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The condensed version, someone posted a rainbow cake recipe, which looks quite delish, and someone else viewed a comment as snarky or condescending, and the entire threat went from recipe sharing to accusations of communism and all that is wrong with America.
Rather hilarious, but it is true.
I posted this in the psychology section because for one, people tend to be more educated here than in the political section, and two, I am wanting to hear more from those interested in the psychology behind this sort of phenomenon as opposed to trolls.
My take is that there is no one reason for this type of behavior. But Certainly low self esteem and self hatred is at the core of it. See The Pattern Pages - Self-Hate / Self-Destructive Patterns for a more in depth explanation.
In the political realm, the activity of trolls is not limited to one side or the other. But consider that during the last election, I had one long term friend who told me that if I voted for Obama, he would never be my friend again. Of course, I publicly endorsed Obama, like the majority of Americans, and nothing came of it. This individual has such low self esteem that he still hangs around.
What has changed is a notable tendency to troll facebook, Emails, forums, with negative, posts, most geared towards pro right wing extremism. He is not alone, I have several friends who have fallen into this. All are fundamentalist Christians of some type. Again, I am posting in the psychology section as opposed to the religious section due to the fact that people who frequent the psychology forums are more insightful and more educated than many of those in the religious forums.
It is a well known fact that the Republican party has been campaigning heavily in fundamentalist churches, reaching out to conservative Christians with their propaganda. Problem is, most all the fundamentalist types I know have a great degree of self loathing and self hatred. SO their open hatred of anyone different stems directly from the hatred they have of themselves. And why not, as they are part of a system which teaches that they are flawed, failures and need someone else to come along and save them . Who wouldn't be under those conditions? And along with it, comes the psychosomatic diseases, all bred from self hatred, low self esteem, depression and ultimately, a need to hate others as a result.
But that is not the only possible explanation. We as a society have become very comfortable in our anonymity. You know me only as the over-sized cat; in fact there are no cats here due to allergies. But it makes for a most interesting SN. However, you do not know who I really am. SO I can, if I want to, post anything aimed at anyone with no recourse. (Again, I do not want to or need to)
I come home from a bad day at the office? OK go on the internet and berate someone who has a different opinion. Not that I would, I do not need to, but many people apparantly do, as evidenced by the rleigious and political forums here. What we have gained is instant messaging, Email, cthe ability to communicate with other people all over the world. With 313 000 000 people in our country, we are not going to all agree on everything. But what we have lost is the behavior of our grandarents, where after dinner meant an evening walk and a conversation in person with the neighbors. Or a drive around town on Sundays to drop in and see friends. We really knew people then. We still do now, but then we had no answering machines, no Email and no smart phones. We had a one on one degree of interaction then that we do not have now. And we had greater social skills to some level. When someone in the neighborhood had surgery, and was laid up in the hospital, we fed their family and helped watch their house. My brother and I once mowed a guys yard, refused to take money because he had just had hernia surgery and could not push a lawnmower.
Now, we seem to see an activity online where people would rather complain, and blame others for any problems in society. And why not, our leaders in Washington do it, what example is that? We tolerate it from them, it would seem, and it is easier to blame someone else than to get up and fix a problem.
But the point remains, many online seems to enjoy conflict, even relish in it, and this is not a healthy behavior. At the core, is low self esteem, self hatred, and the only way to change it is for individuals to learn to overcome this self loathing, and while we can teach and help, ultimately the individual has to want it.
It would seem perhaps that some people do not?
It shows how easily people lose sight of a goal or a purpose, which was to show how to make a cool cake. Then others take advantage of the distraction. I really don't learn that much from people who cannot stay focused or who have no boundaries.
What I have found more interesting is why people like you don't participate in it? I think that once you figure that out, you understand what the others lack and what they have.
I'm really not sure what to say about this, other than that society has become quite mean and selfish. I see this all the time, news articles in which the comments turn into a vicious food fight for no good reason at all, about things having nothing to do with the article. Then too, at times it seems that no matter what I post in a forum someone will attack me for it, for some twisted reason, not that I said anything controversial, but apparently because they just so very much need someone to vent their hatred at. It seems there's a lot of rage out there, and the internet has become the outlet for it.
