THE ART OF A GOOD SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
The art of a good social experiment depends on many variables and some experiments take many years and require many subjects to get an acurate reading, but others can be done in a relatively short amount of time and require only a few subjects or even one.
The internet has proven to be an excellent medium for conducting certain social experiments. One can watch and even interact with others who, because they are behind the veil of a moniter, behave in ways they would never dream of in the "real world."
The biggest problem with using the internet as a base for conducting a social experiment is finding the right subject, as there are simply thousands upon thousands of subjects to choose from. However once that is out of the way the rest is, as they say,
"a piece of cake."
People use the internet for many things, but by far the most interesting social aspect of it is the chatrooms and most recently the blogs. Yes, a good social experiment can not only be highly enlightening but also quite entertaining as well.
There are hundreds of chatrooms and thousands of blogs and one can not possibly engage in all of them so I will speak only for the few that I have involved myself in for these are the ones directly related to my little social experiment.
These chatrooms are islamic chatrooms and we non-muslims or "infidels" originally came into these rooms to vent our outrage towards the muslims for the events that occured on 9-11.
We cursed them and swore vengence against them. We were joined by those of other nations who also cursed them.
We learned of their prophet and their culture and and cursed those too and we swore that allah was satan himself.
We believed with all our hearts that Islam was the true enemy of every non-muslim and we still believe that today.
However somewhere down the line some of our own personalities got in the way of this "oh so nobel mission" and some of us floundered.
For some of us being right and being "boss" over rode the bashing muslim mission.
It went so far that rooms were delegated and going to the wrong room was tantamount to treason.
(Now I, having stumbled into room 10 when I first came to Islam chat simply stayed there when the rooms divided, and although I never bought into the whole "room 1 is completely evil" crap, I remained loyal to room 10 and simply never entered another chat room, choosing instead to concentrate on the people in MY room instead).
This splitting of the rooms was to be permanent and one might think that would be the end of the "infidel" fighting but then one would be wrong.
After a while some room 10 people slowly began to turn against each other.
I watched VERY intently as, like a pack of rabid dogs, they began searching for weakness and pounched at the first opportunity, and when they pounched they expected everyone else to pounch too, and if you did not, you just might find yourself to be the very next victim of the pack!
Over the years this pack mentality gave rise to the blogs and to what can only be termed as an internet bloodbath, and God help you if you got in the way.
It was about 6 months ago when I decided that a social experiment might be in order. Just something to do,
you know for fun, as I had minored in Sociology in college, and since I wasn't really being allowed to bash muzzies
anymore anyway (which really pissed me off) and so I thought "what the hell!"
But what type of Experiment should I do?
Since I had had a very good repore with many people over many years in the chatroom and had never really been a cause of controversy I decided to see just how fast I could get a long time chatroom friend to completely turn on me.
I then had to decide who would be my subject..........
Which chatroom friend would I use, and what would I do to make him or her turn on me?
Most of the people whom I call "friends" in chat I would never even think of doing something like this to because they have been lovely people, but as I said a few had strayed off and joined the pack of rabid dogs and I personally had begun to find myself ever so slightly affected by their behavior and I found myself disliking them more and more each day.
I also found myself disliking some people immensely due to the fact that they were greatly interrupting, if not altogether stopping, everyone's ability to bash muslims and I found this to be COMPLETELY UNFORGIVABLE!!!
So again, who would be my subject?
I decided that I would go after the one that I considered to be the ringleader of the "bullshit brigade" in room 10. The self appointed "chat god." The one who started alot of the crap and the one who keeps most of it going on to this day!
Yes he would be a perfect subject. He was a chat friend of mine for several years, he liked me very much, thought I was great, never had a bad word to say about me, and had absolutely no reason at all to ever turn on me.
So would he turn on me now??
And if so, what would be the trigger??
Oh yes, the perfect thing, simply continue to have my own opinion. simply refuse to, at all costs, join the pack of rabid dogs!
Whenever he says stay out of room 1, simply go to room 1!
Whenever he says don't go to someone's blog, simply go to that blog!
Whenever he orders me to stop talking to someone, simply talk to to that person!
Whenever he bashes someone, simply refuse to join in even if it is someone that I don't like either!
Basically, whenever he says "jump", simply sit down!
I will admit that I was given a small amount of lee-way before I too was set upon and devoured by the pack.
Yes, there was one thing the pack simply could not tolerate, and I, knowing that one thing and knowing full well the consequences, plunged in anyway.
I had to complete the experiment afterall.
So with my experiment at an end, I have concluded that one's own power or one's perceived power is more important than the human beings surrounding one, even in the make believe world of the internet.
I must say I assumed this would be the outcome, for usually what is true in the "real world" is also true online and I am satisfied, but it does seem that my lab rat is still running around the maze as confused as the day this all started!!!
