Where's the Beef?

origial print: 2/5/08

Long ago, before people had Myspace and camera phones, when someone had a qualm with someone else, they were forced to deal with it face to face, or at least through a convoluted web of other people they've influenced.

That is not so today.

Thanks to the networking power of the internet ruining the life of another person over a minor squabble can be done in the comfort of your own home or in less than five minutes.

Sadly people have gotten wise and many are paying the price, but WHY?

I have never understood why people take things said over the internet to heart.

Message boards and newsgroups have always been, and most likely will always be popular on the internet.

They are one of the easiest ways to connect with people, drawing in people from all walks of life, age ranges and beliefs. It's no wonder that people or "fonts" clash from time to time.

What does leave me bewildered is that fact that some people log off and go to sleep at night angry about what a person they've never met and have no personal ties to, said about them on the internet.

It leaves an even more bitter taste in my mouth when I read about adults acting like catty pre-teen girls and squabble so distastefully and publicly.

In my opinion, there is something wrong with a person that can have actual malice against a figure they've complied in their head from a screen name.

If you can't even be sure what the gender of the person you are e-fighting with is, does it really matter what they say?

Are you really going to drive across the country in a diaper to smack them in the mouth because they pointed out your poor grammar, or made fun of your social standards?

If you've answer "yes" to that question, then you not only need to get off of the 'net, you need to get into a padded room.

When the e-fight stop being entertaining , and let's face it they always start out pretty good, at the end of the day it's sad to see two people that could have been friends have so much hatred for each other.

Even worse when people use the internet against someone they used to call a friend.

I'm sure everyone is now familiar with the case of the Myspace suicide which involved a young girl being tricked by the parents of another girl into thinking a handsome boy liked her, only to kill herself when the adults controlling the fake account berated and ridiculed her.

Sometimes words hurt, even though they shouldn't be taken seriously.

You may never know what kind of impact your words may have on another human being.

What might roll off your back might permanently scar another.

It doesn't take that much effort to dig for embarassing photo of someone as cams malfunction, people make poor choices about what sort of pics to put on Facebook or Myspace, and hell sometimes it "just seemed like a good idea at the time."

Posting those in the right places at the right time can be a pretty effective weapon against another person… but why bother?

Will you feel better at the end of the day?

Will it make the world a better place?

NO.

It usually only escalates situations that could easily be squashed if the two parties talked like civil adults.

Besides…the other person was most likely just in it for the "lulz" anyway.

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