Groups and Bulletin Boards Many of us like to communicate with others on the internet. We don’t necessarily even know the people we are talking to personally. There is nothing wrong with that, but we have to be extremely careful. Many of our children are doing the same thing and that could be a big problem. Sometimes parents think there is nothing wrong with our kids playing against others in a game. What they fail to realize is the fact many of these games allow communication between parties and predators know this and when the kids think they are talking to another kid they are really talking to a sicko adult. I remember when the internet was a lot younger and I had joined a pinochle group online. I thought it might be a fun challenge. The idea was to play partners. When we started playing, I began to get cursed at by my partner no matter how good my play was. After a few times I did some research about the group and found out kids were getting on even though they were not supposed to and some were getting their kicks by cursing at people and being generally nasty. Today kids still get on to places they are not supposed to be on according to the rules. Every once in a while, a small kid will get on to Facebook. Facebook allows children at least 13 years old on their site. So, we have to remember if someone is giving us a hard time there, it could be a kid. I belong to a scientific group which I have become disappointed in lately. What has happened is some of the members, I am sure a minority, had decided to go after everyone who believes in God. These people have gotten really nasty even though there has been pleas to get back to scientific discussion. Truthfully the hate for God is incredible and one has to wonder why they would even care what others believe. I think it all started when the universe was being discussed and someone said God probably created it because there was too many unexplained coincidences in the universe in its creation. This caused a tsunami of hate speech. One would have thought there would be disagreement by some, but nothing like what happened. In the old days we used to have what were known as bulletin boards. In a way they were the first groups. You would say what you wanted and people who wanted to answer even at a later date would. I was on an Amiga bulletin board. Amiga was an early fantastic computer by a company which eventually ran it into the ground. Anyway, it turned out to be a very angry group. This disappointed me so I decided it was not worth staying on and left. I can’t help but feel some people who use a handle and have an unknown identity, enjoy putting others down. I have seen this happen to many others over the years. I call this cyber bullying. There is a theory about this which claims some of the cyber bullies are kids who themselves are bullied in school. We all know what a problem that is. Instead of some of these controversial courses being given in some schools, they should all have classes on bullying and how hurtful it is to others. Are social media bases such as Twitter and Facebook actually a group even though they may have groups in them? What is a group? Merriam-Webster defines a group as two or more figures forming a complete unit in a composition. An even better definition is an assemblage of persons or objects gathered or located together, an aggregation. Another definition is a number of individuals or things considered or classed together because of similarities. Isn’t it true we go to places like Facebook and Twitter to gather with others and see what they have to say? I think this would qualify them as a group, don’t you? There are problems with some social media groups because some views are censored while others are not. What good is have a group discussion if only one side is allow to state their ideas? One of the things which bothers me is the advertising on Facebook. I cannot speak to it on Twitter since I left there years ago. It has been my experience that at least some of the advertising is truly there to gyp us. I was fooled not once but twice, so shame on me. The first time I bought a model boat which was much smaller and nothing like the one described. The second time the object was nothing like the one pictured and both times the objects were shipped from China. That is why I will never buy another thing advertised on Facebook. In the old days of bulletin boards there was hardly any advertising except for maybe the name of the person who designed it. Today there are so many advertisements it can get very annoying. One of the things which really annoy me is so many sites telling me to turn off my ad blocker. I know these places need the ad money, but maybe they could give you a sample to see if you want to turn if off before getting to see anything. I had put a sort of bulletin board on Truth Facts a while back, but I was afraid it was attracting the wrong kind of people. I had hoped it would be useful for article discussion, but it didn’t work out like that. Well, maybe in the future I will try again in a more modern way. I believe people like to discuss things and give their opinions and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. The problem is some people think just because they are online and their names are not known, they can bash others and say some very unkind things. I just don’t see why this gives them satisfaction. I know I do not like to treat people harshly. If I don’t agree with someone, I like to explain why. Also, I don’t like to beat a dead horse. What I mean is I don’t like to keep repeating the argument over and over as some others do, hoping to wear people down. This is not a good strategy and just aggravates others. Will we ever have a true port on the internet where we can express ourselves without others jumping down our throats? I can only hope so.
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