the_true_iori
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Mon, 01 Apr 2013 02:17:52 +0000
If statistics are to be believed, there are just under 27 million registered accounts on Gaia; that's roughly the population of Texas. Let's say half of those are bots (which I believe is being generous) that still leaves 13.5 million users (about 3 times larger than L.A and significantly larger than New York City).
Now the average mortality rate for people under the age of 65 (I'm going to assume that the majority of Gaian's aren't that old) in New York is about 17 thousand. Gaia has been around for 10 years now so it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that a large portion of Gaians are no longer alive.
This raises an interesting issue; it's a reasonably well established fact that larger, more globalized communities create desensitization among community members in the physical world. I imagine that a similar trend would exist on online communities. It seems to me that, too often, we forget that there is a living, breathing person behind the aesthetically pleasing, healthy avatars that we interact with.
The whole, Gaian's are dead' thing isn't my main point however; desensitization is. The lack of courtesy that can be observed between users is staggering. I've seen users complimented for flaming another person because their opinion differed with the majority and I have more than once seen people tell another user to 'just go kill yourself' (owtte). It is my opinion that the GCD is a stagnant hugbox full of oversensitive regulars intent to spend their time patting one another on the back. This oversensitivity means that there probably ARE a non-ignorable amount of users who are or have at one point been suicidal. I am willing to bet that at least one user on Gaia has killed themself because of something that another user has said to them.
I'm curious as to when you personally think it's okay to insult someone. If you believe that it is never okay to insult someone, when do you eventually crack and insult them anyway? Do you think this is a particular problem on Gaia that moderation and administration should try to address or do you think that there are perhaps other problems (scammers/hackers, the economy, user interface issues, updates to stores etc..) that are more important?
I anticipate a lot of 'well it's human nature' responses and would just like to let you know right off the bat that you are wrong. There are few if any documented studies that have, in any way, shown that humans are jerks without provocation. There are both psychological and evolutionary perspectives as to why altruism (ie: being nice or charitable toward others) is a good thing. If you disagree and want to be taken seriously by me I expect some sort of evidence to support your point(s).
As a somewhat interesting subtopic for those who have no desire to respond to the main or initial discussion; what are some interesting thoughts you have had or have heard about on Gaia that you don't actually realize until you think about them (ie: a lot of accounts belong to dead children who will never log in again)? Do you think that it's important or even interesting to recognize these types of issues or, since they have played no baring in your Gaian life up until now, they can be ignored and you can continue on exactly as you have earlier?
Now the average mortality rate for people under the age of 65 (I'm going to assume that the majority of Gaian's aren't that old) in New York is about 17 thousand. Gaia has been around for 10 years now so it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that a large portion of Gaians are no longer alive.
This raises an interesting issue; it's a reasonably well established fact that larger, more globalized communities create desensitization among community members in the physical world. I imagine that a similar trend would exist on online communities. It seems to me that, too often, we forget that there is a living, breathing person behind the aesthetically pleasing, healthy avatars that we interact with.
The whole, Gaian's are dead' thing isn't my main point however; desensitization is. The lack of courtesy that can be observed between users is staggering. I've seen users complimented for flaming another person because their opinion differed with the majority and I have more than once seen people tell another user to 'just go kill yourself' (owtte). It is my opinion that the GCD is a stagnant hugbox full of oversensitive regulars intent to spend their time patting one another on the back. This oversensitivity means that there probably ARE a non-ignorable amount of users who are or have at one point been suicidal. I am willing to bet that at least one user on Gaia has killed themself because of something that another user has said to them.
I'm curious as to when you personally think it's okay to insult someone. If you believe that it is never okay to insult someone, when do you eventually crack and insult them anyway? Do you think this is a particular problem on Gaia that moderation and administration should try to address or do you think that there are perhaps other problems (scammers/hackers, the economy, user interface issues, updates to stores etc..) that are more important?
I anticipate a lot of 'well it's human nature' responses and would just like to let you know right off the bat that you are wrong. There are few if any documented studies that have, in any way, shown that humans are jerks without provocation. There are both psychological and evolutionary perspectives as to why altruism (ie: being nice or charitable toward others) is a good thing. If you disagree and want to be taken seriously by me I expect some sort of evidence to support your point(s).
As a somewhat interesting subtopic for those who have no desire to respond to the main or initial discussion; what are some interesting thoughts you have had or have heard about on Gaia that you don't actually realize until you think about them (ie: a lot of accounts belong to dead children who will never log in again)? Do you think that it's important or even interesting to recognize these types of issues or, since they have played no baring in your Gaian life up until now, they can be ignored and you can continue on exactly as you have earlier?