I have the conch!
Gigabyte of memory, doubles as a keychain. And, machine washable!
I am again going to go on about the online gaming. I would invite anyone who doesn't like that to not be snobby.
Instead of regaling you with the truly fascinating tales of my exploits as a 30th level elf rogue seeking the Tome of Eternal Nerdiness, I want to talk about the psychology of people in the "virtual world."
The setting: petty much, in-game interactions with other people are anonymous, or at least as anonymous as you choose them to be. Most people choose to be near-completely anonymous. The sorts of interactions you can have with people are limited almost entirely to text conversation and avatar actions, which are limited by the game mechanics.
Now, depending on the game, some real-life immoral/illegal/unethical/rude behavior is just not possible. For instance, in the games I play, a player wouldn't be able to walk up to another player on the street, put a knife in their gut, and steal their stuff. It's just not possible in the game mechanics.
Some immoral/illegal/unethical/rude behavior is possible in game, but forbidden. If a player misbehaves in these ways you can get a "Game Master" (an employee of the game company with pretty much absolute power in-game) involved to punish them. Punishable offenses depend on the game company's policy, and are usually things like use of profanity, verbal harassment, being openly gay (don't get me started on that), and that sort of thing.
However, that leaves a lot of leeway for people to be total jerks, and this behavior is not within the GMs' purview. For instance, let's say I need to kill a particular monster. There's nothing keeping someone else from standing in the spot where this monster appears and killing it, and doing that over and over so I never have a chance. And this is actually pretty common behavior.
If this were "real life," I could...well, punch this person in the face, or get a group of people to beat them up, or at least give them a piece of my mind. However, in the games I frequent, beating up another player is just not possible. Since they're anonymous, I can't go to their house and beat them up, either. So far as giving them a piece of my mind...I can try, assuming they speak English, but they can just put me on the "ignore list," which means they just won't recieve text from me. So, complaining at people who are misbehaving is almost always pointless. They don't care what you think; they don't have to.
So that's the situation: essentially, some sorts of in-game rude behavior have no external consequences. Which brings me to my first point: people who are largely anonymous and suffer few if any negative consequences for what would be, in real life, rude or anti-social behavior, tend to behave rudely and anti-socially. A lot. It's very "Lord of the Flies," actually. Hardly a game session goes by where I'm not confronted by somebody acting in an "I'm going to do what I want and too bad for you if that screws you over" sort of way. And very often it's clearly malicious.
As a sort of aside: how people can live with themselves doing that is an interesting question. I once got into it in-game with a person who I felt was being a jerk, who claimed to be a philosophy major. He had several remarks I found interesting (and falacious), but the upshot of his argument was, since we were in-game, morality did not apply. Since I argue that morality governs interactions between people regardless of context, and we were people interacting, I find this claim highly dubious.
Anyway. On the other hand, some people, unconstrained in the same way by normal social rules and consequences of misbehavior, still choose to behave in a friendly and socially-acceptable way. (I like to think I'm among those in general, though I'll admit to having my moments.) That is, no one is telling them they have to be good people, and there are no external consequences for not being good people...but they choose to be, anyway. Not everybody goes "Lord of the Flies."
So, the upshot here is: I think of this situation as a test case for what would happen if the normal social rules under which we live were lifted, or there were no consequences for failing to obey those rules. The results of this informal experiment seem to be: yes, a good many people...perhaps the majority...choose to ignore those rules and act like jerks. However, not everyone does; some people choose to follow those rules even though there is essentially no consequence (other than personal feelings on the matter) for failing to do that.
I think there's a psychology study or two to be had here, if anybody's looking for one.
I am again going to go on about the online gaming. I would invite anyone who doesn't like that to not be snobby.
Instead of regaling you with the truly fascinating tales of my exploits as a 30th level elf rogue seeking the Tome of Eternal Nerdiness, I want to talk about the psychology of people in the "virtual world."
The setting: petty much, in-game interactions with other people are anonymous, or at least as anonymous as you choose them to be. Most people choose to be near-completely anonymous. The sorts of interactions you can have with people are limited almost entirely to text conversation and avatar actions, which are limited by the game mechanics.
