Fellow Members, Let's Be Friendlier

I am a member of the official chesskid club, to which I'm sure we've all received an invite at a certain point in time. I was invited by Daniel Rensch himself, and thought myself special for a short while before a couple of other members thought aloud what I'd relished in private. But that is beside the point.

When I interacted with the youngsters of chesskid, I was reminded of the times I'd lost my temper with my opponents, and I felt a tinge of regret at that.

Let's be friendlier .com members. No more voodoo dolls with our opponent's names on them. No more insults in the game chats. No more name shaming.

Personally, I'm guilty of none of the above (just saying), but I could be friendlier nonetheless. We can be friendlier.

This is the problem with the internet.  Being anonymous.

If we could all be face to face, I can guarantee you that 99.99% of the people here would act much nicer to each other.

That's certainly the truth. However, I can't help but think that most of those interactions would be shrouded with pretense. When I think of it that way, I start to appreciate the nature the internet and the subsequent anonymity has exposed in people.

If we could be anonymous and still be friendlier with each other, well, I think that's a form of human evolution.

No not shrouded in pretence. Peo

I've finally called on some strange attention it seems. Serves to memory a TV talk show I saw once, some academic had written to, or tweeted to. She was criticising some business bigwig for his English skills, saying that's the reason the economy wasn't doing well and stuff like that. I found my thoughts drifting towards so many presidents around the world.

We are all here because we love chess so there is no reason to be unpleasant. I'm with WSama.

Thank you, Agnespat. Not to make it about me, of course 😅.

Well said!🙃

Haaaa!

No trollling either that would be nice

I'd like to apologise to @MarkGrubb, I probably took that personally. I had just been insulted in one of the clubs I'd posted in earlier and perhaps my mood wasn't 100%.

That's ok. You may have misunderstood. I'm a supporter of Keto's comment. My comment was only going to be that I thought it was unfair of you to say that if people were nicer to each other it would only be a pretense. Hence my reply kicked off with reference to Pretense.

I was using my phone. It has a tiny pop up keypad of course, and the delete button is right above the return button, which annoyingly sends the message rather than insert a carriage return. Sometimes I go to press the delete button to correct or change something and accidently post the message, which is why you only got the first three letters of people. I gave up after that as I'm always doing it and got cross with myself. I new it would get me into trouble one day. Plus I'm supposed to be working but the forum is more interesting.

Reading your reply, I'm guessing you may have thought I was pointing out Pretence and Pretense. This wasn't the case. I hadn't notice it. According to google both are acceptable spellings

Absolutely know unpleasantness intended. I assure you. It was just my FFS (Fat Finger Syndrome).

That should read 'absolutely no' not 'absolutely know'.

Thank you @MarkGrubb and @redzippyquest.

Nothing much we can do about fat finger syndrome, except we can thrum our fingers more elegantly.

I don't think it's the problem with the internet. It's the problem with the people. It's a matter of character. If you are friendly when face to face, but unpolite when anonymous, then something is wrong with you. Why not be polite and nice always?

Yes, let's be friendlier. Just like that.

The internet has the same effect on some people that alcohol does. 

Alcohol is "liquid courage"

Internet is "electronic courage"

The internet is a tool.  Some use it wisely.  Some dont.

some dont even use it

That's what I said. The problem is not the tool - the person that use the tool can be the problem.

Very interesting thread.