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Hi, Stats? by Greg Forester We've all seen him. He seems to pop up in every chat room in an almost omnipresent fashion: his name is SATAN666 and he has come to ruin your chat! He has several friends, SCUM OF THE EARTH, ANGEL OF DEATH, DEMONSPAWN, and the ever lovely IWANTCYBER. Yes, the chat room is a positive magnet that draws these happy fellows out from under their stones and into our lives where they proudly announce the size of their genitals, insult everyone in the room as if there were a prize going for best abuse and then readily proceed to allocate death threats. Who are these people? Satanists? Murderers? Psychopaths? Worse still, Metallica fans? No they are just regular people. And this simple truth is what makes the chat abusers so interesting, despite themselves. It is human nature to be nasty and only the complex rules of society we have learned to adhere to in order to survive, stop us acting like abusive chatters in our everyday lives. The most serious manifestation of the abusive chatter is the racist who suddenly finds himself with an audience to whom he can voice his pent up hatred. But again, this form of chat abuse is not as it seems. I've been in chatrooms where some idiot has started spouting off about his various dislikes concerning certain races, only to discover him half an hour later chatting in the thickest ghetto-speak to his homey from down the road. Other times I've observed a racist expressing his views only to see his views take a 180 degree turn at the drop of a hat. What does all this mean? What's going on? People are going on, that's what. People are basic things. They have basic needs despite the often complicated appearance of their lives. Chat provides a platform for some of those needs. In chat you can do what you want, say what you want, insult anyone and lie your ass off because you are anonymous. Nobody knows who you really are and few people really care. Its like being drunk without the nasty after effects of having to apologise to all your friends for calling them a dfudging bunch of bashtash. You can let rip for a few hours, come and go under different guises, be SEXGOD, the brash cyber seeking pain in the butt one minute and ANGELDUST, the sensitive poetry loving romantic the next. In what other facet of life is it possible to try on different characters so easily and so believably? You'd be hard pressed to think of one. So while the annoying antics of SATAN666 may seem antagonistic, while the long reams of lyrics being streamed laboriously onto your screen by ANTHRAXRULES may appear little more than an irritation, while the constant flying accusations of chatters' sexual orientations from IWANTITNOW may be an intrusion you can do without, consider this. Chat reflects life. Its like watching the world under the influence, telling you what it really thinks and letting you know what things are really like. We can see that racism still exists, fierce patriotism still exists, ugliness in all its guises still exists and base sexual need still exists (witness the amount of cyber that goes on in any chatroom). We can see that despite the fantastic technology we have created around us, the very technology that allows chat to exist atall, we really haven't changed that much. Perhaps one day we will be able to enter a chat site and nobody will be abused. BIGONE will be THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS BIGONE, cybersex seekers will be replaced by philosophers and lovers of art. Everywhere will be productive chat, interesting points of view with valid arguments and compelling insights and throughout the internet chat will be a wonderful and wholly useful form of expression. If so, then on the same day the world will be a different place. There will be no war because humanity's desire for power and territory will no longer exist. There will be no crime because the basic lust to rebel will be gone. There will be no suffering or pain because people will have recognised the oneness of the planet and the way their actions, no matter how small, can affect the lives of those around them. And of course there will be no SATAN666 because Satan, in such a world, would be a thing of the past. |
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