The internet has proven to be an excellent medium for conducting certain social experiments. One can watch and even interact with others who, because they are behind the veil of a moniter, behave in ways they would never dream of in the "real world."
The biggest problem with using the internet as a base for conducting a social experiment is finding the right subject, as there are simply thousands upon thousands of subjects to choose from. However once that is out of the way the rest is, as they say,
"a piece of cake."
People use the internet for many things, but by far the most interesting social aspect of it is the chatrooms and most recently the blogs. Yes, a good social experiment can not only be highly enlightening but also quite entertaining as well.
There are hundreds of chatrooms and thousands of blogs and one can not possibly engage in all of them so I will speak only for the few that I have involved myself in for these are the ones directly related to my little social experiment.
These chatrooms are islamic chatrooms and we non-muslims or "infidels" originally came into these rooms to vent our outrage towards the muslims for the events that occured on 9-11.
We cursed them and swore vengence against them. We were joined by those of other nations who also cursed them.
We learned of their prophet and their culture and and cursed those too and we swore that allah was satan himself.
We believed with all our hearts that Islam was the true enemy of every non-muslim and we still believe that today.
However somewhere down the line some of our own personalities got in the way of this "oh so nobel mission" and some of us floundered.
For some of us being right and being "boss" over rode the bashing muslim mission.
It went so far that rooms were delegated and going to the wrong room was tantamount to treason.
(Now I, having stumbled into room 10 when I first came to Islam chat simply stayed there when the rooms divided, and although I never bought into the whole "room 1 is completely evil" crap, I remained loyal to room 10 and simply never entered another chat room, choosing instead to concentrate on the people in MY room instead).
This splitting of the rooms was to be permanent and one might think that would be the end of the "infidel" fighting but then one would be wrong.
After a while some room 10 people slowly began to turn against each other.
I watched VERY intently as, like a pack of rabid dogs, they began searching for weakness and pounched at the first opportunity, and when they pounched they expected everyone else to pounch too, and if you did not, you just might find yourself to be the very next victim of the pack!
Over the years this pack mentality gave rise to the blogs and to what can only be termed as an internet bloodbath, and God help you if you got in the way.
It was about 6 months ago when I decided that a social experiment might be in order. Just something to do,
you know for fun, as I had minored in Sociology in college, and since I wasn't really being allowed to bash muzzies
anymore anyway (which really pissed me off) and so I thought "what the hell!"
But what type of Experiment should I do?
Since I had had a very good repore with many people over many years in the chatroom and had never really been a cause of controversy I decided to see just how fast I could get a long time chatroom friend to completely turn on me.
I then had to decide who would be my subject..........
Which chatroom friend would I use, and what would I do to make him or her turn on me?
Most of the people whom I call "friends" in chat I would never even think of doing something like this to because they have been lovely people, but as I said a few had strayed off and joined the pack of rabid dogs and I personally had begun to find myself ever so slightly affected by their behavior and I found myself disliking them more and more each day.
I also found myself disliking some people immensely due to the fact that they were greatly interrupting, if not altogether stopping, everyone's ability to bash muslims and I found this to be COMPLETELY UNFORGIVABLE!!!
So again, who would be my subject?
I decided that I would go after the one that I considered to be the ringleader of the "bullshit brigade" in room 10. The self appointed "chat god." The one who started alot of the crap and the one who keeps most of it going on to this day!
Yes he would be a perfect subject. He was a chat friend of mine for several years, he liked me very much, thought I was great, never had a bad word to say about me, and had absolutely no reason at all to ever turn on me.
So would he turn on me now??
And if so, what would be the trigger??
Oh yes, the perfect thing, simply continue to have my own opinion. simply refuse to, at all costs, join the pack of rabid dogs!
Whenever he says stay out of room 1, simply go to room 1!
Whenever he says don't go to someone's blog, simply go to that blog!
Whenever he orders me to stop talking to someone, simply talk to to that person!
Whenever he bashes someone, simply refuse to join in even if it is someone that I don't like either!
Basically, whenever he says "jump", simply sit down!
I will admit that I was given a small amount of lee-way before I too was set upon and devoured by the pack.
Yes, there was one thing the pack simply could not tolerate, and I, knowing that one thing and knowing full well the consequences, plunged in anyway.
I had to complete the experiment afterall.
So with my experiment at an end, I have concluded that one's own power or one's perceived power is more important than the human beings surrounding one, even in the make believe world of the internet.
I must say I assumed this would be the outcome, for usually what is true in the "real world" is also true online and I am satisfied, but it does seem that my lab rat is still running around the maze as confused as the day this all started!!!
posted by loki at 9:00 AM
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