Humans obviously get emotional about whatever (including football oddly enough). What "should" otherwise be a perfectly logical decision basis ends up often being emotional. The former would suggest that everyone in that situation should choose Product A and Products B and C are clearly deficient for whatever reason. The latter suggests that Product C is preferred by some because they like the name, or the color, or the buttons on the radio.
I've made the argument several times that
humans are basically pack animals, who pretend to reason. Boy, it pisses people off when you say that. But I think it's largely true.
People like to be a part of something. Whether it's a political party, a religious affiliation, nationality, race, fans of a sports team, or owning a Ford instead of those Chevy pieces of trash.
The issue is that sometimes people take this a little too far. They go beyond finding tribal/pack affiliation with those like them, into denigrating those of the other packs. We start to think of our "in group" pack as universally good, and the "out group" packs as universally bad. It's natural, but it's destructive.
This is one reason that this board is better than most "team" boards. We're forced to interact with those from different teams. Even the OSU and Michigan fans here get along with each other. Because over time, although we might argue about football [and other matters, such as the culinary arts or occiasionally energy policy], we're all a part of the same thing.
However, even we have our problems... We occasionally denigrate the SEC as being "lesser" in academics, or scheduling parity, etc. And because we don't have [many] posters from the SEC, we can largely do so with impunity, as only a few SEC folks post in the B1G forum, and they've probably been forced to grow thick skins. And we continue to do it with impunity, relying on "well, I've got a few friends who are SEC, so I'm not conference-ist!"
This is human nature. It's a big part of the strife we see in the world today, and getting back on topic of ONLINE civility, is particularly important in the online world because we can easily wall ourselves off from other packs into an online world where everyone we interact with is part of our own pack. And it coarsens us to remembering that the other packs are--in fact--human beings with hopes and dreams and well-reasoned opinions, even if those opinions differ from our own.
All the dreams of the internet age are dashed on these rocks. The idea that instant global communication would BREAK DOWN barriers rather than making it easy for us to retreat into our own little walled fortresses surrounded by people like ourselves is gone. We are supposed to be getting better; we're actually getting worse.
I don't know how to fix it... Which is extraordinarily depressing, because I look around at the world and see these factors getting increasingly worse, and can only imagine it's going to lead to a very dark place.
