People say things online they would never say in person. To me, for instance.
When I ran a newspaper column detailing how I felt about Kansas State, they responded on the site in a big-time way. My e-mail was even uglier, if you can imagine that.
For whatever reason, people are not afraid to let their true feelings out when they do it behind a wall of anonymity. It makes online discussions more confrontational, and can even lead to situations where people say deliberately offensive things in order to bait for comments.
Would this person say this to my face? From Kansan.com
The New York Times recently wrote about online obituary site Legacy.com and the battle it has against offensive comments.
"When they're face to face at a funeral, people don't have the guts to do something like that and write something offensive," a funeral home embalmer said in the article.
Of course, online they have no qualms with it. One online observer even suggests forcing all commenters on newspaper sites to post a name. That way, the debate can be as transparent as possible.
I'm not quite ready to recommend that, but it is a solution that will get a lot more play as conversations usually reserved for barstools make their way into the online world.
As for myself, people can have at me all they want. I got the last laugh.
"Two words: Get a life." And "Your med school is in Missouri"...I heard about some of your comments from another source. I was hoping to see your entry on this.