“many aspects of human communication are visual – body language, facial expressions – there’s also the audio aspects of communication like inflection, pauses, rate of speech – all of this is lost in this blog – all we have is the written word to communicate with”
I was a sonar technician in the Navy. We sat boring watches for hours at a time in the dark. When on this blog, I often remember how people who sparred gleefully under the lights of the ship all day long would come to blows because they couldn’t see each others faces or the body language while on watch. I imagine that the banter started off in the normal fashion and went down hill because of what you are describing as occurring here on the blog. I do agree that the effects of “cyber darkness” can be mitigated.
The blog also brings together people from different walks of life. Sad to say, IMO, we don’t do that much in the real world so it could be somewhat of a shock on the internet.
The issue of when to stop typing and editing vs. the risk of being misunderstood are also big as you say.
I like the political and religious banter here because this can not possibly be an “echo chamber”, on those issues, and I really like to think I don’t participate along dogmatic lines. The age old rule of avoiding talking about those things in public seems to make sense at times,if nothing else, as a courtesy to those who don’t care for it.I am not saying I am ready to quit as we can attempt to keep it isolated to “off topic threads”.
