6 things on the Internet that people misunderstand

Now it is fashionable to talk about cheating on the Internet. We constantly read and hear about misinformation, fakes and all sorts of manipulations. Yes, it is very useful to know what are the methods of deception and manipulation. Know and confront them. Well, or know and use.

But I want to talk not about deception from the outside, but about deception from within. That is, about self-deception.
')
Specifically, about self-deception which arises from a misunderstanding of what, how and why is happening on the Internet.

1) You do not control the situation

On the Internet, a stream of fragmentary information rushes past us. You can say a lot of fair words to people who do not want to get to the bottom of the details, but every day their guilt is less and less.

The technological reality in which the modern user of a different type communicates with “smart tapes” and non-obvious sortings. I have repeatedly come across a situation where Facebook sent me a notification of the answer in some discussion, but the link sent did not lead to a specific comment.

If we also add mail antispam to these “smart” sorting mechanisms and notifications, then we will have to admit the complete impossibility of treating the absence of an answer as a property of a person.

No, do not celebrate victory in the dispute. It is possible that you did not pin down your interlocutor with an iron argument, after which he merged from the discussion.
It is possible that he simply did not receive notification of your replica. Or vice versa - he answered, and the notification did not come to you.

2) You do not hear the interlocutor.

I am not talking about the case when “listening, but not hearing,” but about verbal communication. Smileys are no substitute for intonations, and capturing on smartphones is not so easy.

The well-known “Aha, of course” is a negation only if it is supported by intonation, and this is a usual statement and pleonasm (well, or how it is correctly called).

Therefore, when confronted with a person on the Internet for the first time, it is impossible to determine whether he speaks his opinion or teases a person with whom he does not agree.

What do we read: real opinion or irony, sarcasm, quote? During the sound communication, we would hear changes in the style of speech to pathetic, mocking, or imitating the film character, when communicating with letters over the Internet, we do not have this luxury.

You remain one on one your own preconceptions about the interlocutor and the desire to see in his words what you need.

3) You see only part of the communication

Now I’m not talking about a purely social aspect, when people can conduct a thorough discussion of the same issue in different places.

No, this is a technical fact of parallel communication. The user can lead a discussion on the forum or on the social network, while privately talking on the same topic in some kind of messenger. In such a situation, one of the leading private communication may ask his interlocutor to copy his remark into a public conversation. Just to ensure that everything important was in one place and did not have to look for the right cue for different programs and services.

This is exactly the technical feature of Internet communication, because the author of the copied text does not need to repeat it by voice, rewrite it by hand or re-write it - you can simply copy it in one place and paste it into another.

From the point of view of an outside observer, this looks like the sudden appearance of a message going beyond the general flow of discussion.

In such situations, try to make an effort and not rush immediately to smash this idiot. Perhaps you see only a part of someone else's communication.

(Another variant of this self-deception is a request for a purely technical action - checking the permeability of a message or something else. Such technical messages may be familiar, caustic or, on the contrary, primitive. A third-party observer who is not aware of the request for technical comment transmitted through other channels, may misunderstand the appearance of an obscene comment. :))

4) You overestimate your own worth

Once I watched an extremely funny situation. Several LiveJournal users noticed the clearly coordinated activity of the bots. They found that their "guest list" contains the same set of guests. The joy of these users was great - the Russian government threw against them their choice forces from the boto-farm. They encouraged each other, discussed possible motives of the Insidious Enemy and were very proud of their own importance.

No, not "morons", but people who do not know the concept of "referral spam." This phenomenon is well known to website owners, but not obvious to ordinary users.

No, these “guests” in LiveJournal were not interested in what you wrote - these are robots that reacted to the very fact of your activity. Once you have written something today, then tomorrow you will go to check who read your text. Having seen an unfamiliar user there, you can go, maybe subscribe.

Therefore, do not flatter yourself about the appearance of "guests" of the opposite sex in Odnoklassniki, do not swell with the importance of the appearance of "guests" after you write a posting on a political topic and do not take pride in the instagram your photo with the hashtag # Great Ustyug two great shops and a beauty salon . This is just spam - nothing personal.

5) You are looking for meaning where it is not

This item is somewhat similar to the previous one, but still not identical to it.

A year ago, in RuNet, a text appeared exposing "scientific" groups in Vkontakte, which were not very scientific. In these groups were funny pictures, jokes, astral canoe and all sorts of fashionable things. As so, the authors of the accusations lamented, the theme about science is stated, but this topic is not followed.

Clever, it seems, seriously perceived thematic content projects, whose main and only task is to show ads and generate revenue for the owners. For the creators of such projects, the stated topic is not very important; their creation and management is just technology. Today it is “science”, tomorrow - “technology”, then some kind of positive world view, personal effectiveness, etc. Inside, there will be the same cats, cakes, jokes and other garbage, and only occasionally something containing keywords from the stated topic.

Do you have in mind a site or group that is worth publicly shamed for bad materials and deviations from the topic?

Before spending time and nerves, take a closer look at them more closely, perhaps this is just a topical content project, and its authors will not be ashamed of it - they will be glad for additional PR.

6) You look into the void

Completing the list of self-deception item, which is a perfect example of a demonstration of what leads to a misunderstanding of the realities of the Internet.

There is a group in Facebook where people have fun over other people's mistakes - typos, wording, etc. Have fun and discuss how this or that error occurred. They are very competent and proud of it.

Not so long ago, they very actively discussed the inconsistency of the proposal found by them on the site consisting of synonymous texts. Yes, they took seriously the texts on the auto-generated dustbin. Google’s robots no longer take such texts seriously, but they are not robots, but people who want to find meaning where it is simply not intended. And they found him.

It was a strange sight — a discussion of grammatical errors in a synonymized text. Funny, but strange.

And instructive, because I myself am the same.

I can rush into battle without seeing the whole situation, I can take the joke seriously, I can rejoice at the bot from the bot and get angry at the content-project on the topic of interest to me.

But you do not have to be so at all.