1) Behind every screenname is an actual person.

With the obvious exception of spam accounts, people on the internet are just that - people. It's easy to view your friends as simply faceless collections of words at times, and people would say things to others online that they would never say in real life. It can be incredibly entertaining to treat people like garbage, and it's easy to say that many people deserve it. Just like real life, though, you'll get far more out of it if you spend your energy being positive instead of negative.

It's also helpful to remember that despite how your present yourself online, you, too, are a person.

2) Politics is not a sports game.

There's nothing wrong with a friendly sports rivalry - it makes our leisure hours more entertaining. Politics, though, is too important to reduce to derisive and divisive jeering. The outcome of an election will directly affect your life - the outcome of the World Series won't. Don't simply reject another person's statements outright because they have a different political belief than you. I have seen people make statements of politics for no reason than to irritate "the other side". Politics affects everybody in the country, and petty insults aren't going to help anybody. Leave your asinine "loony libs" and "Republitards" name-calling out of it and listen to the other side - you might find what they have to say enlightening. There will always be crackpots and jackals in any political discussion - ignore them. Don't take their bait, and don't reply in kind.

3) The internet is a terrible critic.

The actions of people on the internet do not acturately portray how good something is or isn't. If you are an artist, you will find that brilliant and painstakingly well-crafted work can go ignored, while a simple doodle of a popular fandom or fetish will get beloved by thousands. Don't give up. Find people who care more about art than popularity pissing contests. Get to know them. Talk to them. They're the ones who can help you improve.

Sometimes you will like a certain team or brand or product. Other people won't. They will defend their opinions and attack yours in the most asinine way possible. Who cares?  There's no reason you can't both enjoy what you like.

4) It is spelled "you're welcome".

Appearance is everything. On the internet, your spelling and your grammar constitute your appearance. The easiest way to get people to dislike you is to have horrible English. If it's not your first language, we don't ask much of you - just capitalize, punctuate, and try your best. If it your first language - you've been being taught it for years. By now, you should have an idea on how to write it.

5) Personal bias aside - furries aren't as terrible as you've been led to believe.

You have heard a lot of horrible things about furries. You can easily find several people for which all of them true. But there are also many people who simply like drawing pictures of animal people with fancy clothes, and will readily agree with you about how gross and dumb many furries are. The problem is that there's everybody labels themselves with the same term, so as it happens a lot of furries are a lot more tame than all the hype tells you. And as much as some of their fetishes - or the fandom's "fetish" as a whole - may repulse you, I have to say that the people on FurAffinity are some of the nicest and calmest (if occasionally creepy) folks I've ever met. Even if you can't bring yourself to like them - they're not out to get you, and most of them just want a little bit of respect.

6) People have short attention spans. Keep it brief.

It's okay if you have a lot to say - say it! Just don't use more words than necessary. People on the internet bitch and moan when you present them with anything longer than a paragraph.

If you've got something long to say, use line breaks between paragraphs, try and use bold formatting to highlight the most important or interesting parts. And by God, keep it lively! Nobody wants to read paragraphs full of boring. If you're still reading by this point - well, I guess I'm doing something right here!

7) Even if it's not short, read it anyway.

You're not some kind of moron, are you? There can be some pretty interesting stuff buried in those paragraphs! Besides, not only is "tl;dr" incredibly rude, it makes you look like a total idiot.

8) Be self-sufficient.

Have you forgotten that you're on the internet? The Information Superhighway? Oftentimes, the answers to your most simple questions are a Google search away. Yahoo! Answers is full of morons, but can occasionally be helpful. Want to know the definition of something? There are scores of online dictionaries - dictionary.com comes to mind - or if it's a slang term, head to Urban Dictionary. You can't walk five feet without stepping in a tutorial. Always check to see if you can find the answer on your own first - it's a pretty easy way to appear smart.

9) Try not to get too angry.

It's easy to get outraged over the slightest thing on the web, partly because it's hard to determine tone from text, and partly because of the facelessness of the internet. Don't! An article might get you angry. Don't post a comment ranting and raving about how terrible it is because they spelled a word wrong or because you don't like the author - just leave it alone. A person might deliberately be trying to get your goat. Don't take the bait - if you can learn to recognize when somebody's trolling, it'll help you to laugh. Your friends might get on your nerves as well. Sometimes you'll need to simply stop talking to a truly caustic person - but it's normal for friends to fight.

Long story short - most things on the internet aren't worth getting angry over.

10) Be more than the sum of your interests.

If you only apply one of these to your life outside the internet, this is it.

You've probably seen a poorly written character in a story of movie - "MY PERSONALITY IS THAT I PLAY SPORTS." "MY PERSONALITY IS THAT I'M A WOMAN." "MY PERSONALITY IS THAT MY SKIN IS SORT OF BROWN."

Sadly, I've met people exactly like this online. "MY PERSONALITY IS THAT I LIKE XBOX." "MY PERSONALITY IS THAT I'M A CHRISTIAN." "MY PERSONALITY IS THAT I'M A FURRY." And while it's true that you can meet people by sharing common interests, it's hard to keep friends if that's all there is to you.

I know some guys with some fetishes that bother even me. But they're really cool people. And I'm good friends with them. I've also known some guys who have nothing going for them except that they're Nintendo fanatics. I love Nintendo. But these people have no other facets to their personality. I've stopped talking to them years ago.

Your greatest assets are your personality, individuality, and humanity. Make the most of them.