Many of us use this platform every day as a way to communicate. It is a way for us to reach out to each other, to express our thoughts and experiences, gain insight into problems or current events, and to connect with others. There are many dangers to using text as a way of communication that many of you  have or are finding out.

These problems crop up from time to time here on ActiveRain, and it can be very difficult to deal with them. What starts as a small misunderstanding grows into a large insult and ends in a flame war. People of my generation have come to understand that there are somethings that are better done not over the Internet. What I am talking about here is simple communication.

People who use sarcasm as a regular form of speech have the most trouble in the online world. I would know, I am one of them. As you cruise alone in the cyber world, you will find that people will tend to add more facial expressions (what is known to many as emoticons), verbal accents (such as /sigh/ or /yawn/), and even third person references to the self. It is becoming more and more difficult to express the individual meaning behind each sentence as we read more and more into what we see online as we break away from meeting face to face with each other.

Is blogging the end of meeting one on one?

I have heard this question more often as I grow older. My generation is finding that we use the Internet, blogging and instant messaging as tools, everyday living. I can't imagine life without instant messenger. I dont know what I did without it. The ability to just toss a message to one of my friends while I am working to get an opinion about something, check up on dinner plans, or have a idea validated is one of the strongest tools I use on a daily basis.

Email, who uses snail (postal) mail any more? I used to receive letters from people, once upon a time. These days, if you do not have email, you probably wont hear from me.

Blogging. That is one of the newest to many people. It is tool to many, a journal to some. It just depends on how you view it and what you use it for. I have been blogging for more than five years, long before ActiveRain came into existence. For me, and many of my friends, it was a way to keep in touch without actually taking the time to call or write each other. You would have the chance to write a post about your day, an event you went to, something that you want to share with others, and your friends, or even the world at large would have the chance to respond to you. Most of the world wouldn't read your blog, but your friends would. They would leave comments, talk about how they wish they were with you when you did such and such, are excited for you in this and that, wish you luck etc. It is a good way to stay in touch with people that you would otherwise drift apart from.

Now for the problem!

Many people tell me I am an expressive speaker. I speak using my hands, facial expressions (most often my eyebrows), and body language. All of these things are missing when you type a message and send it to someone. How are they supposed to know that you are really laughing when you type something negative? How are they supposed to hear the sarcasm that is inside your head (narrating your text as you type) as they read it to themselves?

It is these things that are huge barriers when we use the Internet as a medium of communication. When you are getting to know someone online, you do not know how they “netspeak” themselves. You do not know if they tend to joke around or tend to be super serious. All of these things should be considered when you introduce yourself to the world online. Even in your first blog, you are creating your online persona, you need to realize that people will start to form opinions about you at that point. Your close friends will always understand you, but the rest of the world will not. You will have many arguments online. The arguments that progress, those ones that get out of control – those are the flame wars. It is a sad condition that there is a special name for those fights that are pure mud slinging for the online world. That just lets you know how often this has happened.

We are adults. If you are offended by a comment, let the person know in private (also known as email). More often than not, they did not intend that comment to go in that direction. It is all about how YOU ARE FEELING AT THAT TIME that influences how you interpret a post, comment or email. I know this sounds like common sense, but you would not believe how many times I have even caught myself being offended by what people write to me (and I get a few of them a week).

We are trying to make a community here. If we are going to function as a happy community here, we need to trust one another. Please take the time to consider your words BEFORE you type them. And when you are reading them, please take a moment to think about how you are feeling before you respond.