What happened to good manners

[ChezCheese:)]

Life (so-called) online is different than in real life. People do not have the attention span and do not wish to intrude on what little others have by stuffing their posts with civilities which are normal in in-person interactions. When I was taught to write for the online consumption, we were told to shorten our sentences, use less complex sentence structure, and only one space after a sentence. Avoid more than 4 lines of text in a block. People simply don't consume online content in the same way (think Pacman). Because of this, the muscle needed for digesting complex content, ideas and language is simply atrophying. Highlight a new story on the BBC website, or anywhere else, and paste it into a word document, and you will find that most are 2 or 3 sentences. All of our brains are atrophying. Sorry about that, but that is what is happening. And it shows in everyday civilities, or lack thereof.

 

[Chargeride]

Automated AI reply is infesting our conversations, Whatsapp reads your messages and prompts with a selection of quick replies, youtube comments are the same, its spreading into sms messages and soon our entire online interaction will be prompted by a machine and we will press one of them because it will quickly become 'who do you think you are with your own thoughts', it will be 'safer' to let the machine decide as you might offend or make a thought crime.
Give it a few years and there wont be an option to type.
That sounds like a bold prediction , but twe are being led into instant consequence tech corporation dystopia at an alarming rate.
We are becomin the bots ourselves and the next logical step for the psychopaths who run these boardrooms is to answer our messages for us.

But they will be polite

 

[Roamers]

Automated AI reply is infesting our conversations,

Disable that crap.

 

[stompandgo]

Why do people put bots on forums like this? What is there to gain?

 

[Gionnirocket]

Life (so-called) online is different than in real life. People do not have the attention span and do not wish to intrude on what little others have by stuffing their posts with civilities which are normal in in-person interactions. When I was taught to write for the online consumption, we were told to shorten our sentences, use less complex sentence structure, and only one space after a sentence. Avoid more than 4 lines of text in a block. People simply don't consume online content in the same way (think Pacman). Because of this, the muscle needed for digesting complex content, ideas and language is simply atrophying. Highlight a new story on the BBC website, or anywhere else, and paste it into a word document, and you will find that most are 2 or 3 sentences. All of our brains are atrophying. Sorry about that, but that is what is happening. And it shows in everyday civilities, or lack thereof.

Seems you're not a very good student

 

[Biplaneguy]

Why do people put bots on forums like this? What is there to gain?

Search engine ranking. The more other websites that have a link to yours, the higher you sit in the search results. So they put links in the post, in their user profile, etc.

That's one reason why many forums restrict new users from posting links, so the bot tries to post enough messages to get past that limitation.

 

[Gionnirocket]

Disable that crap.

Have never used it and disabled at purchase and any app install/update. Only sheep fall into all of these data gathering traps.
No voice commands for me either and I've been using home automation since it's inception.

 

[stompandgo]

Search engine ranking. The more other websites that have a link to yours, the higher you sit in the search results. So they put links in the post, in their user profile, etc.

That's one reason why many forums restrict new users from posting links, so the bot tries to post enough messages to get past that limitation.

I get SEO, but that doesn't explain to my pea brain why one would create a member account and use a bot for posts unless it's the forum owners doing it for themselves.

 

[jabberwocky]

I would personally prefer people just treated others with respect instead of obsessing over superficial gestures like saying please and thank you.

 

[Gordon71]

I would personally prefer people just treated others with respect instead of obsessing over superficial gestures like saying please and thank you.

I think saying please and thank you are part of treating people with respect.

 

[Chargeride]

Obviously, the issue here is who isnt doing this?
I havent seen it at all on here, maybe its from people offering advice that isnt much good and its a bit of a palaver to respond with 'thankyou for your suggestion, but I think it might be better if I try this instead'.
We'd be here all day.

 

[Biplaneguy]

I get SEO, but that doesn't explain to my pea brain why one would create a member account and use a bot for posts unless it's the forum owners doing it for themselves.

The bot scours the web to find forums, then creates the account and then posts the links, on thousands of forums at the same time. Now there are thousands of links to boost the search rankings.

 

[Rexlion]

Please go for a ride! Thank you!

 

[mschwett]

I would personally prefer people just treated others with respect instead of obsessing over superficial gestures like saying please and thank you.

agree.

communication styles and norms change over time. nobody thinks we’re being rude because we don’t use the queen’s english from the 17th century, when people certainly used a lot of words but the world but brutish, cruel, and inequitable!

i could not care less if someone gives me a wordy greeting, uses lots of adverbs and adjectives, extensive pleasantries and smalltalk, and gives me a “thank you very much for your valuable time, sir!”

what i do wish is that people actually paid attention, read the text, gave others the benefit of the doubt when reasonable, tried to understand each others’ points of views and different life situations, and acted for a balance of the common good and personal interest. unfortunately the internet and especially social media have not been great for this.