Those are valid points, albeit somewhat far out there.
Closer to home, in a somewhat ironic twist, my previous comment was downvoted to oblivion. My first thought was to give the critics the benefit of the doubt, and assume they were not intending to be mean.
That said, after I had taken time to give a thoughtful and respectful response (there were no personal attacks, or snark) aimed to give another moral perspective, you have this knee jerk downvoting occurring.
So while on the one hand "it's internet points and who cares, right?". And yet, I'm an actual human being here on the other side of that browser with my real username. Not a hypothetical possibility. It still feels crappy and like you've been judged by the community and found wanting. Thus to me, in my bubble, it feels mean spirited, even it was not.
Thus, it begs the question, why shouldn't our focus be on how the receiver of an action is affected?
I tend to put it under the heading of people sucking sometimes :-). It's a commonly observed effect that when there's no face-to-face interaction people don't think hard enough about the impact of their actions.
Unfortunately people tend to use downvote to mean 'I disagree'. It's sad, as I think it's important to preserve reasonably expressed dissenting opinions
Closer to home, in a somewhat ironic twist, my previous comment was downvoted to oblivion. My first thought was to give the critics the benefit of the doubt, and assume they were not intending to be mean.
That said, after I had taken time to give a thoughtful and respectful response (there were no personal attacks, or snark) aimed to give another moral perspective, you have this knee jerk downvoting occurring.
So while on the one hand "it's internet points and who cares, right?". And yet, I'm an actual human being here on the other side of that browser with my real username. Not a hypothetical possibility. It still feels crappy and like you've been judged by the community and found wanting. Thus to me, in my bubble, it feels mean spirited, even it was not.
Thus, it begs the question, why shouldn't our focus be on how the receiver of an action is affected?