Not everyone who does such things self-loath, or have low self esteem, just because some phsyciatrist came up with that theory who knows how long ago. That's akin to saying everybody loves peanuts, and I wish people would stop saying that.
This sort of thing has been happening on the internet for many years. A thread will start on a particular topic - that topic will be discussed for awhile, then the discussion will switch to something different. So you click on a thread which has been running for awhile and no telling what they are talking about - certainly NOT the subject!
This is similar to getting 10 people in a circle, have one person whisper something to the person on his/her left, then that person repeats the message to the next person on the left. By the time the message gets back around to the 1st person, it is totally changed!
The condensed version, someone posted a rainbow cake recipe, which looks quite delish, and someone else viewed a comment as snarky or condescending, and the entire threat went from recipe sharing to accusations of communism and all that is wrong with America.
Rather hilarious, but it is true.
I posted this in the psychology section because for one, people tend to be more educated here than in the political section, and two, I am wanting to hear more from those interested in the psychology behind this sort of phenomenon as opposed to trolls.
My take is that there is no one reason for this type of behavior. But Certainly low self esteem and self hatred is at the core of it. See The Pattern Pages - Self-Hate / Self-Destructive Patterns for a more in depth explanation.
In the political realm, the activity of trolls is not limited to one side or the other. But consider that during the last election, I had one long term friend who told me that if I voted for Obama, he would never be my friend again. Of course, I publicly endorsed Obama, like the majority of Americans, and nothing came of it. This individual has such low self esteem that he still hangs around.
What has changed is a notable tendency to troll facebook, Emails, forums, with negative, posts, most geared towards pro right wing extremism. He is not alone, I have several friends who have fallen into this. All are fundamentalist Christians of some type. Again, I am posting in the psychology section as opposed to the religious section due to the fact that people who frequent the psychology forums are more insightful and more educated than many of those in the religious forums.
It is a well known fact that the Republican party has been campaigning heavily in fundamentalist churches, reaching out to conservative Christians with their propaganda. Problem is, most all the fundamentalist types I know have a great degree of self loathing and self hatred. SO their open hatred of anyone different stems directly from the hatred they have of themselves. And why not, as they are part of a system which teaches that they are flawed, failures and need someone else to come along and save them . Who wouldn't be under those conditions? And along with it, comes the psychosomatic diseases, all bred from self hatred, low self esteem, depression and ultimately, a need to hate others as a result.
But that is not the only possible explanation. We as a society have become very comfortable in our anonymity. You know me only as the over-sized cat; in fact there are no cats here due to allergies. But it makes for a most interesting SN. However, you do not know who I really am. SO I can, if I want to, post anything aimed at anyone with no recourse. (Again, I do not want to or need to)
I come home from a bad day at the office? OK go on the internet and berate someone who has a different opinion. Not that I would, I do not need to, but many people apparantly do, as evidenced by the rleigious and political forums here. What we have gained is instant messaging, Email, cthe ability to communicate with other people all over the world. With 313 000 000 people in our country, we are not going to all agree on everything. But what we have lost is the behavior of our grandarents, where after dinner meant an evening walk and a conversation in person with the neighbors. Or a drive around town on Sundays to drop in and see friends. We really knew people then. We still do now, but then we had no answering machines, no Email and no smart phones. We had a one on one degree of interaction then that we do not have now. And we had greater social skills to some level. When someone in the neighborhood had surgery, and was laid up in the hospital, we fed their family and helped watch their house. My brother and I once mowed a guys yard, refused to take money because he had just had hernia surgery and could not push a lawnmower.
Now, we seem to see an activity online where people would rather complain, and blame others for any problems in society. And why not, our leaders in Washington do it, what example is that? We tolerate it from them, it would seem, and it is easier to blame someone else than to get up and fix a problem.
But the point remains, many online seems to enjoy conflict, even relish in it, and this is not a healthy behavior. At the core, is low self esteem, self hatred, and the only way to change it is for individuals to learn to overcome this self loathing, and while we can teach and help, ultimately the individual has to want it.
It would seem perhaps that some people do not?
I think most internet interactions are pretty meaningless. There are exceptions of course and I personally have learned a lot from some posters but most of my interactions are usually trying to proving people others wrong and making snarky remarks.
