In my short time on Hubski, I'm noticing a stark dichotomy between two types of comments:
First: Helpful, positive, encouraging, neutral
Second: Combative, hostile, argumentative, attacking
The first, I like. The second...
I've studied the nature of violence, psychopathy, conflict, chaos et al. Life is a continually in flux thing, where emergent growth comes into play. Life, death, growth, decay, violence, peace, orgasm, anhedonia, conflict, resolution, postmodernism, classicism: each of these things are needed. It's the evolving cyclic interplay between these things that makes life, forward motion possible. It's how the universe was formed. Insisting on one way of being over another fails to take the complex nature of life into account.
Yet, I've been befuddled and annoyed by the argumentative, hostile comments I'm finding on Hubski. Why would someone choose to act like that? When it is painfully obvious that it detracts rather than helps? (Realizing full well my own subjectivity in this.)
Then I skimmed through a hostile comment today. Structure, syntax... it seemed oddly familiar, and I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized: I used to do the very same thing.
I was a wordy, ponderous idealist in my younger years. It was very important that others have the same beliefs as me, and if they didn't, I saw it as a personal attack, one which I HAD to defend myself against.
There's a friend I used to have, who was very impressed with how well read, educated she was. Our conversations were filled with labels, textbook definitions, elite narcissism, which I tolerated. And then she "attacked" me one time. For the sake of anonymity, let's say she was an avowed socialist, and she wrote me a lengthy email on how I was a capitalist, and all the ways I was wrong in being so. I was incensed, wrote an even longer email back, delving head first into dismantling her argument, that I was not, in fact, a capitalist, and insisting on how she was wrong, couldn't she see how limited she was?
I stopped being friends with her because of this. That wasn't an isolated incident. Embarrassingly, I can remember too many times in which my insistence on literalism and adhering to rigid ideals hurt relationships, how it pushed people away. Thankfully, with time, I learned to be less rigid, more open-minded. And I continue to try.
So I wonder: the hostile vs positive comments--is it a matter of maturity, age? Or is it something else instead?
I've spent a lot of time on the chan boards. You learn very quickly that anonymity can breed hostility, but it can also foster some amazing conversations that could never happen in real space. Anon boards are where I became an atheist, something that I still today cannot openly talk about at home or work due to stigma and real threats to loss of friends and employment. Most of the hostility is, in my opinion, venting from people who cannot talk freely in their personal lives. Why are people racist on 4chan and 8chan? Because they can't be in "real life." People need a place to vent with minimal consequence to stay sane, and here we are on a message board where most of us will never meet in real life. This place used to be the local pub; there was a social norm that things said in the pub were not really indicative of your character and that people could blow off steam and not have serious repercussions. That social space now in the internet. I've been called names that nobody would ever dare say to my face. Or, more to the point, my ideas and my arguments have been torn asunder by randoms on the internet. I don't let random text online impact my mental health anymore. Then again, I've been on the "internet" longer than the .com domain has been a thing. The hardest thing to learn about being on the internet is that your identity as a physical being, again in my opinion, should take a back seat to your ideas, your ideals and the way you can convey them to a greater public. Through online interactions I've learned how to separate my thoughts and ideas from my, for lack of a better term, identity. Online, nobody cares that you are some 18 year old high school kid in the inner city, or a 65 year old grandfather or anything in between. Some people I know in "real life" have a very hard time adjusting to this when they talk online. I know people who get pissed when people don't treat them the same way they get treated face to face; I also know people, myself included at times, who cheer the loss of identity that levels the field so that only your words matter. Angry people on the internet are sort of a hobby of mine. On places like reddit, voat etc, if I see someone go off on a screed I'll troll through their post history. Some of the nastiest people on reddit where hurt damaged people who were lashing out at the void due to their home situation. Or they were having relationship issues. Or their parents were splitting up. Or any of a thousand things that make life suck. And yea, there were people who were just assholes. So how to deal? First, stop typing. STOP. Read again, slowly, in a neutral voice. Is it possible to take the statement as a neutral statement? Is the person trolling? Do they have a comment history, and if so, is this comment out of place? was this a bad attempt at a joke? Or was this a barbed attack on my person? If an attack, don't reply. Don't touch the poop. Don't feed the trolls. Don't fuel the attention seekers. If, however, the statement can be taken as a non-attack, and instead just an impassioned reply (hey, it can happen!), work on replying in a neutral tone back, maybe for clarification or try to add to the conversation. One of the ways I work on this is to reply in a way that addresses the audience, sort of like what I am doing now. I don't know you, you've only been here nine days, and I am talking to you, but also to all those who are reading. So how do you deal with a friend who goes off the rails? Part of maturity is learning to deal with people who are different than you. Different religions, politics, outlooks on life. You are going to end up working with people with offensive politics. You are going to deal with people with piercings when you don't like piercings, tattoos when you don't like tattoos etc. The only advice I can give you is to work on separating a person's character from their identity. And if the others can't do that to you? Learn to get a long, keep your mouth shut in meetings and learn to deal with people who are different than yourself. If you can find an easy way to do that, let us know so we can help you write the book, get on Oprah and make your millions.
