Power struggles in Cyber Fora

Namaste

HDF is very quiet, there is no such power struggle here, but in a heavy-traffic forum, these power struggles are more than likely! If you read on, such a behavior might amuse you:

1. Offending others' sentiments unnecessarily. Saying things like, Smt. Sita Devi should have married the 'charismatic' Ravana, because Rama asked Sita to take the fire test.

2. Declaring one's personal success story in life over and over and over again.

3. Supporting bullies and harassers and being 'friends' with them.

4. Dominate every thread and leave little room for others to contribute.

5. Only "I" should be the 'famous one' attitude.

6. Imply in every opportunity that I am the only one who is broad-minded, having humane values. Implying that others are sort-of 'wicked' at every opportunity!

Have you come across such a cyber-experience. What did you do? Did you make your harasser realize you are not 'that bad', afterall? :)

Cheers!

Vannakkam: The internet users have a false sense of importance. Getting all upset over the written opinion of one stranger seems to be the order of the day. I've written tons of stuff that others took to be insulting, despite my very best efforts at being polite. Alas!

It reminds me of the time I approached a young student in Grade 1, on about the second day of school, as she had worn her muddy boots down the hallway to her locker instead of taking them off at the boot room. In retrospect, I should have retrieved the elder sister who was in my class, and knew me, to do the explaining on my behalf. I tries to be ultra-nice, but to no avail.

Half a bucket of tears later, I did get the sister. The sister jokingly called me 'Mr. Meany" for a few weeks. So you can't win on here.


Aum Namasivaya

Namaste ji,

You can't ever win against this kind of thing. Most of what you're describing, Viraja ji, are what web-speak had defined as 'Trolls'. Trolls will troll for emotional reaction, preferably negative, for laughs. The more it appears that they have upset or offended another, the funnier they find it and the happier they are. The only solution that works is to not respond, as they say, "Don't feed the trolls".

Then there are those who are deluded with a sense of importance, as EM ji mentions. This can be mixed in with a sense of immunity and exemption from manners and polite behavior by a false (in most cases) idea that they are completely anonymous.

And some people are really just judgemental, righteous, privileged bigots who enjoy spewing their negative feces all over the Web and in general life, they're no different in either case.

This is what has been called, (half jokingly), 'the cancer of the internet'. This forum provides an excellent harbor from most such personalities, I'm very grateful for that and it's why I joined.

The real power struggles are when people start questioning and insulting the administration of a board in an attempt to force a way. This can be successful at times and is rarely good. Other times, if the forum is a good one and administration is strong, one simply watches those individuals self destruct as we did here recently. This is an amazingly common thing on forums, as well.

~Pranam

Thank you, EM ji and Aanandinii ji.

The reason I thought of addressing it is because it seemed funny to me that people in cyber fora all the time seem to judge others, even those who post sparingly or post mostly messages of general/harmless nature and assess their intentions based on their cyber interactions, their frequency of posting and what not...

Viraja ji

Cyber fora should be a miniature version of real life͵ shouldnt they? Its but natural that the animal instinct comes up once in a while.

Quote:

---

Saying
things like, Smt. Sita
Devi should have
married the
'charismatic' Ravana,
because Rama asked
Sita to take the fire test.

---

Though not directly related to OT͵ this above quote got me thinking. The Rama͵ Sita and Ravana of the Ramayana as we know it today͵ owe their characters to a man who gave up his wife and children͵ since͵ while eager to share the wealth he earned through various means͵ they were not willing to share the pApam associated with such means of making wealth. While Rama has bore all the brunt of criticism͵ Valmiki who became an MGTOW͵ has escaped the feminists and their white knights. Is it because poor Mrs.Valmiki was not as charismatic as Sita?