Quote Originally Posted by Pax View Post
I disagree. I've met many people from a motorcycle site I frequent, most of them as the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet in real life but on the internet they say incredibly cruel and thoughtless things at times. They've told me it's because they have to "be nice" IRL and the internet gives them opportunity to cut loose.

The anonymity of the internet has managed to offer people the opportunity to behave abominably with limited repercussions. You can be anyone you want to be on the internet, you can say anything and have little fear of it coming back to bite you. For example, I imagine this entire thread would have gone very differently if we were having this discussion in real life.
I'll concede the point to an extent for internet forums such as this and cites like myspace, etc, where strangers are dealing with unknown strangers.

The anonymity is gone on Facebook, however. You register under your real name, friend people you actually know. What you say and do there has real life consequences. People don't (typically) act like they would on a forum. If the above doesn't apply, well, I don't see how very many people are listening to you anyway because not many will friend a stranger on facebook; let alone keep one that turns out to be rude.

I'd also argue that your biker acquaintances aren't really all that "nice" of people anyway; if they are only "nice" because they "have to be" IRL. They just feel they can show their true colors on the internet. That's too bad. If they can't realize (or worse, don't care) that on the other end of the computer is someone that's just as human and hurts just as much as someone standing in front of their face are they really great, awesome people? Even if they hide it well when they talk to someone's face?