nofungusamongus's Journal: world wide web of truth?

could it actually be that people, when communicating online, tend to speak the truth more often than they do in phone or face to face conversation? a new york times magazine essay reports on study of Cornell college students who recorded the percentage of falsehoods and truthhoods in their online vs. real conversation and found that students were more likely to tell the truth online than they were offline. the author attributes this phenomenon to the permanence of online communication, whereby anyone can check up on the facts by looking up past e-mails or saved IM conversations.

could this be? do we really reveal more of our true selves online? what were they lying or truthing about? are cornell students just weird?

sometimes there's a bias. if you're trying to convince someone of something be it online or not, you will select the arguments that most strongly favor your case. i doubt that these cornell students were reporting on facts related to any agenda, and you probably do get more truths due to the ability for the data to be referenced and recalled. the magnitude of the lie probably depends on the probability that someone will actually call you on it. when you're e-mailing or IM'ing, you probably know the person and there's a high probability of future contact. if you're publishing a blog or a webpage, chances are you won't be contacted by people other than those who are interested and favorable to your facts and can extend the truth a bit further. i tend to think that misinformation on the web still greatly outnumbers that in reality due to the fact that most people on the web, especially those that publish to a wide audience, have an agenda.

how does this relate to internal observations, opinions, feelings, and moods? if we adhere to the social self view of identity, then the more people we tell something to, the truer it is when related to personal information. this truth relates to a public face. for some this public identity is their private one as well (whether it starts out that way or it becomes that way is another matter) and for others there's a disparity. the truth of these types of statements depends on which type of person we're dealing with. while there may be a greater tendency to tell the truth online, one can still only evaluate how likely it is that someone will lie offline.

the truth

[silent_rock]

Define truth.
Eh, anyways, I think this makes sense? When you are online, you are not face to face, you don't have to suffer the consequences of getting red in the face, mumbling, not being able to find the right words.
But you have many valid points, what are they truthing about anyways?
And yes, Cornell students are weird?
Writing online allows postponing having to respond to any reaction. Oh man I have no idea how to use the English language, even with time to edit.