- Anton P Nym
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- Exalted Mythic Member
True. There are plenty of 'tweeners and teens that are decent folks. However, they're not the ones whose parents plunked them in front of a game console or computer screen while the parents went off to work so that the parents could both afford to work.
(That last bit is not a typo. Think on it for a bit, and I hope you'll see where it comes from.)
The ones we see stinking up New Mombasa are the ones who haven't been socialised for an online environment, so they have no manners or decorum or empathy for others here. It's like dropping feral kids in a shopping mall... of course they're going to crap in the stairwells, steal food, and harass the patrons; they don't know any better. They've never been taught.
However, they're the ones with the time to remain extended periods in the forums and they're the ones who can generate the most volume of posts in that time; think on it, how much time does it take to crank out a one-or-two line post if you don't bother with spelling, punctuation, or reflection?
We're stuck with 'em. Lousy parenting may not be our fault, but we're the ones who have to deal with the result. So we're going to have to raise the Little Darlings for them, at least in an online context; for our own protection, if for no other reason. However the kiddies aren't too receptive to authority, and why should they be? They've learned that there are no consequences to disobedience, since their lousy parents are too busy in their own lives to bother to enforce any sort of rules. So their response to any direction is, "Make me."
It's too damned much work to bully an entire forum into obedience through terror. Besides I'm not sure we can make it stick. Suggestions just fly right past 'em. They don't even seem to recognise good examples, so leading by example doesn't work either. And that leaves me fresh out of ideas.
So how do we house-break the feral kids?
-- Steve's going to have to break down and read Lord of the Flies.