acknowledgment

Vance, your example is very different than what the OP described (refusing to take two seconds to say a simple "gg" or "ty"). In fact, you said you had a nice conversation with that opponent in two games. Your opponent obviously decided to do more than just say "gg" or "thank you." As I understand, what's nagging the OP is that he thinks so and so people aren't taking two seconds of their time to acknowledge his existence.

In your case, who knows what happened at the end to cause her to apparently ignore your msg (did her eventual reply provide an explanation?).

I think sukerpunched has helped me out here. From now on I will keep his list close to hand. I can refer to this whenever I don't get a response from a 'thanks for the game' or 'well played' etc. Now I can look at the list and think that persons wife has approached him ? ( I have learned how to stop looking at the screen if my wife approaches me ), or his house is on fire? - even if it was he could just quickly type thanks for the game, but perhaps I'm asking a bit too much.

You know, it sounds like we are not so different in our views after all.  What you say is true, of course, but it strikes me as all part of the same class of behaviors.  Anyway, she said that she didn't see the other three messages, and wondered why I over-reacted as I did, and this severed ties between us.  Until this outburst of mine, she had enjoyed playing against me (she said).  Quite a dilemma, if you think about it.  On the one hand, remain polite, and know that you will get no reply at all.  Or, on the other hand, put the rude one in his or her place knowing that if you now get any reply at all, then it will be to tell you how quick you are to judge, or whatever, and why not simply send a polite message.  As if you had not been doing this up until this point.

Burke said something to the effect that for evil to prevail, all that is required is for a few good men to stand down and do nothing.  My New Year's resolution was not to be one of these spineless men.  I have no delusion that my harsh messages, when they are called for, have done any real good in the world, but at least I have done my part.  If the rest of us were equally hostile to bad behavior, then there would be much less bad behavior.

Again, instead of addressing the point (like Vance did), you avoid it. Your whole message above basically says: "Sure, whatever, like that could really happen." I only chose a few examples at the top of my head. There are tons of more possibilities. Here's another one: someone earlier said "I happen to play a large portion of my games over my cell phone. I never even see the messages." The possibilities are almost endless.

Your point is that the individual possibilities are too far-fetched to be true. My point is that 1) there are so many alternative possibilities that added together they are a very real possibility, even if some of the individual scenarios by themselves are rare. And 2) you still haven't addressed all the alternative possibilities.

After that, maybe you could finally answer the core question: How can you eliminate or rule out all the tons of other possibilities and come to the single conclusion that your opponent must be deliberately ignoring you?

LOL, sorry, I just HAD to re-quote that. So you look away from the screen, and that prevents your wife/boss/parent from seeing what you are doing on the computer?

And no, expecting your opponent to type "thanks for the game" when his house is on fire (or during any other emergency) is not too much to ask for. It's perfectly reasonable.

Strange case, but maybe she really didn't see the msg's? Even among friends, it can be hard trying to interpret their behaviour through email or instant messenger. But on chess.com, your opponents are complete strangers--you can't be certain of what they do for a living, what environment they live in, what else they are doing while playing chess, who else has access to their accounts, whether they are drunk/deprived of sleep/in a depression, whether their parents/boss permit them to go on chess.com, how much internet access they have, whether they suddenly went into the hospital, whether their account got hacked, whether they forgot to sign out and their little sister/brother managed to mess around with their account, etc. It's endless.

You can speak up against rudeness when you see it in person, but it makes no sense to react so strongly against these so-called "rude" behaviour over the internet. Why? For one, it's almost impossible to tell if that behaviour is even real in the first place. To sum it up, I would just give them the benefit of the doubt, remind yourself that there are an endless list of alternative scenarios, and save your energy for cases where you can actually witness the behaviour in person.

But honestly, possibilities are not probabilities, and I say this having earned a doctoral degree in statistics (plus published two books on the subject and taught at several universities).  And in this case, none of the possibilities were the cause.  Moreover, this scenario plays out rather often.

