This is mostly an excerpted IRC session - you should come and join us there sometime.

Shp: Thing is that those players gert tarred by people calling them young - which is farcical - i know plenty of immature games players who are older than me they tend to go on chat rooms and try and start fights and call everyone in the rooms geeks. And make out they are some kind of cool people who go out clubbing and stuff and just play games for fun.
Vitenka: It's tarring the people who are really young but that's ok - it's just another word switch the only possible meaning of 'age' on the net is percieved age through their actions, ie. maturity.

Vitenka: well - it's an inclusion/exclusion thing they are excluded from real interaction (because they are idiots or whatever) and thus turn around, and exclude everyone else, form groups.. etc. it's more a society split - those inside each group want rid of the other side except, of cours,e that they also desperately search for recognition. What was that article? 'if you cant be famous - be infamous'
Shp: its a reject/acceptable member of society thing. If you cant be famous, go play half-life.

Vitenka: Compare it to physical reality - remove most of the threat of retaliation. Now, assuming everyone wants to get their ego stroked, what do they do? And can you just wall off all of the 'less successful' people?
Shp: no but you can have a damn good job trying. I mean - the famous is pretty much the upper class of the 21st century. They consider us benathe them and we consider them above us.
Vitenka: ah - there's a difference to the online world. The unwashed masses DON'T consider people to be 'above' them. The majority just slag everyone off, and if they are better, they 'got lucky' or whatever.
Shp: Its like being a local folk singer everyone in town knows you but very little people elsewhere do.
Vitenka: makes sense. So - it's not like a single city, it's more a whole load of small towns, and an almost completely transitory population?
Shp: I consider the global village thing to be the besst description but with lots of crowds.
Vitenka: shp - good point, a lot of people stick together, but migrate. So, tribes of gypsies? The people who migrate tend to dislike the people who stay, however short a time.

Vitenka: there are LOTS of enclaves of people. People are just people. Sometimes they join wandering tribes, sometimes they wander alone, and sometimes they stay. But the identity of a person is usually either a tribe, a wanderer or settled.
Shp: But what about people that spread themselves thinly around all their old sttlements?
Vitenka: yeah, there's the trouble, even the settled are in multiple places at once :) You could say that those places are 'close together' in some sense and that you move about between them easily, so are 'sorta' settled :)
Shp: Its like popping round your mates tribe

Vitenka: right, tribes form alliances, and hatreds (pf forums vs catacombs, frex) Although, oddly, no-one seems to mind people being on BOTH sides of such a divide.
if we are narowing this down to irc, then the channels are your m8s street, the pm his house, the server his town.
Vitenka: IRC is a very small slice of 'the community' But there's a good example, we say 'the halflife community' and 'the quake' community' and they have seperate places to be - but a heck of a lot of those people are in both
Shp: you have people who dont real time chat at all besides games. And some are in neither; the unreal community, or rts boys etc. etc.
Vitenka: So, this is all looking very much like a more primitive society, with two additions - a LOT more migratory tribes - and the ability to be in multiple places at once
Vitenka: which, presumeably, has the ability to help bond tribes together. Although you're two seperate people, you aren't seperate, so help guide the tribes in the same direction.

Shp: well we havent realy went into any depth of the loner
Gestalt: Yeah, that's one subtype, the type who just doesn't use the net much, maybe lurks forums and newsgroups. That's seperate, uses it a lot, but doesn't contribute, but hes not really a gamer - hangs around the edges, as it were. He just plays dm i would of thought. And then there'll be the type who is actually outcast, gets onto EVERYONEs ignore lists. Presumeably until they eventually find a tribe that accepts them and doesn't judge them on other peoples conceptions. And to counterpoint, the type who is willingly outcast, and would rather flit from tribe to tribe, picking up a bit of everything. Which is the beauty of the net really.

Vitenka: the question then: Is this a GOOD thing? Do we WANT the net to be like this? de facto tribes sometimes co-operating, sometimes warring, and moving about a lot, switching members, sharing memebrs, and with a lot of people around the edges?
Shp: I think so - the real question is - is it a good thing for people to grow up with? I mean if you always knew the net, then you could get some interesting peronality defects I would of thought.
Vitenka: So, the mature people who are used to a different reality can go into this and create it and cope with it, but people growing up with it might become something else (is your point) ? Ok, so how DO these people grow up?

{Children raised as animals, broken to the world}

Vitenka: The thing is, if they work perfectly well within their rules and thier reality, does it MATTER that they can't function outside of it?
Iceman eventuallly it will. As they get older they wont be able to be isolated for ever.
Shp: If its all theryknow they will - they wont know anything apart from its reality.
Injektilo: their physical self still needs to survive away from the net
Iceman they will discover things outside of what they know eventually.
Vitenka: that's the other way this model is flawed. The people in the tribes go to sleep or go on holiday or whatever, and spend some percentage of their time living in a different (the real) world, to different rules. Hopefully a decently big percentage, but probably not. Do they take the same rules into the net with them? or change to suit the enviroment? The thing is, over time, they can CHANGE some of those rules.
Injektilo: if a person grew up with the net everyday and was educated on the net, would they not have the same morals and values as people in nomal life?
Gestalt: I don't think they would / doubt it / adopt a faceless you cant touch me attittude / well, quite a few seem to

Vitenka: So, they take some rules from reallife to the net, where ALL the rules are made up - and they bring some rules back with them.
Shp: Except i probably act more serious in here for longer than I do irl when in company. But then thats more to do with the company I keep.
Vitenka: heh - the net as a civilising influence
Iceman I act more confident on the net then I do irl
Injektilo: I expect most poeple do I dont really change any of my personality I dont think
Vitenka: No, i think I act a bit more confidently

Vitenka: Back to the question then - if this is what is happening, is it a good thing?
Iceman I think it is a good thing. Living online allows somebody to learn how to judge someone based on personality, in some cases allows someone to have greater self-confidence.

Comic of the rant - [Details]

Continued sometime soon - please go back to the main page - or do help continue te discussion