OnlineStigma

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Little has been written here about stigma, things that make people different from normal, things that make them discredited or discreditable in the community. It seems important to send the message that stigma is quite different in online communities than in real life. A RL-stigmatized person that has big problems in meatspace can well be a respected member of the online community and vice versa. This may have different reasons. Some deviations aren't visible or effective online: it doesn't matter that you are blind or deaf, the color of your skin and your age doesn't matter, as long as you can read and write a computer screen (you may still feel uneasy, but this is not necessary, the online community will respect you just the more). On the other hand, some kinds of RL-normal behaviour may create stigmatic situations online: people that do shallow communication only, people that constantly mix self-representation into their communication will soon be in a stigmatized position and their communication horizon will shrink. -- HelmutLeitner

Gideon (this is his personal view of the events) once made a remark on a forum which was misunderstood, was quoted badly (words taken out of context) and turned in to a infraction of GodwinsLaw. In MeatSpace this would not have been more then a small miscommunication, but online it grew a life of its own. While he apologized for the bad choice of words and pointed out the misunderstanding, trying to correct himself and resolve the problem, this was not accepted (Wiki:NeverExplain, NoExcuses). The other party was a highly influential and respected member of the community and from that moment on Gideon was persona non-grata. Everything he said was reinterpreted and misrepresented in terms of disagreement: he was stigmatized. In the end he had to leave (and got baned for life after he left). He should have left it at that but too his own disgrace, he didn't (AngryCloud, LegalThreat) until he found this place and learned that sometimes the only way to win is to leave graceful and reevaluate for himself the value of what he had lost.

CategorySociology

OnlineStigma

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