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Toxic, irrational behavior - which the examples lean toward - makes me remove people from my life. Attacking some terrible public figures is not irrational
Toxic, irrational behavior - which the examples lean toward - makes me remove people from my life. Attacking some terrible public figures is not irrational
So what makes you better than all the people your railing about? Its the same behavior and the same rationale.
There are countless other psychologically unhealthy behaviors online that are not seriously criminal. For example, a friend might anonymously spout QAnon theories online.
You'd better not post that thought on the CD Politics and OC forum or else you will get pulverized! And I'm sure that everyone on the POC forum is a lovely person in real life. Anyhow, I'd never make friends with a QAnon type because we would have absolutely nothing in common.
I think that a person who is addicted to gambling or plays non-stop computer games or dips their toes into hard porn online is going to show evidence of these behaviors in real life. If a behavior is central to who you are, you can't cover that up forever. Sometimes I just want to go strangle my housemate for his obsession with playing intricate online computer games that gobble up all the bandwidth our skimpy rural internet connection can hold.
I don't know if this makes him psychologically unhealthy or not - his possible mental health issues are none of my business. But his selfish tendency to hog all the available bandwidth around here annoys me no end. I have spoken to him as nicely as I can about this (even though I can be very snarky when replying to someone online whom I've never met). Anyhow, my roomie will generally try to clean up his act and arrange for all his game downloads to occur after 2AM when I am asleep. But then he will eventually need another gentle reminder.
It really depends on how close the friendship is and how unacceptable the on-line behavior is. If my housemate was downloading kiddie porn, he'd be out of here so fast that his head would spin. The occasional 2 gajillion gigabyte game download I can tolerate. The same would go for online gambling. If my housemate was spending his every last cent gambling playing online poker so that he couldn't pay his share of the bills, then it would be pretty much curtains for him.
Do you often suspect your friends of living sociopathic other lives?
I've never thought that of real-world acquaintances, friends or not. Out of sight, out of mind. People generally are easier to like if you don't know them well, heh.
I have a friend who used to be an online troll. I never ended the friendship, even though I was never able to answer why he did it.
I had another friend who treated me to his online trolling and I have no idea how I got sucked into wasting so many years on the friendship. He was actually pleasant IRL but via online media he was just ultra obnoxious. He even admitted that he found trolling me to be so much fun. For a variety of reasons, we are no longer friends anymore.
It wouldn't change my affection for a friend but I would have an honest and concerned discussion with them if
I thought it could affect them negatively.
Sometimes that can cause a rapid distancing on their part and that's a risk I take with people I care about. My door's always open, nonetheless.
okay, then I dont' really understand why it would bother or affect you if your friend is a gamer and playing playstation all day or hangs around City Data all day long. If he likes to do that, why does it matter to you?
Exactly. Do you even like this person? Were you ever really his friend? Rhetorical questions.
Why would it bother someone if a friend hung out here all day? (No, I don't do that, despite what some have said.) But if someone were posting selfies somewhere all day long - kind of at odds with secret, but it can be secret - yes, that would bother me, as addictive in a narcissistic, unproductive way. I like others to have values generally in common with mine.
If I found out a friend/relative was doing unscrupulous things online I would no longer be around them.
What else are they doing even deeper unknown? These people know their behavior will cost them friends and if they knew that I knew what they were doing and I did not drop them then I am not objecting and am supporting their acts. Underage porn is a crime.
If you discovered a real-world friend had a secret, psychologically unhealthy online life - obsessive gaming, trolling, harassing, things like that not crossing over to real life- would you change your behavior toward that friend?
I'm not that, and I have never had a friend like that, as far as I know. But I know that some people like that are socially functional in the real world and not all hermits and mental issues are rampant and often aired out online, so odds are some of you have such friends, whether you know it or not.
I'm not sure what you mean by "not crossing over to real life". The people your hypothetical individual harasses and trolls online are experiencing the harassment as real. But I guess you're saying, that the perpetrator doesn't treat people that way fact-to-face. They behave in a normal fashion.
It's concerning, that the anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in people, or that people feel free to vent and let out their frustrations on strangers online.
It's a good question. And a weird phenomenon.
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Anyhow, I'd never make friends with a QAnon type because we would have absolutely nothing in common.
