and fear is what drives modern social media ... places like facebook, twitter, instagram, tik tok and all the rest all bank on hatred, anger and fear ... its the engine that drives these places. Once you get someone anger or afraid, they are more likely to engage and react ... maybe not for long but more often than not, they will react. Then that same person will move on and get upset about the next thing they see or read and on and on.
But like I said at the beginning, things in the world are better than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. My dad was born and raised in the bush and when he visited modern cities and towns in Canada in the 50s and 60s, he was not welcome and treated harshly with a lot of blatant and open racism. In the 70s and 80s things lightened up and Indigenous people were able to work and live more freely. In the 90s when I was a teen, I went to school in the city and things were still rough but the racism was not as open and tolerated any more. In the 2000s, things were better still and being Indigenous was more normalized to the point where racist attitudes were fewer and far between. It doesn't mean it stopped. There was just a lot less racism than a generation before.
My point is ... in the digital world where we feel free to be disconnected from reality and feel that we can treat people in ways we normally wouldn't in public, many people are willingly open to be racist, arrogant and ignorant. But what I've found in the real world is that when you see and meet people in public face to face, they are more open, tolerant and capable of understanding one another regardless of gender, race, background or religion.
We are made to feel online that the world is a less open place whereas in real life from my own personal perspective, the world is a lot more open now than it was 20 - 30 years ago. It still isn't perfect but I think it is a lot better than it was a generation before.
Because in my experiences, it's always been easier talking with people who have a specific cultural background, traditions, cultural foods their parents make, usual another language, so they have a sense of identity, family history, some kind values they learn, and that is mainly, but not always, been with immigrants and children of immigrants.
Multigenerational Canadians have no culture, no traditions based their own family background, no customs, no culural foods, no religion, so Canadians have no common values they share for living in society and instructed from birth about proper social values and the punishments that can happen for not showing proper considerations for peopley. Acting nice does not equate to caring for individuals. Canadians talk about being a good person, but have no objective standard for that is based off of, and only talk about themself being a good person, not about their obligation to be good to others.
People get stabbed if they talk to assholes in public. Online we can tell assholes they're being assholes without dying.
Would I like the freedom to express surprise or concern, to help someone or tell someone to use the other door in public? Yeah, sure. But it's potentially a stabbin'.
I overheard an old lady asking a guy for directions somewhere the other day and I spoke up because I knew. But the risk is there. I lived near NYC for a bit: you keep moving, you get off the street. Maybe not even for an old lady lost.
It's not so much a cultural thing as it is a stabbing thing. And if someone's a dick in real life, I think they're more likely to get all stabby if you tell 'em so.
I left the army a ways back, and I don't have the body or the homies to be so confident these days. So I'll let the real-world dicks be dicks and whinge about it from the safety of not bein' stabbed.
It sounds like you live by fear and self preservation, giving no consideration for how to show care for others and being an example of a better way of interacting with others to leave a positive impact on people's life.