Posted by Bob on October 23, 1999, at 20:58:25
In reply to Re: Ahh, heck, I'm gonna say it anyway., posted by jamie on October 23, 1999, at 13:23:33
It's like Jamie said ...
I think it would be good for everyone to take a look back at the posts that led to this. See if you can take different perspectives from it.
I've offered apologies myself a couple of times due to things being read differently than I intended. Not "misread", but differently read.
E-text is quite hollow compared to normal, f2f communication. There is no inflection of voice, no non-verbal gestures or facial expressions ... other than "smilies". We can't even use fake HTML tags if we use angle brackets, because this text gets interpreted and any tags, fake or real, get stripped. Oh, by fake HTML, [drolly]I mean stuff like this [/drolly]. To top things off, the communication is asynchonous ... you can't head off a difference in understanding because we all can get our full messages off before anyone else can read them.
After 15 years on the net, I've seen this sort of thing happen way too often, and I've almost lost one of my dearest friends because of it, long ago. So, if a post you read creates more heat than light for you ... let it sit for a while, let it cool down. These things usually wind up as mutual misunderstandings and not intentional flames (those tend to be much easier to spot!), and the results lead to more sadness than anything.
Stay cooly cool boys and girls
bob
poster:Bob
thread:13698
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991016/msgs/13731.html