I think in real life scenarios there are less variables because we don't have as much control of our environment. We realize much quicker that things "might not be as it seems in our head. We also see humanness, on the internet is very easy to dehumanize others because we are not seeing facial reactions or body movements. We just see text. Most are insults, capital letters, sarcastic remarks, rude emoticons nasty repeated symbols !!!!!!!! ?????? so in our heads our positive and negative emotions might run deeper because nothing is stopping them.
I also think that when we read some posts we read what we want to read not what was actually written. If we are already emotional(upset) we are even more biased to interpret the information differently.
But your question was why we do that? IMO Because we are judgmental people. We were told life should be fair and there is a "right way" for everything. We think we live according to our standards of "fairness" and "rightness" If someone lives differently we assume those people don't approve us and should be schooled about it. The logic is that those people will realize how wrong they were about us and about themselves, change their wrongful thinking and finally approve our thinking.
I don't see a great amount of change in message boards since they were one at a time bbs's. People so inclined will surf the thread titles and comment at will. Sometimes its with an agenda, some just to see your fingers move, some to say something. Think of it as a conversation which goes on and on. There's people who don't want the topic and come up with other suggestions but the talkers ignore them. And the guy who just *has* to win his point.
What has changed is instead of a finite number of mostly locals on a local bbs, its thousands of reads a day, from all over the world. And while some boards are moderated well, some are not. Some not at all. When it was your bbs and someone slandered someone else, they could go after you since you gave them the opportunity. The early dial in nets were generally much looser (except Ilink) in content. You were dealing with a national or with Fido an international audience. It was still up to the 'host' to report and remove the bad posts, but the moderator on the net did most of the pruning. Web based boards are the responsibility of the sponser, going back to the start.
Usenet had moderated groups, and unmoderated ones. You learned how to ignore the ones which were from trolls and enjoy. I liked usenet since there was not that pause to decide if your story was too fill in the blank or your point of view liable to annoy a moderator. One of the worse things which ruin boards is over moderation since it usually means the person who owns it doesn't like disagreement.
I like that most boards let in thinkers of all origions and if you don't want to discuss with them your free not to. Even if it is to you an undesirable point of view they have the right to hold it just as you do yours.
I think most internet interactions are pretty meaningless. There are exceptions of course and I personally have learned a lot from some posters but most of my interactions are usually trying to proving people others wrong and making snarky remarks.
I think in real life scenarios there are less variables because we don't have as much control of our environment. We realize much quicker that things "might not be as it seems in our head. We also see humanness, on the internet is very easy to dehumanize others because we are not seeing facial reactions or body movements. We just see text. Most are insults, capital letters, sarcastic remarks, rude emoticons nasty repeated symbols !!!!!!!! ?????? so in our heads our positive and negative emotions might run deeper because nothing is stopping them.
I also think that when we read some posts we read what we want to read not what was actually written. If we are already emotional(upset) we are even more biased to interpret the information differently.
But your question was why we do that? IMO Because we are judgmental people. We were told life should be fair and there is a "right way" for everything. We think we live according to our standards of "fairness" and "rightness" If someone lives differently we assume those people don't approve us and should be schooled about it. The logic is that those people will realize how wrong they were about us and about themselves, change their wrongful thinking and finally approve our thinking.
Thanks for the good points. I have certainly made use of the ignore button on this and other forums, there are some people who just like to argue. and as nightbird 47 pointed out, some forums moderate and do not allow it, others do.
Some people want to insist that their way/opinion is so right that they will argue about the least little things. I personally think the videos of Brian Williams rapping are funny, I always geta good laugh out of them and admire someone's time and patience in making one. Of course, as soon as I say this, someone says they do not like it. OK no big deal to each his own. Next it becomes"You must be stupid for liking that" (See my thread intolerant of intolerance as to what became of someone who said that in person to me)
THis is where the self loathing and low self esteem comes in. What if someone likes something I do not like. For me, no big deal. But to someone with low/no self esteem, the inner question is "Oh,am I doing something wrong? I better convince them that I am right in order to make myself feel better about myself"
And what better place to do that than the internet, where anonymity rules and rude emoticons are the norm.
It's my inclination that people of the liberal philosophy (who internet forums are primarily composed of) are the ones who take the internet anonymity with glee and love to incite arguments and debates. That's what they do in real life.
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