We live in a rather "me-centered" society in which it is considered OK by many to reply only when expedient to do so.  Not to open Pandora's box, but I see this as roughly the same mindset as "I'm too cool to use my turn signal on the roads".  It's all about me.  I am so important (to myself) that I do not need to move my finger one inch to signal, even though doing so may well prevent an accident.  Likewise, I do not need to waste five seconds of my time to give you piece of mind, or closure.

I find this attitude repulsive, yet ubiquitous.  And if I may draw an analogy, you know how everyone has an IQ above the nominal mean of 100?  And the implication that now the "average guy" is an idiot?  This phenomenon gets at the issue of improper calibration.  If everyone is above average, then we are using the wrong average.  Likewise in our situation, the attitude behind the behaviors in question is absolutely incredible.  One in a million.  No way anybody could think so little of his fellow man.  And yet this one in a million occurrence occurs every single day.  Back when I was naive, and still believe in benevolence, I, like you, would look for prosaic explanations.  Surely nobody could be that rude?

Well, then I grew up.  They can.  They are.  They do.  All the time.  So now I apply Occam's razor instead of infinite optimism and belief in the spirit of man.  If it looks, smells, and walks like a rat, then it probably is a rat.

This has nothing to do with what caused the incident. This is about recognizing whether the incident even occurred in the first place. In many cases, your opponents won't even understand where the accusations came from. Basically you are telling your opponents: "You are probably being rude. I may be wrong, or I may be right, but I'll just assume that I'm right, and treat you as the arrogant jerk that I think you are." Isn't that right?

Reasoning that this scenario is common also makes no sense--it's common, but that doesn't mean you can always target the right people. With that mindset, you are now saying: "Hey, there are lots of rude people in this world. They are so common that, chances are, you are one of them."

And finally, this isn't about being overly optimistic and naive. This is about giving the benefit of the doubt.

And the rest of your post was about how you dislike that kind of behaviour, which I agree. The only problem is that across the internet, it's easy to falsely accuse the wrong people. You are willing to risk falsely accusing otherwise nice people? Again: benefit of the doubt.

OK, you have a point.  I am almost reminded of that old Grouchy Marx skit in which he thought a guy might not shake his hand, whipped himself into a frenzy over it, and then refused to shake that guy's hand when that guy extended his hand.  And no, I do not wish to be like that.

But I would argue that I am not like that.  Not at all.  I am keenly aware that there is a segment of the population that is so concerned with not being treated rudely that it will itself treat others rudely; rather hypocritically.  Yes, I would be doing the same thing if I were assuming that others were being rude with no "case specific" information to go on.  Say members of a certain race, age group, or gender, or some combination thereof, has a certain tendency, and then I confuse the general with the specific.

But no, I am not doing that.  Let us not forget that in this case, and in every other case in which I have lashed out, the one against whom I lashed out provided me with a very good reason to do so.  No imagination required.

I agree with underobs. win or loss, i think a simple GG would do since my main purpose here is to hone my chess skills rather than just chat. Just to show a little courtesy and appreciation to somebody for spending his time playing against me. Remember too we are here to make friends out of the game, so after the match don't forget to add him to your friends list.

It was an inane thread to start with, don't know what we could do without someone inanely reviving it a year later.

They should have an icon that represents a handshake.

We did a terrible job of derailing it first time round, I guess.  I'm lol-ling heartily at Vance's "scum of the earth" designation earlier on.  Considering the recent WW1 comparison, one has to say he really takes these initialisms seriously, doesn't he?

Another forum was discussing this and someone mentioned to respond with "handshake". At the end of every over-the-board game my opponent and I shook hands. Here we have to give a virtual "handshake".

Works great for me. If I win because my opponent made a bad move, gg is an insult. If I lose a game that I really should won because of a blunder, I'm more likely to say I stupid rather than gg. So "handshake" takes of these awkward time nicely.

http://support.chess.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/122/0/what-should-i-do-when-another-member-makes-rude-or-abusive-comments-towards-me