For me, it was that the Internet never forgets and that you should never enter your real name. In my opinion, both of these rules are now completely ignored.
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” -Abraham Lincoln
Social media, a gorilla getting shot, two US elections, and GenAI later, we have completely fallen off this one simple rule.
Basic forum etiquette. It’s horrifying at work seeing teams “teams” (forums) used like chats, all the cross-posting and thread necromancy, people completely unable to keep topics confined to the appropriate sub-forum, etc
Don’t talk to strangers.
Searching things is easy so don’t post something without checking it. People now don’t make the slightest effort to verify a rumor or conspiracy crap.
Most of them. Don’t believe everything you see, don’t give out personal information or real-life pictures… the usual.
You should use the Internet to get info out of it, not put your info there. If you do want to put info, it should never be traceable to you.
I just don’t get why people want so much of their life online…
It went from “don’t post pictures of yourself or your real name online because you might get strangers’ attention” to everyone trying to be their own version of a Max Headroom talking head to try to get the attention of all the strangers. Selfies, video selfies, talking head videos, reaction videos… all garbage.
As in real life, it’s pretty sound advice to ignore, block or otherwise disengage from trolls and other forms of belligerents. Even in the '90s when I first started using the internet, the phrase of the day was “don’t feed the trolls”. But people just can’t help themselves. They will even reply saying “I know you’re a troll, but…”.
The Steam forums are a great example, where every other thread is a fake “is this game woke??” screed. The fact that you can be rewarded for being a cunt there with jesters (which translate into points that can be spent to buy profile items) just makes it a thousand times worse. You get ‘paid’ to be a troll on Steam. It’s insanity.
The only anti-troll weapon that works or is needed is oblivion. Let their steaming turd of a post curdle in solitude. Don’t even downvote it. Being downvoted is a victory for them, an acknowledgement that they exist and that they’ve gotten your attention and that they’ve annoyed you. Shadowban them from your mind. Block them so that no future posts of theirs will infect your screen. Report them so mods can remove/ban them. Just don’t engage directly with the post or the user. Don’t say “blocked and reported” in the troll’s thread/post. Just do it silently.
Ive blocked so many award baiters on steam, when an update for one of the bigger games comes out the first few comment pages are filled with "you’ve blocked this user. If you’ve blocked enough of them the comments get usable again.
On the Internet I grew up on, pretty much anything was ok except to discuss (or even speculate about) the real-world identities of users who didn’t very openly disclose them.
Now many people think the latter is ok.
Don’t top post.
… except when it’s a forwarded convo and then it’s okay, as per 1855.
And then when is a conversation NOT a comment or update to something you’ve forwarded back? The answer is never.
So it’s all good.
twitter built itself on doing this the most nonsensical and annoying way possible.
I’ve never used Twitter and every time I see a post with like… the original comment in the middle, a reply on top, and a reply again? On bottom? I’m like what the fuck is even how
Gmail is super annoying at this, there is no way to automatically turn this off. I just have to delete the ellipsis every damn time
When you share something cool, link back to the original creator or where you found it from.
I’d argue this is the opposite of what was asked.
In the early days, no one would post sources or attribute “stuff” to anyone. We’d all just share what we thought were cool pictures.
Now, everyone gets mad when you dont post the name of the artist and their socials.
What people are really mad about us the fact that artists are (and always have been) starving. We throw so much food away, let the artists cook for fucks sake.
When reading a long text, disconnect from the internet as soon as it has loaded so you don’t pay for the time you spend reading.
Don’t feed the trolls.
Of course nowadays its nearly impossible to tell whos spouting racial slurs to get folks mad and whos doing it because they’re just an asshole.
Don’t feed the AI
Just assume almost everybody is an asshole online and you can’t be wrong. Because anonymity has granted them that capability.
The fact that people being assholes with their real names on Facebook tells me, anonymity has nothing to do with it.
Facebook has no anonymity though. So it’s different. You are sole responsible for who you allow yourself to add that now may know your real name.
I think people being assholes on FB with their real names makes filtering a hell of a lot easier.
