Everywhere you browse, people have such strong opinions about everything and are so toxic or extremely negative. You start playing a game, want to check the forums or something and most of the posts are people being mean to each other. You open social media to keep in touch with people that you’d like to maintain a certain level of contact and there’s always some people that are always complaining about every single thing.
I see myself more and more closing myself into a bubble which makes me appreciate Beehaw much more. I know I am guilty of being taken away by the toxicity and sometimes replying things I wouldn’t be proud of but since I joined Beehaw I see myself policing myself more and more focused on being better.
Just a quick rant, I currently started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and I am honestly pissed off on the fact people can’t give feedback without being rude or “gamers” just shitting on developers because they are stans of another game. I wanted to be active on the forum and comment on bugs and such because I want the game to be better but it is so depressing reading people being awful so often.
Why are we so shitty to each other? I’m so tired.
Edit: Pardon me if I used weird terms or grammar errors, english isn’t my first language
Edit2: removed specifics
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I think most people aren’t toxic, but the toxic ones always stick out. If you get 20 normal comment replies and one that was rude, you’ll probably remember that rude one more.
Same goes for anything that people have strong opinions about online - especially politics. The most extreme, hostile, and bizarre takes get a lot of attention and float to the top, which makes it seem like the majority opinion, when most people aren’t like that.
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I started using 4chan around 2007/2008. It was always like that. It was the place to be if you were a toxic edgelord - a space to openly be a nazi and racist and homophobic.
I remember threads on /b/ back then too where people were looking for a new Hitler.
And they always had that shitty mentality. Be as contrarian as you can and as long as you can antagonize people into reacting, then you got one over on someone.
I haven’t been on there since 2020 but I watched it get worse and worse over the years as it spread into the mainstream with things like Gamergate and the fappening. I even tried to tell people but they would just laugh it off cause “4chan”
why are we so shitty to each other?
I am honestly pissed off on the fact people can’t give feedback without being pricks or “gamers” just shitting on developers because they are Starfield stans
Painting with such broad strokes about opinions you don’t like and writing them all collectively off as “pricks” and “starfield Stans” is contributing to the current state of discourse that you are lamenting.
I was just giving examples. English is not my native language so I did my best to diversify on adjectives. It takes like 5 seconds to find a comment anywhere you go where the person is just being straight up toxic and there’s no good intent on the post. I don’t care about the opinions, I am talking about the intent.
Edit: typo
Intentional or not, the phrasing is very hostile and dismissive, just fyi. No worries just pointing it out.
Sorry but that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I wasn’t trying to sound hostile I am just extremely frustrated and sad right now.
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Why are we so shitty to each other?
Outside of the internet, I ask this question.
It’s bizarre to me how billionaires don’t how to else to use their money other than engaging in a space race. It’s mind-boggling that people get into relationships only to beat and kill each the person closest to them. It’s discombobulating how a society largely directed by the whims of men rejects the anguished, depressed cries of other men before they kill themselves. It’s morbidly fascinating that a homeless epidemic is unfolding in developed nation and the response is to…withhold resources from them, destroy what little they have, and essentially do nothing to address their problems.
Why are we so shitty to each other indeed.
Outside of the internet, I ask this question.
I find people think the Internet and the “real world” are two different things. I don’t find this to be true, and I’ve seen people I know well entirely change their personality after hours of being angry just because a telephone call rings and they are practiced at changing for it. Similarly, I witness people who change while driving an automobile compared to their normal domestic behavior. It’s all part of the same person and acting like it isn’t real is denial of a lot of human history of other media.
All your points about homeless and and male identity crisis with mental health I find are true. And we clearly have the resources and information systems of connecting real people to real problems, one on one. But there hasn’t really been a social movement of the Internet to make friends and use real identities - even when social media often started that way with local area-code BBS systems and users groups… and even LAN gaming.
We need true social leaders who cross national boundaries and say the kind of things that were said during civil rights movements. Someone could start with doing a world-wide grieving over the pandemic deaths, we weren’t allowed to visit the people who died at the hospital or in quarantine at home. It seems like an obvious social positive to have a funeral, every society has a funeral, why not a world wide one for a world-wide pandemic? But I keep watching as nobody organizes it.
IMO, there’s a lot of factor playing part in this. (Copying from my fedi personal fedi acc!)
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A lot of people lack control of the real world situation that happen to them and some are desperate for the feel of being in control enough to harm other people just to feel like ‘I’m in control’
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A lot of people do not have a way to properly deal with their anger and frustration. They only teach to ‘hold or suppress it’ and there’s such also consequence in showing negative emotion IRL, so online is almost having no consequence for it.
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Online people are separate by screen. People know that there’s people behind it, but they don’t feel it. In online, we don’t get in your face ‘feedback’ from body language or facial expression from other people. IRL, you mess around and pretty much find out instantly.
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Social media reward people with engagement and fav/like, which is easy dopamine for people like it’s just a tip away from their body. And SOMEHOW I feel like social media normalized people being mean to each other as ‘Playful witty funny hahaha’ so they get rewarded by that. And yeah these things are addictive, so you can crave more, making you do more ‘extreme’ thing to get them. And yes you can get addicted to being angry too.
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And then there is also peer pressure and ‘us vs them’ mentality that is so strong in social media. I mean yeah, if we look at it, being ‘mean’ together with your group it’s sort of activity that you can bound together and also reward you as well. It just not a good one and come at a cost of another people.
Now add all of them together, you get the platform that reward toxic interaction and also extremely addictive. You get reward from like/fav. You get reward by ‘Peer approval’ (because today we forbid other people having neutral opinion on a thing, but it could be just my experience.), You get reward by your own brain. Not counting other thing like politic, moral compass, religion because it adds entirely another layer on this.
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There is hope.
This is really cool, is there more from where it came from? Is this a blog? I really loved it!
Just search for indie web. It’s an idea, a movement, etc. If you want to find things off the beaten path, this is an interesting search engine.
My favorite part of that site was discovering this site: https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops
I already knew about Windows 93 and 96, but didn’t know there were so many of them out there!
I know. I love stuff like this. Some people are so talented.
I honestly believe that modern social media and “the algorithm” has conditioned us into this kind of behaviour.
It’s already quite easy to forget we are interacting with other humans when we are behind screens and keyboards. This has always been an issue on the internet.
But when the internet is fuelled by algorithms which only want engagement, it is going to encourage behaviour which drives this. This is often extreme, sensational opinions and language. I feel like the algorithm constantly tried to show me content that would upset me. “What’s hot” is basically always “what’s controversial”, and controversy drives engagement. It certainly engaged me and I’ve had to make a conscious effort to just rip myself away from it.
Furthermore, social media doesn’t encourage long-form discussion, and it also conditions us to seek immediate gratification. Twitter especially wants us to summarize our points in just a few words, which doesn’t lend itself to mature, thought-out discussions.
I often make long posts here on Lemmy which I often feel aren’t really read by people or responded to because TL;DR. Me writing out paragraphs of analysis about Starfield isn’t going to get as many responses as someone simply saying “Starfield is the game of the century” or “Starfield is dogshit in every way”.
Lots of Rage bait out there, or people purposely posting things and making it sound slightly wrong, knowing people will comment too
