Posted on 11/28/2006 6:48:55 AM PST by shrinkermd
...If so, we are all crazy now. There is something about the Web that brings out the ego monster in everybody. It's not just the well-established tendency to be nasty. When you write for the Web, you open yourself up to breathtakingly vicious vitriol. People wish things on your mother, simply for bearing you, that you wouldn't wish on Hitler.
But even in their quieter modes, denizens of the Web seem to lug around huge egos and deeply questionable assumptions about how interesting they and their lives might be to others.
This is strange. Anonymity, for better or for worse, is supposed to be one of the signature qualities of the Web...
...But anonymity does not actually seem to interest many of the Web's most devoted users. They are the ones who start their own sites or sign up for MySpace or submit videos to YouTube. Indeed, the most successful Web sites seem to be those where people can abandon anonymity and use the Internet to stake their claims as unique individuals. Here is a list of my friends. Here are all the CDs in my collection. Here is a picture of my dog. On the Internet, not only does everybody know that you're a dog, everybody knows what kind of dog, how old, your taste in collars, your favorite dog food recipe and so on.
Social networking sites such as MySpace (for which Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million last year) are vast celebrations of solipsism. "My interests are music, girls, sports, clothes, cars and oo did i forget to mention girls," writes Lex... Or is this blond...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Can we talk about me for a change?
Okay, you got me. LOL here.
But I'm laughing AT you not with you.
(There. That's better. That was close. I'm series.)
The peasants have taken to printing and the reading of books!
I have to agree with this to degree. Particularly in the case of forums that spring up merely to give malcontents a place to vent. At Jews, at FR, at Conservatives, at whomever they perceive as "the enemy." You gotta believe that these are deeply frustrated people, who wish they could beat up on their bosses, or wives, or the guy passing out unemployment checks. But of course they can't, and in truth they are cowards. Yet on the web, in their little fiefdoms, in their own little three-ring circus, they reign. They can be as abusive, mean, smug and vindictive as they please. They are enabled by their anonymity. Course in truth they are like the lone character in Edvard Munch's Scream...wailing into the abyss. But they think they are very important! And they are...in their make-believe world. :)
HA!!
True, true.
And I'm certain they miss the day when an Editor got to cherry pick what appeared in the "Letters To The Editor" & how said letter would be phrased, also.
As an old Psych prof used to say, "Too bad...
...How sad." :o)
Could be worse. Could be...
This should be required reading for some of the Attention Whores here.
That having been said, don't post to me. :)
Years ago, david duke, the comrade of senator byrd, was on tv with kinsley and called him, "a pencil-neck geek" a term that mikey had earned and was very descriptive.
The word solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is used for two related yet distinct concepts:
An epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world that is, the source of one's perceptions therefore cannot be conclusively known; it may not even exist. This is also called external world skepticism.
A metaphysical belief that the universe is entirely the creation of one's own mind. Thus, in a sense, the belief that nothing 'exists' outside of one's own mind.
A professor I knew while in college constantly spoke about this concept in relation to his own viewpoints. He was/is an extreme and devout liberal. Figures that someone of his mindset would believe in his own self-importance in claiming nothing exists but for what he says exists.
Poor Mike. First he sleeps with Mo Dowd then he turns up gay.
Let that be a warning to all.
And no one ever bothers to look him up in Who's Who anymore after he paid all that money to get in.
They are enabled by their perceived anonymity.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who dig up trash about others on the internet think that trash about them cannot be found in the same manner.
HEY! If you sing like that I'll talk about YOU too! ;-)
I look & sing just like him. LMAO!!
The people who try in the first place are pathetic clown scum.
I do think its difficult to raise children in a day and age when we are being led to believe that every little single thought that meanders through their mind is equally important.
Wait. Did I just say that out loud?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.