I’m a faithful follower of never using your real name in social parts of the internet. We don’t need to know and we don’t want to know. The only ones who would want to know are scammers or people wanting to give you a shitty time. I only use my real name online for people and places in where it’s required like talking to agents from my bank, insurance .etc And very few friends know my real name through FB and the circle anyways.
Don’t send nudes online to anybody. I know of some communities where people happily are flaunting it one moment then they make a post later whining about them being exploited or that they thought they were crafty hiding the nudes from someone they’re married with. They delete it but they’re too naive to think that what’s already out there, has most likely been saved by hundreds by now, so you’re fucked either way.
Another is, is that if you want to be understood, then you need to use proper spelling and grammar. I miss the days when you got kicked at because you used ‘u’ in replacement of ‘you’. It’s just two fucking extra letters you lazy asshole. These days saying stupid shit like; ‘yah fr u tha fam’ is somehow a complete sentence. No, I’m going to give you shit for it and if you want me to bother caring with what you have to say, fucking make some sense. I don’t even get offended by insults when they’re poorly spelled, it just tells me what kind of an inept moron you are.
I’m with you on the no real names, no nudes. “Don’t dox yourself” was the norm pre-Myspace. Facebook made it almost fashionable to do so.
I’m fine with shorthand and colloquialisms, especially in the era of the smartphone and their lack of physical keyboards.
It made sense with t9 texting. Smartphones have easy to use keyboards and autocorrect. No reason to still type like you have to make 7 or 8 key presses to type “you.”
I’m fine with shorthand and colloquialisms, especially in the era of the smartphone and their lack of physical keyboards.
It wasn’t even cool once t9 emulation came in. But writing with no regard for the audience, that’s apparently eternal.
Put in the effort or eat the down-votes.
I don’t think people really do that anymore, people got faster typing and autocorrect got good
I do use my real name in voice chats provided I’ve known the person for a few days at least, I hate being called by my username in voice
I’m a faithful follower of never using your real name in social parts of the internet. We don’t need to know and we don’t want to know.
Corollary: there are no girls on the Internet. The simplest way to achieve gender equality (which women ostensibly want) is to not disclose gender in arbitrary conversation or in the profile. If you still do in an anonymous forum, you are likely trying to take advantage of privileges that the patriarchal societal structure offers you in that situation, and in doing so you are upholding it.
But then nobody can use gendered neopronouns.
Which IMO is a good thing. I don’t mind people having their own identity, but if nobody tracks pronouns (including traditional pronouns) then life becomes easier for everyone and there’s less drama. We need fewer pronouns, not more.
Nah, u wrong fo dat last part homie. Maybe if u tryna have an intellectual discussion then u can write in full n shi. But if it’s just a casual convo, then write casual
20 years ago, if someone said ‘u’ for ‘you’ then I assumed they were young. These days if I see someone use ‘u’ for ‘you’ I assume they are 60+.
These days if I see someone use ‘u’ for ‘you’ I assume they are 60+.
Nah. Indolence knows no cohort.
Social media killed online aliases and I have a hard time deciding if we’re all worse for it.
Instinctively I still stick by that, though, as you can tell by my anonymous profile with no bio, but when I volunteer any amount of personal info these days people are often confused that I’m not sharing openly who I am or where I’m from. Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
And now it’s come 180 in that some see it as a red flag if you don’t give up that information. I had someone on a different social media site accuse me of being a bot because I wouldn’t give up the specific town I’m from. I’ve seen it happen to others too. It is both fascinating and insane how viewpoints have changed regarding identifying yourself online.
Shit, I provide every single service with randomly generated data, unless legally required. Just doing my part to pollute the training data.
in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
a/s/l?
We were all 18/f/cal come on man…
Haha true
Aight, I put on my robe and wizard’s hat.
RIP bloodninja.
(Except other dogs, and we meet every night on irc:#awoo)
Dont believe anyone on the internet.
That’s my favorite Charlemagne quote
I don’t believe you
I don’t believe you
I don’t believe that you don’t believe me