Nothing but the last gasps of a dying breed. The pessimist plants do not flower here. Keep your pail full and your garden will thrive.
Ah, but trolls have existed throughout the span of time, and will probably continue far after our small epoch in history ceases to exist.
https://www.quora.com/Who-were-some-of-historys-greatest-trolls A quote from self-professed troll Alan Sokal that cracks me up: There's also Loki, the Trickster: http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/enigmatic-loki-trickster-among-gods-norse-mythology-002484"Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and 'pro-choice', so liberal (and even some socialist) mathemeticians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo-Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its ninteteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice."
Sometimes I post hostile comments. Mostly I'd say I don't. However I reserve my right to my hostility when it happens. Not everyone is a troll and not everyone is just trying to argue, argue, argue until we're all shouting over each other. I don't agree that "pessimists here die out." I'm a pessimist. About what, I choose to generally keep my mouth shut because that's my own business and I don't want or need to offend anyone, nor do I want or need to defend my pessimism. I do not think hostile vs. non-hostile comments are as simple as a matter of maturity or age. There is a lot of room for interpretation and misinterpretation in those spaces in between words and lines. I think that a few long, passionate comments back and forth on a controversial matter can sometimes help hash things out. When I have made more than 2 or 3 replies to the same person on the same topic, that is when I get tired and decide the debate is no longer worth it. It may have gotten negative by that point or it may not have. I try to avoid getting negative and lashing out but I have to own up to hostile comments, comments which maybe no one else would even think were very hostile but, since i have the advantage of knowing exactly what I meant when I posted them, I know and feel are hostile. Sometimes it happens. I think the maturity comes from knowing how to read and engage in a discussion. I will write a page-long take-down of a comment when it is, in my opinion, very wrong, very misguided, or so on. However, users should try and read the thread. Is someone else already handling the rebuttal? If so, don't pile on. Are you getting too heated? If so, walk away. Is the discussion going nowhere except incendiary language and popcorn drama? Know when to fold 'em. Are you embarrassing yourself? Run. I think that is perhaps one of the best tools Hubski has at "keeping commenters in line." There is no other online community where I have worried that making my aggressive responses/opinions would cause other users to think badly of me. I respect the other users I know and want them to respect me. When you engage in a flamewar on Hubski, it's very public. I have repeatedly thought, "Everyone is watching/anyone can see this." Sometimes it has made me cringe. Sometimes, it's made me stop. If you care about your Hubski rep you don't troll. And if you don't care about your Hubski rep, do you care about the community? And why are you here?
I don't think there's a real dichotomy between those who are agitated and not. Sometimes otherwise cool people get heated. No big deal. That said, our current 'troll' problem is a tough one to tackle, because I don't think the users think of themselves as trolls. They're not here to stir the pot, but rather see the world as backward, and only they can see it forward. It's like that scene in The Naked Gun where the main bad guy remarks that the best assassin is someone who doesn't know he's an assassin.
The environment and upbringing that people were raised with plays an important. role, perhaps. Emotional wounds and mishaps, values that their parents passed on expressed by their actions and words, social status, gender, etc all play a significant role in shaping a person's mind and his or her thoughts. One thing in common though, I feel, is that they all feel as if what they're writing is right AND they don't believe thay anything else can possibly be. The greatest difficulty lies in being able to say, sorry, I was wrong and admit your mistakes and change your views when presented with sufficient, quality evidence. I feel like there always will be people filled with and sowing the seeds of hate, because this is reality and the world cannot be 'fair' to everyone.
My therapist has been starting me on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I think it has a big place here, especially accepting that there will be opinions different from our own. As well, accepting that sometimes we are wrong, no matter how much of a seasoned expert we are.
I like to think it's mostly immaturity, but apparently it's also psychopathy.
Would these help? http://imgur.com/a/QDbyt#7
This is an interesting thing to think about. (And I can't help but wonder if you made this post because of a somewhat hostile comment I just made ;)). I'm not sure it has anything to do with age, except maybe with teenagers. I wonder if it might be more of a personality thing. Some people are more combative, or easily insulted than others and maybe they feel the need to lash out, leading to hostile, hate-filled comments. It spreads pretty easily though, I'm definitely more likely to be hostile to someone if they were hostile to me in the past. This is all just idle speculation though, I'm no psychologist...