As many of you may know, there has been much outcry about having our real names out in the official forums (if you post in the forums, you will post with your real id) and bliz has responded by changing their minds. now there has been a lot of theories as to why bliz even did this and one of them is that it will reduce forum trolling since real id, in a way, removes a layer or several layers of anonymity from forum posters. those who would spend their efforts trolling others will have to think twice about trolling.
I would like to take it a step further and say that everyone has the ability to troll the forums, in-game, or anywhere else for that matter. the reason i think this is true is because i do believe everyone is evil. come again? i think everyone is inherently evil. we are not "good' by nature. we are evil by nature. so how do i kinda prove this to myself? consider the popular formula depicted below. it shows a "normal" person (whatever that is) that's given two things and he turns into a monster. Anonymity and an Audience.
Many of you may have seen this before, so i will not go into too much details about the diagram. but i will say that there is something missing from the equation. namely, the left side. what? well there's something missing from it that makes the normal person "normal". would you guess it to be societal rules, values, mores, taboos and all sorts of other sociology term that i've learned.
but lets get straight to my point. that normal person wouldnt be there if it werent for teaching, discipline and fear of being outcasted or rejected by his own society. but i would say that it is mainly, 99% mainly that the fear of being rejected by his own society is what keeps him acting like a "normal" person. because, after all, normal means being like everyone else, acting in a way to fit in. and you cant fit into a society where people are respected, treated well and given preference at times by being a "Total Fuckwad". So take away these boundaries (by adding Anonymity and adding an Audience... see what i did there?) and you will get a person that exemplifies what a human being is meant to be. a total fuckwad.
This brings me back to my original thought, which is that people are inherently evil. to all the people that say kids are awesome, kids are great, kids are lovely.... i tell them to have their own damn kids and tell me if they think kids are awesome, great, lovely, etc. they are not. they are monsters. from the very beginning, they know how to be selfish, how to grab at things, how to cry to get what they want, and when they realize they can cry some more to eventually get what they cannot get initially, they will do it. this is the reason my own daughter throws a fit, especially when grandma is there, because she has a higher chance of getting what she wants if she does throw a fit. and she will almost certainly gets what she wants if she throws a fit when grandma is there. and she knows it. she takes advantage of it. she's evil.
Lets talk about the word "inherent". it means something like, instinctual, having a quality built-in, or its nature. webster.com gives is a consise definition. what this means is that the quality we are talking about is, indeed, built-in and whatever it is we are talking about cannot exist without that built-in characteristic.
So when i say people are inherently evil, i mean they do not need to learn evil to be evil. nor do they need to be encouraged to do evil to be evil. humans just are. humans are taught from a very early age (most i know at least) that what they do is "bad" and that they need to stop doing it. they are then taught to do "good" things as imposed and rewarded by society. children are always taught to say thank you and to share. they do not need to be taught to be selfish or to take what they want. Kids arent obeying, honest and selfless creatures we see in the world. teachers and mothers know better. they are monsters who sometimes follow the rules. we enforce these rules through a punishment and reward system. so kids comply and when they grow up, use these same principles on their own monsters.
Again, i'd like to reiterate the point (i know, that was redundant), that people are inherently evil. now you see my point of view and how i justify it, you ask yourself, what the hell does this have to do with realid? well it doesnt. it has to do with people's perception of solving the "troll" problem in forms and the fuckwad problem, in general, on the internet. it is not to remove the layer of anonymity. anonymity only removes the possibility of being "punished' personally for being ourselves. and to remove this anonymity, we open the fuckwads to the possibility of being "punished" in some way. and since this possibility of being punished is out there, the fuckwads will have less incentive to post trollish things on the wow forums. this is probably the thinking. but this is definitely not the answer. fuckwads will remain fuckwads. they will just unite under another banner. they will be the fuckwads, patting each other on the back for their douchebaggery and enforcing "evil" on the internet by rewarding each other. people's inherent nature will always be inherent to them. after all, that is what makes us human. someone said "to err is human". i say he's ignoring the true statement, that people are evil, and evil actions will be considered an error.
the ideal solution would be to teach everyone to be civil to each other, treating everyone else like how you'd want to be treated. then, tell everyone that their character is what matters most, and that being douches on the internet shows a lack of character. then make them all believe that. and eventually, we'll have a society where everyone shows kindness and respect to one another. sure sure. ideal. the other ideal solution is to ban offenders. but even with banning, there has to be a standard. who's to say one statement is deemed offensive and another isnt? this gray area is what really makes it difficult to offer this soluiton.
in the end, in order to keep the good, we also take it with the bad. thats all we can really do when it comes down to it. because, after all, we believe that people are really good people and sometimes do bad things. but this isnt my argument. see the difference? in any case, forum trolls and innocent bystanders rejoice!! blizz will not throw the baby out with the bath water, as the saying goes!
in a nutshell (or in internet lingo, TL:DR) real id in forums will not fix the real problem. it only fixes the manifestation of the problem. to fix the real problem, you have to dig deeper and change each person individually. this, however, is an impossible feat.
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