I'm a convivial person.  I have the GameSpot badge to prove it.  I don't know what it means, convivial, but I think it goes along the same lines as friendly.  Cool.  I'll go with that.  I'm friendly.

Before GameSpot I wouldn't have considered being "convivial" to be any kind of accomplishment.  But when I consider how exceptionally rude people around the forums can be, I feel a pat on my back is in order.

Okay, so the badge doesn't come from being friendly.  It just means I've got X amount of friends on site.  That's fine too.  But since I got to talking about it...

Visit any thread in any forum here at GameSpot.com to see what I'm talking about.  The rudeness and all.  In the PS3 forum, one member creates a thread and speculates on the price of the PS3 at launch.  Fair enough, right?  Some members engage him in decent conversation, while others take time to tell him how sick and tired they are of "that type" of thread.  On and on they go, all-capsing the guy to death...

...instead of just moving on to another thread. 

And it's all the time with this behavior online, not just on GameSpot.  I don't have a solution for it either, except to not fall into the trap.  Sometimes people start threads that I hate too, like those "which game should I get" threads where they almost always answer the question for themselves before they really ask it.  Or those idiotic "what color is your DS," threads. 

But it's a public forum, and unless someone is making it a point to be a nuisance, what point is there in trying to shut them up?  That's what the mods are for. 

I'm not spineless and I'm not a pacifist.  Sometimes I think I get too confrontational too quickly.  It's not that I wish people would stop being rude online, especially here at GS, just that I wanted to tell them all that I think they're all cowards hiding behind the safety of the internet.  

And if they don't like it? 

They can shove it.