Chatrooms ("electronic fight clubs") separate the men from the boys

[emad]

From The Guardian:

Internet chatroom users can be so aggressive that a sociologist studying them has labelled some online communities "electronic fight clubs".According to the new research, even the most laid-back people can erupt into furious rants when debating online, and it's all part of an effort to distinguish themselves from the next user. Some even take on multiple personalities in a bid to outsmart their online acquaintances, while others adopt menacing usernames.

Gordon Fletcher, an information systems lecturer at Salford University, revealed his findings to the British Sociological Association meeting this week. His paper, entitled "Fight Club: culture, conflict and everyday life amongst an online community, focussed on a sociological study of an online finance forum", describes conflict as "a unifying social force that shapes individual participant's relationships with one another".

The research's abstract explains: "Conflict is an important social force among online communities, as it assists in the construction of hierarchies and social orders without the need for prior knowledge of individual participants or other forms of verification or trust in relation to the claimed identity of others."The finance chatrooms that Mr Fletcher studied were made up of stockbrokers and finance buffs, who used pseudonyms such as Moriarty and Xerxes, and repeatedly argued until they established a pattern of social hierarchy. "The hallmark observation of this forum was the regularity with which conflict occurred among the members," Mr Fletcher told the Times Higher Education Supplement. "These people are coming together because they have a common interest, but that doesn't necessarily mean they want to be friends with one another," he added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1178589,00.html


Clearly Mr Fletcher has not encountered DU's fearless Mods and their conflict management strategies, hehe.....

[Kipper58]

1. I like the part about multiple personalities -

In my time here I've noticed a distinct pattern in some of the threads of the same group of user names appearing together within a few posts of each other. I'll name no names, but suffice to say that if anyone criticises Israeli actions, study the thread and it soon becomes obvious!

[emad]

3. Re: DU interest groups

The Israel grouping is significant, as is the Catholic grouping that explodes into rabid apoplexy each time the biz of links with the Mafia, bent banks, money laundering, Irish terrorism, US-funding of Irish terrorists (both Catholic and Prot), US child sex abuse scandals etc etc is in the news.......In fact religion seems to be the No1 hotspot for clique mentality to erupt into fight club talk...

[Kolesar]

2. Even the Usenet Newsgroups were taken over by a**holes a decade ago

You know,--conservatives. I would be in a newsgroup about sailboats and some dumbshit would start a flaming antiClinton thread.

I have a theory that the most impulsive, spendthrift morons were the first people to plunk down $4000 for an 80486 PC, buy dialup service, and then go online and start raising hell. My point here is that in 1992, it was hardly worth that kind of money just to have access to USENET or the limited offerings of the world-wide-web, but some people considered it was worth it to spend that kind of money just to amuse themselves.

[emad]

4. So happy they clubbed together and founded Free Republic!

a natural roosting ground that evolved from your admirable analysis of bizarre behaviour when Bush 1 got throuwn out of the W H ....

[charlie]

5. AOL

One-note conservative knuckledraggers were around before, but the 1993 hookup from AOL added a tsunami of shitheads that turned Usenet into a hopeless moshpit.

[htuttle]

6. Yup. I remember that dark day....

The internet was a whole different animal before the AOLers were let loose on the net. Usenet became useless within a few weeks after that date.

[AlienGirl]

12. The September that Never Ended

[Kolesar]

7. I was only barely familiar with AOL at that time

So you probably have the timing right, it would have been 1993.

[tjwash]

17. I sort of enjoy ready extreme RW posts on usenet.

It's just that the anonymity of the medium exposes the black hearts of the conservative movement for the extreme garbage that it really is. The group "talk.politics.misc" is the worst of the worst there. I have educated a lot of fence sitters, and possibly helped push them to the dem side by taking them there, and scanning through the posts with them.

Seeing such uncensored gems as "they vote with their snatches" in regards to women, and "Get serious!, I could give a rat’s ass about a bunch of worthless minorities and faggots living around downtown somewhere, yet alone some ignorant sand niggers on the other side of the world. Praise god!", and my personal favorite "Not only don’t I care, I am proud as Hell I don’t care! I are not like them; I am a real American who is damn sick and tired of being forced to share what I worked hard for with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, EVER! The other guy can go to Hell". Causes many an eye to open up.

Lately, TPM has been flooded with libertarians. It's hard to tell the difference nowadays between libertarians, and neo-cons, but a clue is the words I, ME, MY, or MINE, in every post. Ex. "It's MY money why should I take ONE RED CENT away from ME or MINE to help some poor welfare trash crack whore

TPM is like freerepublic cubed.

[whatelseisnew]

14. You need a dose of cynicism and a more suspicious approach

UseNet was a threat and a useful tool, all the hallmarks of a well

funded psy-ops campaign.

George Orwell was not just making stuff up, he was recording

his observations.

[sweetheart]

8. I don't know if i agree on how the author sees conflict

I think conflicting views, when discussed without hatred or violence
make for the most interesting learning, FOR THE 3rd person, and
sometimes take antagonistic positions for that purpose. If i was
writing for myself, i'd not be online. Even the most noble view,
unchallenged, makes for a boring sinker thread.

Does that make a social order? Methinks not. It makes people think
and challenge dogma, framing and embedded views more thoroughly, and
leaves people, long having forgotten the individual user-names of
the discussion... invigorated.

[Kolesar]

9. that was a really boring response

...just funnin'...

[sweetheart]

10. I'm disappointed with the shallow

nature of their perception of the web and these "chatrooms"... and
perhaps they should use DU, or the old records of UK online at the
british library to see a more social forum... finance is hardly
a social forum.

Some people choose a moniker and live up to it, as if an author
writing a character. "snail" is one i encountered elsewhere. The
poster would hit a thread and respond to every post, like when
you go in to your garden and find snail slime all over a plant...
The in-character writers make a complexity beyond basic fight club..
and i think the author thinks it as adversarial, by the very
nature of "fight club".

My favorite with online flag-cult members, is getting them angry
and spewing what "they REALLY think". This leaves the 3rd party
reader able to cut in to the propaganda basis of RW psychosis, that
by exposure, like a cockroach, they cannot survive the light.

I guess thats the difference in social objectives between "being
right", and "eliciting knowledge", or "uncovering knowledge"... or
"education" as purposes for interacting online... even speaking up
where you cannot in real life, is a more complex social motivation
than fight club... and i think this has bypassed the study for
lack of a better forum to study.

[Beam Me Up]

11. you've obviously given this a lot of thought

and observation. I was going to say, perhaps you should share your ideas with the author of the story. Then I thought, nah. . .Last thing we need is a cybersociologist analyzing and writing about DU!

[Runcible Spoon]

15. awww come on now

I wanted for a long time to write a piece on DUers "reframing" of political discourse, in the spirit of George Lakoff's work. Then again, I'm an anthropologist, NOT a sociologist! *sniff*

[everythingsxen]

13. *gasp* People fighting on the internet?? I'm shocked!

Did he do his research at http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame1.html ?

I think he did. :P

Regardless, I enjoy fighting on the internet, despite the.. *ahem* less than PC euphamism regarding that.

[Buns_of_Fire]

16. He studied stockbrokers and finance buffs?

"The finance chatrooms that Mr Fletcher studied were made up of stockbrokers and finance buffs..."

I see how he came to his conclusions. Them finance types are a fiesty bunch! Cross an accountant, prepare to get :nuke:

;-)