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 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”
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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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.
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.
Why are we so shitty to each other indeed.
For whatever reason, people like to be better than others. It’s something I’ve never understood and I always try my best to be humble because of it and don’t really get off on being competitive like a lot of people do.
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Lots of Rage bait out there, or people purposely posting things and making it sound slightly wrong, knowing people will comment too
One of the things that really pisses me off is the current state of Steam. People realized they can bait to get lots of clown awards, which rewards them with a lot of points. On one hotfix update post, someone got over 200 clown awards.
It’s already quite easy to forget we are interacting with other humans when we are behind screens and keyboards
I honestly hate that people do this. Maybe its because I work online in customer service and I chat with people online so I always know that I’m talking to a real person - but even before I worked online, I always assumed I was talking to a real person on the other end.
It’s wild to me that people become so incredibly inconsiderate that they don’t even think they’re talking to a human and instead interpret it as “oh I’m just arguing an idea” yeah, you’re arguing an idea with a HUMAN.
Sometimes I catch people doing that because they’ll respond to me like I’m someone else and I have to be like, hey no, I’m not that person, I’m my own person and you are in fact talking to me now. A person who will react to things being said. Cause you know, human.
The loudest voices usually aren’t the most representative ones. I like Hank Green’s take in a recent video. It’s easier to dismiss the really out there opinions when you realize that it’s not what everyone thinks.
I’ve actually wound back on posts on facebook and specialised sites. In hiking forums on facebook, I literally gave common sense information sometimes (for instance, in one case, someone was asking if water tanks on a route was full, and I explained to never rely on water tanks in the middle of summer for multi-day hikes since rangers don’t fill them) and you need permanent water sources. And, I got told I was “mansplaining”, and that she was knew what she was doing, from multiple people (not sure why she’d be asking if they were full then, if she didn’t plan to rely on them). On another one, someone was literally telling other people that they should carry a knife to protect themself against other people (and were trying to scare women into feeling like they shouldn’t be safe when hiking here in Australia).
Even if you’re a professional in a specific field, you’ll always come across people who tell you you’re wrong too, and try to treat you like crap. On Reddit, I got told once I was LARPing about doing hiking and mountaineering, until someone else pointed out my long post history.
On facebook, the whole fake troll accounts thing is the worst too (I literally saw a guy with 3 of the same named account as his friends, and a 4th, which was obviously their real name, as it was similar name).
Its one reason I was happy to donate to Beeshaw. We don’t all need to agree, but there needs to be good faith. And it feels like other communities are either just full of angry people, people who are scared of change, or people operating in bad faith.
We don’t need to be one of those communities. I myself can be toxic at times, but I agree… I am trying to be better…
I’ve been starting to reduce my “internet footprint” especially on large media sites. (twitter, reddit, youtube, etc). I’ve been deleting a lot of my posts that dont have important info, and reducing my time spent on them. I’m doing it to improve my mental health. hopefully.
I and three others had a pvp Minecraft server and we had to shut it down because people were getting into stupid toxic arguments to the point we had two sides, one wanted the other banned on threat of them leaving because one of their members had an argument several months ago with them and brought it up again. I spent all nighters on the Minecraft server and the owner spent €50 every month. To be treated like this was heartbreaking. So the four of us agreed to shut it down. It hurt and I feel bad and the underlying concept was enjoyable to many people, but we couldn’t have it because people were just trying to figure out ways to break it and weren’t actually playing the game we tirelessly were maintaining for them. Shutting it down was heartbreaking but I feel so much better for it.
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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I honestly started crying, but that’s just me being pathetic and a sponge to stuff people say on the internet :(
Definitely not my intention and I apologize for upsetting you.
these are the valuable interactions that make the large amount of work running the instance worthwhile :)
hey, just wanna jump in here to say i am proud of you both for having this honest conversation peacefully <3 really appreciate the thoughtfulness here
It’s all right, I was just extremely vulnerable due to the amount of exposure (which caused me to write this post) so I just got caught of guard, but I did my best to not be defensive
You are not pathetic! Having emotions about things and feeling your feelings is not pathetic.
It’s definitely easier being on and participating on the internet when you have a ‘thicker skin’ and aren’t too much of a sponge emotionally, but I don’t think it should be that way. I’m sorry that it does tend to be that way. It sucks.
Having feelings about people saying negative things about a post you made where you poured out your thoughts and feelings and opened yourself up is not pathetic. It would probably be beneficial to you (& to everyone, not just you) to try and not take stuff like these internet comments so personally and so hard, but I know that’s a lot easier said than done, and being this way is not a fault.
I may be projecting, because I’m definitely this way, but it sounds like you may have a habit of being too hard on yourself? I know I do! I’m a bit of an emotional sponge like you described yourself as, too, so I totally get it. We both could benefit from giving ourselves some more grace and understanding, like I tend to do for others and I’m guessing you do, too, and trying not to be so hard on ourselves. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you/us, though. It’s so easy to be this way, especially on the mean wild west that is the internet!
I’m probably all over the place with this but I hope it all makes sense.
Just to reiterate: you’re not pathetic. Feeling that way and being that way is not pathetic. You deserve to be treated with kindness and understanding, both from yourself and from others. Some of these commenters seem to be taking your post and comments without reading them in good faith…which not only isn’t cool, but Beehaw has rules/guidelines about doing our best to take people’s comments and arguments and stuff in good faith, darn it!
What you were saying was perfectly clear to me and I totally get and understand where you’re coming from and what you’re getting at and I agree because I’ve seen the same thing.
I hope this all makes sense. I can get a little rambly and all over the place, especially when I’m emotional, and seeing your comment saying how hurt you were and then also being so hard on yourself for it makes my heart hurt for you! I totally empathize and understand. If I can clarify anything, please feel free to let me know!
You’re not pathetic and your feelings (in the comment and the post) are totally understandable and valid here. Please try to be more kind and positive to yourself, just like how in your post you were saying people should be less negative and more kind and positive on forums and internet stuff. You deserve kindness! I’m sending big internet hugs your way :)
(My apologies again for this long, rambly, all over the place, novel of a comment, lol!)
What a lovely, high effort comment. Thanks for taking time to respond so earnestly.
This was great, thank you! Yeah, I just wanted to vent a little bit because I was being really overwhelmed by toxic things when I just wanted to browse.
I am extremely hard on myself, haha. This is one of the things I tried to work on during counseling so I have huge triggers with rejection and such (yup, it’s awful).
I really appreciated your message, really! 🥺
Why are we so shitty to each other?
Pretty sure it’s a result of over a decade of algorithmically incentivized cultural shift. Fights drive clicks and they clued into that pretty early on.
Why are we so shitty to each other? I’m so tired.
That’s our nature. We always have been and always will be. The only difference is that now it’s way more convenient.
With that said, I deleted my twitter a year ago. I deleted facebook three months ago, and left reddit for lemmy two months ago. It’s actually been really great for my mental health to not know what everyone I know is thinking all of the time, and I still have messenger if they need to to get in touch with me. Do I miss an event here and there? Yes, but it’s worth it for the amount of stuff I don’t have to see anymore.
There is hope.
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.
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.
