Quite a shame how people respond

[Rayaan]

I believe that words matter - what you say and how you say them have an impact regardless of what attitude you may wish those words should have.

I agree that words matter; of course they matter. Writers and speakers know how much of an influence words can have on people, and that's one of the reasons they spend so much time crafting and improvising their words, sentence structure, grammar, and all that stuff. Surely, poets know it also. Presidents and politicians are also aware of the power of words, and that's one of the reasons they put so much effort in preparing their speeches and debates.

There is in fact a whole branch of study called rhetoric, which is an art of discourse that deals with language and which especially aims to to improve one's use of language so that they can more effectively persuade and/or manipulate other people with their words. There are plenty of books on rhetoric and I have read one myself recently. Rhetoric is something that teach us about the secrets of language and how to use to them to influence people's perceptions and feelings - at a subconscious level. Therefore, some people even consider rhetoric to be a type of "black science" which still continues today from the ancient times.

It is also known that listening to or even thinking about certain words generates their own unique pattern of brain waves; different words create different brain waves.

ScienceShot: A Brain Wave Worth a Thousand Words

"Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me" might contain a lot of bravado, but if that were true, we wouldn't read, go to movies or listen to the lyrics of a song. And certainly forums like this one wouldn't matter at all.

Yeah, I agree that the "sticks and stones" phrase is not exactly true because sometimes words do have negative affects on others. But, I think that's the problem with some people; they care a little too much about what is said to them, which is not good, in my opinion. Yes, words affect everyone, but we shouldn't let them affect us so much so that we become all depressed or angry for days or weeks or whatever amount of time just because someone said something that we don't like, especially on an internet forum since you don't know these people in real life and since most people come here just to have some fun.

With words, however, at least you have more control over that because you can sometimes ignore them or you can forgive them for saying bad things (and you can forgive yourself as well), or you can even return the insult if you want to. But if you get hurt by, say, a rock, tree, wall, paper, or by anything physical ("sticks and stones"), then you don't have as much control over the pain as you have with words.