Message Boards - Enter at Your Own Risk

Message boards. Aren't they awful? Well, not all of them I suppose. But mostly it's just awful. The internet used to be used for information, in fact it was called the information superhighway. Now it's just a place where anybody and everybody can get on and find information by reading what someone else of the same knowledge wrote. Or they can make up what they want and post it on a message board. Message boards consist of a page where you can post a topic something in whatever drama you like depending on where you go. Here are some of my least favorite things about the message boards. They are things that bring the intelligence level of human beings down to a minimum.

I am on the message boards a lot on www.imdb.com. Message boards are a bit like chat rooms in that you can post and get a response but they are geared toward certain themes on www.imdb.com like certain movies, TV shows or the Oscars. But when you venture to go on these message boards, let me tell you, get ready for anything. People in this world have become absolute monsters. They are rude, annoying disgusting and unintelligent.

People are rude I suppose because they anonymous. They can get away with being rude because no one who they respect is there to tell them not to be. People become annoying on these boards they often think they know more than anyone else about a certain subject. In essence, they are arrogant. Again, no one is there to tell them to watch their manners and respect others' opinions so they don't tend to. Lastly, they are unintelligent. People don't tend to use good grammar on the Internet. They also don't watch their language, don't research subjects before talking about them and rarely have a high school education behind them, no matter their age.

This is society. This is the way we have become after so many hours of TV watching without having to think. This is why more people are dropping out of high school and those that do graduate just slip by. This is why more people read tabloids than Shakespeare or Tolstoy. Not necessarily because of the Internet but because society keeps getting faster and faster. No one wants to sit down and read to take in real knowledge of the world. People are more fascinated with Brittany Spears' haircut than they are with the state of the world or true art or where the soul comes from.

But I digress. Message boards have become notorious for places that people can go and "troll". Trolling is a way to describe what a user does to ruin everyone else's good time. A troll will basically do one of three things on a message board. 1) They will make a lot of topics, filling up the board about things that don't relate to the subject or topic so that people get frustrated. 2) They will post on someone else's topic talking about things that don't relate and being disruptive by starting fights or using foul language. 3) They will stalk a person and try to make them feel bad about themselves by posting cruel things.

But trolls aren't the only mean people. There are bullies on the net these days who are simply out there to make life miserable for those who post on message boards. It seems as if they are interested in the subjects by they are really there just to bash whatever subject is brought up so that they feel good about themselves. Hopefully more people will learn to live their lives off the internet and won't get sucked into the mindless chit chat from people who don't matter much in the large scheme of things.