I believe that children are the future...

Reparented from another thread:

I had the pleasure of bumping into the first "graduate" from the Teen Grid in-game the other day who quite effectively demolished some of my preconceptions about TG and the kids who play there. I formed some of my false beliefs in a 2.5 day stint in There (which I will categorically deny if pressed ) before I found SL.

According to this player, conduct in TG is both generally well spoken and polite. Moreover, he reported that it was not out of fear of the hand of "god" but that kids who have grown up in a world where global communications are common act more like civil people in RL do, because for them, there is no relevant distinction. This was very heartening.

I remarked at the time that it was somewhat reminiscent of what happens when cultures having different languages are drawn together for some reason. The first generation of adults will usually form a pidgin language which is a hodge-podge of words from the two languages sufficient to live together but lacking complexity. Interestingly, the children born into the merged society invent a "creole" all on their own which is based on the pidgin they learned but has higher grammatical complexity, contains tenses and moods absent in the pidgin, etc.

Another related phenomenon is that as a child of the 70s, I was taught that "racism is bad" because it is, and race relations was a very important part of the social discourse then. I learned the lesson so well that I often fear that I am in danger of being overly solicituous of people of different races in order to show that I am not a racist (yes, I know that is a kind of bigotry, and if I could do otherwise I would; try not to think of a pink elephant before you condemn me). My young child however, has grown up in a world where there was no need to inculcate "racism is bad" as she simply doesn't view it as a relevant distinction any more than one does, say, eye-color. She's not blind to differences, she just doesn't care.

As to the "benevolence" of the Internet, part of that can be ascribed to its academic origins and tenor that academics need to adopt while disagreeing in order that all academics would not have killed each other by now. However, the internet was not a rosy utopia by 1996 or even 1986. There was this thing called USENET which was already in common use by at least 1983. For you young'uns out there, think "forums" as viewed on a 80x24 character ASCII display terminal. Not only were flamewars invented there, they could rage like wildfires. Indeed somewhere around 1986 Brad Templeton (ironically also known as "Bad Temperton" created the fictious and seminal advice column Dear Emily Postnews thus coining the concept of "netiquette". Having just reread the column again, I'm amazed at how applicable it still is. A couple of my personal favorites are the answers to:

1. Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do?
   
2. Q: Emily, I'm a man. how should I treat the women who post to the [forums]?
   
3. Q: What is the measure of a worthwhile [thread]?
   
4. Q: Emily, I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for his removal from the [forums] and phoning his employer to get him fired. Everybody laughed at me. What can I do?
   

An interesting sidenote is that spelling flames seem to have gone the way of the dodo, so there *is* hope.

I hate kids, they have sticky hands and like to touch me accidently with said sticky hands in airports.

Interestingly, my friend who transferred to the teen grid from the main grid a few weeks ago has this to say about MG vs TG:



Our perceptions of the grid are colored by the people we meet. I am lucky to have met some very fun people.

Agreed, I've seen much the same thing. Which is as it should be IMO.




LOL. So long since I've seen that, thanks for posting it. Even before USENET became more known to the public, you saw very simlar things on BBSs as you might remember. Same personality type and behaviors whether just local to a single BBS or Area Code of BBSs...or over distributed message systems like FIDONET. For me this would have been back in 1983. Though on the BBSs, Flamers and Abusers usually were usually delt with by either groups of SYSOPs banning people from their boards who had developed a reputation for being trolls (or whatever we called them back then), or by overwhelming barrages being heaped on them by all the other BBS regulars.

There was a particularly interesting reponse to abusers and trolls that a few local SYSOPs I know who modified their own BBS code employed. It was a setting on the User Account called the "Twit Bit". Once set, any and all public messages posted by the troll would be run through a text filter that would translate their messages into, for example, VallyGirlSpeak or SwedishChefSpeak or PigLatin when displayed. That reponse actually made having troll around quite amusing as I recall.

Ok, I'm done now.

