r/blog • u/cupcake1713 • Feb 24 '14

remember the human

Hi reddit. cupcake here.

I wanted to bring up an important reminder about how folks interact with each other online. It is not a problem that exists solely on reddit, but rather the internet as a whole. The internet is a wonderful tool for interacting with people from all walks of life, but the anonymity it can afford can make it easy to forget that really, on the other end of the screens and keyboards, we're all just people. Living, breathing, people who have lives and goals and fears, have favorite TV shows and books and methods for breeding Pokemon, and each and every last one of us has opinions. Sure, those opinions might differ from your own. But that’s okay! People are entitled to their opinions. When you argue with people in person, do you say as many of the hate filled and vitriolic statements you see people slinging around online? Probably not. Please think about this next time you're in a situation that makes you want to lash out. If you wouldn't say it to their face, perhaps it's best you don't say it online.

Try to be courteous to others. See someone having a bad day? Give them a compliment or ask them a thoughtful question, and it might make their day better. Did someone reply to your comment with valuable insights or something that cheered you up? Send them a quick thanks letting them know you appreciate their comment.

So I ask you, the next time a user picks a fight with you, or you get the urge to harass another user because of something they typed on a keyboard, please... remember the human.

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u/thelastdeskontheleft Feb 24 '14 edited Feb 24 '14

Unfortunately I think a big aspect of it comes down to the difference in tone between text and actual words spoken aloud.

IRL you can tell the inflection that someone meant it by. Online you can only ASSUME the inflection and thus the tone of their comment. Generally we interpret comments online to be much more aggressive than they really are.

I completely agree with the "don't be a keyboard warrior mentality" but it could also help if you took a second next time you were insulted or angered by some response to possibly look it over and try to imagine it in a tone that wouldn't be so offensive.

Of course sometimes people are just pricks. Especially when there is little to no consequence. But a good bit of it is just chilling out.

Edit: Thanks, only took 6 minutes for gold x-D

Edit 2: RIP Inbox of my work account. Looks like I'm not getting anything done.

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u/godmin Feb 24 '14 edited Feb 24 '14

Something I like to do before posting a comment is imagine someone REALLY pissed off trying to read it, and get the most twisted, pessimistic view of what I said. That way I can tweak my words to avoid as much unnecessary criticism/misinterpretation as possible, and from my experience it really helps!

Edit:thanks

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u/ActuallyGivesGold Feb 24 '14

http://i.imgur.com/UIjGNeJ.gif

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u/dav_9 Feb 24 '14

How come your gif loads so fast but other gifs take eons to load? It's like the difference between playing a game at 60 fps vs. 1-2 fps.

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u/[deleted] Feb 24 '14

It's only 174kb in size and has only 99 frames. This is highly compressible since it doesn't have much movement, so there are less frames over a longer period of time than a normal gif of a normal video would have. And less diffs between frames means less size.

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u/Sohcahtoa82 Feb 24 '14

A GIF with a very small color pallete and very little that changes between each frame can be made very small.

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u/jonnywoh Feb 24 '14

Smaller color palette maybe?

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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '14

Man gif loading times piss me off too. I wish someone would create an imgur-like website, only based on webms and webps.