Online interactions and Rascism

I have never looked forward to an assignment more than this one. A few weeks back me and my buddy were playing Halo online against random people from all over the place. We interacted with some pretty cool people including a guy from Scotland, and a really cool woman from New Zealand; both had really cool accents or were really good at faking them. Anyway my friend and I got in a real heated battle with a couple of Gents who were as my friend put it “born without a verbal filter”. These guys were saying some of the most offensive stuff I have ever heard. Things that would make many Rated R comedies blush, but the most surprising of all were the racial epithets that were slung around. My friend who is African American couldn’t help but laugh every time the “N” word was used. I began to wonder why he was laughing and not getting offended and my buddy told me that people are much tougher on the internet where they know they can not get hit. This got me thinking about the internet and the use of freedom of speech. Throughout this whole course we have examined how people communicate through the internet and what kind of facades people put up to change there personalities and this has never rang true more than in the online gaming world. My friend told me he was not offended because he knows the people on the internet would never say that to his face because there would be repercussions, I know that if someone got in my face and insulted me I would not take it lightly, but he tells me that they use the internet to hide there true selves and he was right, had this interaction happened outside of cyberspace there would have probably been a huge brawl and those are never good. This interaction was not misinterpreted because the guy meant what he said but he used his advantage of being in his own space where he could not be hurt to speak his mind.
I liked the discussion on Discursive Resistance and the analogy of what to say and not say in a classroom. The same rules should be applied to the internet but sadly there is no one to relegate what happens on the internet all of the time. Though the one issue people would have with that is it takes away there freedom of speech which is a good argument but if you are going to use that freedom to bash another person for something they cannot control or what they believe you should really consider what you say and where you say it. Now I know I got a little preachy but this happens everyday where people abuse the freedom and know that if ever put in that scenario they would not utter the words they say when they are alone.