Can we judge a person by the way they post?

reply to post by darcon


I really don't think we can judge a person by the way they post.

1. Sometimes I play devil's advocate to get a poster to clarify or defend a position better. I do not really disagree with what was written, but I do like to read good ideas and thoughts. Sometimes it takes a nudging to get them out.

2. Some people get emotional and then write typos and misspellings when upset. Others who read such opinions think the writer is not very intelligent, when they are just passionate about their causes and beliefs.

3. There are also those who will state something just to get a reaction to it. Sometimes it can be vile, other times it is a hoax thread.

For the most part, when we do write about our passions, one can get a little information about how we tick. Remember, this is the internet, and people do change their identities a bit (for the most part).

reply to post by darcon


I have a theory about that. I think that regardless of how different we try to be online, our true personalities still show through. No matter how good of an actor someone is, there will always be occasions when they slip and show their true selves as opposed to the act they try to put on. It may only be glimpses, and it may be difficult to tell what is an act and what is real especially online, but they are there.

For instance, offline I talk a lot. There isn't a single topic I have come across that I don't have an opinion on or a question about. However, online and specifically here, I don't post frequently. I'll have spurts of a week or two where I post a lot, but then I will go a month or more without making a single post and spend my time just reading what others have to say. Judging merely from the average rate of posts I make in a month, it may seem like I don't have much to say. But once you get me talking about something, or once I see a post filled with so many asinine comments I don't know whether to laugh or cry, I end up almost using my entire 10000 character maximum in a single post. In doing so my true talkative nature comes out. I try not to because no one likes to read a 10000 character post, those are typically the ones I make that get no response and so I just assume that no one bothered to read it because it was too long, but as I said I'm opinionated and talk a lot so it all comes out in one huge post. Kinda like it's starting to do now.

So I know that if I slip up and make huge posts on occasion, and thus allow my true nature to show fully, then there are others who have similar slips in their online persona's. That's my theory anyway.