| Jeff Abrahamson on 11 Jun 2004 17:16:02 -0000 |
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On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 09:31:29AM -0700, Matthew Ozor wrote: > [47 lines, 197 words, 1547 characters] Top characters: _tnoeils > > So you are going to tell me that pointing out > locations on the keyboard isn't insulting and is in > fact a starting point to intresting converations. Some people on the net have different ways of perceiving social interactions than what I'll loosely call society at large. In some groups (such as programmers) this has been known to be accentuated. Indeed, some folks on this particular list have a way of phrasing things that can appear offensive or caustic until you get to know them. If you ask them five minutes after they write something, though, they'd probably disclaim any emotional content to what they were writing. I use the third person, but I'm sure I'm not immune myself. It's probably helpful to ignore things that appear to be impolite or condescending, in the same way it's worth ignoring spelling and grammar mistakes. If someone really didn't like you or thought you unworthy of their attention, they surely wouldn't waste their time. The truly geeky sometimes have a strange way of helping out, but we mean well. I'm sorry you took offense. I'll even agree that some of what you found offensive read a similar way to me, too. Perhaps I just have more empathy from having made too many mistakes myself, but I don't think we will change people through conflict. If I may be so childish as to propose an odd metaphor, I think of it like pickles in brine. I like pickles, but the brine is pretty distasteful to me. But I know that pickle venders are like that, so I just take the pickles, letting the brine drip off, forgetting almost immediately that all that salt and vinegar surrounded it in the first place. -- Jeff Jeff Abrahamson <http://www.purple.com/jeff/> GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276 63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B A cool book of games, highly worth checking out: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931686963/purple-20 Attachment:
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