re: #100 Bagua

You ask a good question, the two phenomena are connected. Both their compulsion to leave when then they disagree with what the blog owner is doing and their need to later regress to an infantile hostility are symptoms of their underlying emotional and intellectual immaturity, naturally there is narcissism involved as well, thus a desire for attention and acceptance.

There is something very strange about it. Some of it is the normal weirdness that happens online, where people are shed of their identities. The anonymity makes it easy for people to be cruel to each other, but it also makes it very easy for people to create and project their own psychological needs and fantasies onto other people. Often they are rage-filled fantasies. That’s why people develop something like hate for other people, who they don’t even know at all— just an internet persona.

And some people are using their persona as a subsitute for real life. That’s why they have all these fantasies about how ‘unfair’ it is that they’re banned and scream about how they deserve to ‘defend’ themselves. From what? It’s a big internet. Start your own blog.

And some people use the community here as a substitute for real community. That’s why they’re tortured by the idea of people here thinking badly of them.

Suppose I got banned and completely unfairly and in teh worst way possible— suppose CJ announced my IP proved I was the founder of StormFront, or something like that. Just made a mistake or someone gave him bad info or whatever.

Obviously I’d be hurt and upset. Suppose I emailed him and he didn’t answer.

i still wouldn’t be over at 2.0, or starting a site called “CJ is a poopy-head”, or crying about my ‘internet reputation’ or ‘defending myself’. I already have the emails of people here I’m close with, and they’re not internet relationships but offline as well. It wouldn’t matter to my life, or change my opinion of the site or CJ. There’s something very weird about the people who can’t move on.