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I was talking to Becca last night for a while on the phone and we came across and interesting subject which we both thought was worthwhile in writing in our blogs. The subject is “What makes people on the Internet so obsessive and short-fused?” (read more)

The conversation started out with someone who was seriously offended that she deleted him off of her Facebook friends list. The same can be said for MySpace, LiveJournal, and other social network sites. The argument started when said person noticed he was no longer on her online friends list. He was deleted because she was cleaning out her list of people she didn’t talk to often enough and just wanted to organize her friends list a bit.

It can be understandable in some circumstances when people get angry online. There’s no inflection or vocals to help the recipient understand what’s actually being said and in what manner it’s being said. However, what happened before the Internet was around? Let’s suppose that I stopped talking to someone for an extended period of time before the Internet was mainstream and in most homes. Did that mean that I was no longer that person’s friend? Did that person go crazy on me and yell at me asking why I didn’t talk to them?

More than likely, the person would call, stop by, or find another means of contacting me. It would also likely be done in a calm and composed manner. You certainly wouldn’t start yelling at someone for this. After all, maybe they had a good excuse to not talk to you whether it be extreme lack of time, or some other reasonable situation. Things and life were more slow-paced and sometimes, I wish it was like that now.

Ever since the Internet is commonplace everywhere you go, people have shorter fuses for tolerating certain, trivial things (such as conversing online, a friends list on a social networking site, or otherwise). That bothers me. It mainly bothers me because it’s changing the way kids are growing up and the way their social interaction is taking place. Some would rather stay online all day talking through AIM, MySpace, LiveJournal, or otherwise than actually go over to their friend’s house and talk. It’s changing the social interactions and the way people are behaving, and I don’t really like it so much.

People are becoming so uptight and unreasonable when it comes to being online. It’s as if the rules of being social don’t apply anymore and it’s really stupid once you think about it. People are making online conversations and other items too literal and too serious. I can think back to a time when people used to argue with me all of the time online and personally, I was amused by it. But it got me to thinking: What is it that causes people online to have such short tempers?

Maybe it’s the fast-paced style of the internet and intolerance of things that aren’t as you’d want them to be online. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so easy to start an argument online. Maybe it’s the impersonal aspect of the ‘Net that makes it so easy to throw “virtual punches” and get away with it. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting topic to think about and try to understand.