Public and permanent

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Theres a ton of starcraft replays of me calling people racial and sexual slurs online, I'm never going to be president ):

On March 20 2013 16:30 lawn wrote: It's much better to be too paranoid and go overkill than not do enough

See this is the line I have a problem with. I don't agree that others having access to information about me is a bad thing overall. Why hamper interactions with say... a poker forum so that a non-existent person in 20 years can't see that you were a member of a poker forum?

If you have a weird rape fetish or whatever then yeah, prob don't write that down somewhere. But for 99.9% of your life no-one gives a shit and it's not worth weakening your own experiences/interactions for it.

yea this genuinely scares me a little bit too,

some guy in UK lost his job (london underground train driver) because he was posting racist jokes up on his facebook,

admittedly a facebook account is a lot easier to link to your real life, but the way everything is going (youtube accounts linked to a real name, a quick google search can find the real identity of most online pseudonyms etc) it won't be long before everything is easily tied together.

not that i'm posting up any racist jokes but it does worry me that what you did years ago online under an anonymous username could potentially come back to bite you in the ass in real life...

On March 20 2013 17:34 2c0ntent wrote: I think this is true enough, but for those that spend a lot of time on the internet it has been shown that a man could become quite too used to being nothing more than a member of the faceless masses using your approach.

bit interested by what youre getting at but i think u should explain more what u mean. do u mean accustomed to not having unique identity in just public online interactions, or this somehow transfers over to general life attitude as well? for either case, in what way do you feel this is a negative outcome? (not arguing that it isn't). Also, where has "it been shown", any citations to back that?

On March 20 2013 18:18 TheLink wrote: Show nested quote + On March 20 2013 16:30 lawn wrote: It's much better to be too paranoid and go overkill than not do enough See this is the line I have a problem with. I don't agree that others having access to information about me is a bad thing overall. Why hamper interactions with say... a poker forum so that a non-existent person in 20 years can't see that you were a member of a poker forum? If you have a weird rape fetish or whatever then yeah, prob don't write that down somewhere. But for 99.9% of your life no-one gives a shit and it's not worth weakening your own experiences/interactions for it.

this is very likely true in most cases it's not gonna matter or make much difference, and nobody will ever care. what makes me uncomfortable is that if my interactions on forums/fb/etc will forever be accessible to whoever cares to access them, it will become possible for anyone i ever encounter in life, or anyone who for some reason becomes aware of my existence and wants to find out more about me, can access these old records and form judgments on my character based on interactions i might have had a long time ago that were intended for a very small, specific audience. Even if you're right that it prob won't matter, it just makes me uncomfortable. Imagine if every phonecall you had with your buddies in the 1990s had been recorded and was accessible for anyone in the world who wants to, to play it back at any time. I hope you can realise in many cases, it really can be that dramatic. What appears private in your psyche now is actually public, and the record can't be erased. If this doesn't make you uncomfortable enough to think twice before every time you hit the post button, then kudos!

I don't necessarily agree that watching what you say has to hamper your interactions.. There is nothing stopping you from private messaging and exchanging skypes with members of a public community that you admire, and so you can enjoy interaction more freely through a medium that is far less likely to end up permanent public record.

On March 21 2013 06:15 Critterer wrote: yea this genuinely scares me a little bit too, some guy in UK lost his job (london underground train driver) because he was posting racist jokes up on his facebook, admittedly a facebook account is a lot easier to link to your real life, but the way everything is going (youtube accounts linked to a real name, a quick google search can find the real identity of most online pseudonyms etc) it won't be long before everything is easily tied together. not that i'm posting up any racist jokes but it does worry me that what you did years ago online under an anonymous username could potentially come back to bite you in the ass in real life...

right.. i agree it's healthy to be worried and aware even if you currently think everything you're doing now is innocent. and yeah i really feel bad for those people that made big mistakes in this area that ended up costing them in ways they didn't see coming. racism is an awful thing but i would speculate that if every single person who has any trace of racist sentiment within them were found to do so through magical discovery, and fired tomorrow, then we'd suddenly have some serious economic problems on our hands.

