My wife has recently gotten into email discussion lists. I thought these
lists were only for geeks, so I cringed at the thought. Watching her
participate, I was surprised to notice several similarities to geek
mailing lists. First, off topic threads tend to get more heated
attention than on topic threads. Second, mailing lists are great for
arguing, but bad for discussion. Both of these things I would have
expected to be unique to the geek community, but I was wrong. Let me
give you a true example that illustrates both phenomena, because it was
(to me at least) quite entertaining.
My wife commented, using hyperbole, that she would rather feed her
children Twinkies for breakfast than allow her children to $BEHAVIOR.
Rather than discussing $BEHAVIOR, a few posters latched on to the
Twinkies, and went on to argue about breakfast foods and eating habits,
totally off topic from the *already* off topic thread. It was an
eye-opener for me. It made me realize that mailing lists are a great way
to argue, because whole threads of argument can spawn from a side
comment. This simply does not happen in face-to-face conversation. Had
my wife made the same comment face-to-face, I struggle to imagine a
scenario where the whole conversation would shift to eating Twinkies for
breakfast rather than continuing to discuss the original topic. It may
even be considered rude or overbearing to disregard what she had said
and shift the topic away, though I don't exactly have the best social
skills, so buyer beware.
I think this phenomenon happens because it's easy in an email to trim
away things you don't want to respond to, and focus only on the part of
the email that you disagree with. It's easy to believe that someone
disagrees with you 100% because they chose to respond to the 1% of what
you said that they disagreed with, even if that 1% was totally
tangential to your main point (which the responder may *did* agree with,
but you'd never know). I'm not sure if I like or dislike this because
frankly, it'd be a boring list if everyone just responded with "me too".
However, I do think it encourages argument and nit picking rather than
good old-fashioned discussion.
What are your thoughts?
--Dave
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