9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

As a party in many human relationships (my marriage, my family, my coworkers and my friends), it is sometimes a bit unsettling to compare it to the many online relationships that I have.

It sounds dirty, but it really is innocuous. I am an administrator for a gaming community online… the community is focused primarily around one game with two game servers running that one game 24/7. We have events and activities and an online presence. We also have a dedicated community of about 200-300 players that are pretty much regulars, and another 1000 to 2000 others that have visited our game servers.

Out of the core group, about 15 of us that are the core administration team. We admin the website, the forums and the game servers as well. Our ages range from 16 to the early 40′s. And I have noticed some trends when comparing online exchanges with an exchange you would have in a face-to-face relationship.

1. Emotions are quick to change. Rarely do people have guarded emotional responses online. In a face-to-face conversation, the responses and give and take in the discussion have emotional visual queues that allow us to gauge the other person’s mindset and expected response. Body language, voice stress, etc all play into what we say and how we say it. Not online. Online the emotional queues are amped. Voice chat and text chat include a lot more stress and higher variability in response. Admins tend to take offense much more easily and make rash decisions that obviously are a result of assuming that the offender has little to no maturity. Which is ironic, because that makes the admin seem immature.
2. Opinions don’t matter, yet they do. Politics exist even online. You don’t really care what someone offers in opinion, because a) they seem immature or b) it is not applicable, but in an effort to build community, you have to care. You have to try to build something worthwhile out of their comments, even if it is painful.
3. Youth wins. Adult emotional and mental maturity does not go far in an online community, because the discourse of the community takes the lowest denominator most of the time. And most of the time, especially in a gaming community, the lowest common denominator tends to be a teenager without a job, a girlfriend and plenty of time to blow online. So even the more mature players and admins tend to regress in maturity.

Interesting… how online we all tend to behave as if it was a grade school playground.