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On March 21 2013 08:34 2c0ntent wrote: Show nested quote + On March 21 2013 07:46 lawn wrote:   On March 20 2013 17:34 2c0ntent wrote: I think this is true enough, but for those that spend a lot of time on the internet it has been shown that a man could become quite too used to being nothing more than a member of the faceless masses using your approach. bit interested by what youre getting at but i think u should explain more what u mean. do u mean accustomed to not having unique identity in just public online interactions, or this somehow transfers over to general life attitude as well? It transfers to general life attitude because many people end up spending so much time "practicing" how to express themself in a way that is inherently apathetic. I say constantly practicing the ways of being anonymous is inherently apathetic because it is impossible to effectively express onself in real life anonymously (think of an anonymous talk show guest) or to really get anything done at all without being face-to-face, or willing to take on some kind of responsibility that you can be held accountable for. .

Very debatable, but i would suggest that apathy is more of a biological state caused by certain trigger events, rather then something you teach yourself on command or by repetition.

Also, i agree with premise of OP, but more in the way that we as users, are undervaluing our data(personal information) that we so easly share with third parties and random companies.

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On March 21 2013 09:42 2c0ntent wrote: Show nested quote + On March 21 2013 09:35 uiCk wrote:   On March 21 2013 08:34 2c0ntent wrote:   On March 21 2013 07:46 lawn wrote:   On March 20 2013 17:34 2c0ntent wrote: I think this is true enough, but for those that spend a lot of time on the internet it has been shown that a man could become quite too used to being nothing more than a member of the faceless masses using your approach. bit interested by what youre getting at but i think u should explain more what u mean. do u mean accustomed to not having unique identity in just public online interactions, or this somehow transfers over to general life attitude as well? It transfers to general life attitude because many people end up spending so much time "practicing" how to express themself in a way that is inherently apathetic. I say constantly practicing the ways of being anonymous is inherently apathetic because it is impossible to effectively express onself in real life anonymously (think of an anonymous talk show guest) or to really get anything done at all without being face-to-face, or willing to take on some kind of responsibility that you can be held accountable for. . Very debatable, but i would suggest that apathy is more of a biological state caused by certain trigger events, rather then something you teach yourself on command or by repetition. I agree that apathy is a biological state, in that apathetic behaviors are promoted by some biological state of your brain that influences your mind's thoughts. My argument is simply that you can condition yourself out of it just the same as yous conditioned yourself into it. The mechanisms of brain plasticity allows for this phenomena, for example it is known that neurons can change character, and can form novel synaptic connections even in adulthood(1). (1) See: Neuron reprogramming, neuron remapping studies

i see what your getting at, and i have scratched the surface of neuron remapping and brain "disorders" in general, wich started few years back when confronted with myth that brain stops developping once at young adulthood, while observing major changes in my congnitive functions and others around my age, at that time (24-26). And yes i think there are and will be ways of re mapping neurons in people with all kinds of intense brain disorders.
I can also see how conditioning someone to remove an apathetic state is very possible, but i wouldnt link apathy (or maybe depression? same thing?) with someone disconecting from the world. Still needs a major cataclyst, best example would be being in a war and seeing things and feeling emotions that your body cannot control, cannot intake, thus making your emotions unresponsive to events of lesser magnitude then a war.
Obviously someone who is depressed or apathetic, and engages in more and more isolated events will probably not help him, but he does it to cope with his brain disorder, which is more or less just alot of mental pain. Same concept i apply drug users; as in people who already have a given brain disorder, usually unaware or just ignoring all signs (usually caused by a social stigma), and tend to do drugs to cope with that state.
Same kind of situation; user stops using drugs, which might improve his state, but in no way "cure" him,