Alexin (having a geritol moment)

I would argue that the congeniality and friendliness that currently pervades the TG now isn't a result of some new cultural paradigm...

The Main Grid was the EXACT same way when it was small.

The TG has what, maybe 1000 folks at most right now? All early adopters, all wide-eyed and bushy tailed about changing the world and such.
Sounds like the early days of SL. Back then, everyone was exceedingly friendly, you could literally drop in on anyone and make a friend. Everyone was helping each other out, there wasn't the spectre of making money or dwell or hating your neighbors.

Nowadays if you drop in on someone, you're just as likely to walk in on a bondage scene, be shot at, or be cursed out of the Sim.

Witness in action, the Inverse Law of Online Spaces: The quality of an online community is inversely proportional to its popularity.

Lemme know when the TG hits 20,000, then we'll see how friendly it all is.

LF

Ahhh Usenet - where KoTM yet reigns and The Cabal (TiNC) has things well in hand.

I hear Palmjob is still active, though... not yet perfect. (grin)

Edit to add -- here's an interesting thought.... what if we had our own KiBo?

I have to agree with this

Small towns have always tended to be more civil and neighborly than big cities also.

As much as people may cry about it-

The internet has not fundamentally changed human nature.

There are some who say this has already happened.

Absolutely and totally agreed.

However, human nature has its good and bad sides and it is possible for certain technologies to cause alienation and isolation (hypothetical examples: superhighways, television) while others could, in principle, increase connectedness and extended community (hypothetical examples: pubs, rotarians, internet). As others - even LF - have noted above, expression of human nature can and does vary according to context. All I was saying was that there may be a fundamental shift in context that has occured in our lifetimes.

I am reporting this thread because every time I see the title it puts Whitney Houston on repeat in my brain until I'm ready to smoke crack.



Well, smoke more crack than usual.

Yum!

Word. It's far easier to be get away with being a jerk in New York City than in Smalltown USA (pop. 520).

Gross generalization to follow: I shudder to think what the TG will be like when there are 10,000 l33t d3wds running around. There may be mature reasonable <18's out there but I've never met one, not even when I was one.

Academics are not as restrained as one might think--I have been privy to committee meetings that make the forums look like backstage at "Up With People."

Mal, what you have posted is, in my opinion, so important. So, so, so important. This has been labled 'intellectual grandstanding,' but the elevation of rhetoric (not for self-importance, but for clarity) actually aids the communicative process.

As a person who has arrived on the technology scene woefully late, I can say that some sense of history is absolutely key to deciphering the present and, possibly, to predicting the future.

Like you!

I peaked over my sons shoulder last night and found young ladies giving lap dances for money.

Now see, there's a small intimate, friendly teen grid for you!

Ok, Beau, spill it. How did you handle that one?

I explained to him that just like with everything on the internet, there are activities I would rather him not take part in and lap dances were not the reason got him involved in SL. I talked about the many things to learn from SL. Of course I am sure it went in one ear and out the other. I also mentioned if it were mom who saw that, she probably would make him shut down the game for good. I did investigate the chat a little. And even though there was a half naked AV shaking her rear end, the chat itself was really harmless.

At 13 I was stealing my dads hardcore porno magazines. So if all he is seeing is an AV in underwear, how worried should I really get?

Worried? No, not in my opinion (For what that is worth around here . ) In light of your previous thread on teens and SL love, I did wonder how this incident influenced your thoughts and if you touched upon the distinction between SL and RL. I mean, your reaction would different if you happened upon a young girl dancing in her underwear for your son irl, of course.

Some food for thought questions as well. What do you think your reponse would be if you found your son earning his way in SL by dancing for teh ladies? And what if you came upon their avatars "working on some new pose balls" he used his newly acquired SL skills to create?

I just remembered and liked this quote from your other thread.

It was more like this "Dad look at this she is giving lap dances that is so funny"

So thats the main reason I was not worried.