Now, depending on the game, some real-life immoral/illegal/unethical/rude behavior is just not possible. For instance, in the games I play, a player wouldn't be able to walk up to another player on the street, put a knife in their gut, and steal their stuff. It's just not possible in the game mechanics.
Some immoral/illegal/unethical/rude behavior is possible in game, but forbidden. If a player misbehaves in these ways you can get a "Game Master" (an employee of the game company with pretty much absolute power in-game) involved to punish them. Punishable offenses depend on the game company's policy, and are usually things like use of profanity, verbal harassment, being openly gay (don't get me started on that), and that sort of thing.
However, that leaves a lot of leeway for people to be total jerks, and this behavior is not within the GMs' purview. For instance, let's say I need to kill a particular monster. There's nothing keeping someone else from standing in the spot where this monster appears and killing it, and doing that over and over so I never have a chance. And this is actually pretty common behavior.
If this were "real life," I could...well, punch this person in the face, or get a group of people to beat them up, or at least give them a piece of my mind. However, in the games I frequent, beating up another player is just not possible. Since they're anonymous, I can't go to their house and beat them up, either. So far as giving them a piece of my mind...I can try, assuming they speak English, but they can just put me on the "ignore list," which means they just won't recieve text from me. So, complaining at people who are misbehaving is almost always pointless. They don't care what you think; they don't have to.
So that's the situation: essentially, some sorts of in-game rude behavior have no external consequences. Which brings me to my first point: people who are largely anonymous and suffer few if any negative consequences for what would be, in real life, rude or anti-social behavior, tend to behave rudely and anti-socially. A lot. It's very "Lord of the Flies," actually. Hardly a game session goes by where I'm not confronted by somebody acting in an "I'm going to do what I want and too bad for you if that screws you over" sort of way. And very often it's clearly malicious.
As a sort of aside: how people can live with themselves doing that is an interesting question. I once got into it in-game with a person who I felt was being a jerk, who claimed to be a philosophy major. He had several remarks I found interesting (and falacious), but the upshot of his argument was, since we were in-game, morality did not apply. Since I argue that morality governs interactions between people regardless of context, and we were people interacting, I find this claim highly dubious.
Anyway. On the other hand, some people, unconstrained in the same way by normal social rules and consequences of misbehavior, still choose to behave in a friendly and socially-acceptable way. (I like to think I'm among those in general, though I'll admit to having my moments.) That is, no one is telling them they have to be good people, and there are no external consequences for not being good people...but they choose to be, anyway. Not everybody goes "Lord of the Flies."
So, the upshot here is: I think of this situation as a test case for what would happen if the normal social rules under which we live were lifted, or there were no consequences for failing to obey those rules. The results of this informal experiment seem to be: yes, a good many people...perhaps the majority...choose to ignore those rules and act like jerks. However, not everyone does; some people choose to follow those rules even though there is essentially no consequence (other than personal feelings on the matter) for failing to do that.
I think there's a psychology study or two to be had here, if anybody's looking for one.
posted by Craig at 12:45 PM
3 Comments:
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Goddamn philosophy majors.
I have questions two:
1. Is the in-game situation really a model for what would happen in the real world if the rules by which we were expected to behave were lifted? After all, in the real world, one is not prevented from punching the other guy in the face by the game mechanics.
2. Is it possible that the jerky in-game behavior you describe above is actually a result of the user's real-world experience? E.g., "I have to follow these rules all day long, but here's a chance to throw them to the wind for a little while..."
1. Well, in the case of real-world anarchy, I agree, people could still get punched in the face. So alright, I take your point. The main thrust of my argument here is the "no consequences" angle. So, the question is: if you could misbehave without (external)consequences, would you? Clearly some would.
One interesting question is, how much would they misbehave? The difference in the level of misbehavior between a group of people subject to consequences and a group not subject to consequences would be a measure of how important the consequences are as a deterrent to misbehavior.
2. Yes, that's possible. Why the jerky people might choose to behave like jerks is another interesting question. For that matter, why do the non-jerky people choose to behave like non-jerks?
I could speculate. Some jerky behavior may be for personal gain. Some may be due to an inherent jerky nature. Some may be what you said, people letting their proverbial hair down.
Like I said...somebody should do a psychology study.
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