Hate

[koriandr]

For the past months I've noticed a spike in the hateful posts on social media. Starting with normalizing obsessive and possessive abuse to flat out wishes of death upon someone that is doing what they like. Why are we so hateful toward eachother?

 

[lofivelcro]

I'd say it's always been like this on the internet. Twenty years ago, it was all fine and dandy because no one used his/her real name in the internet. No idea why people aren't clever and refrain from doing that when it has never been easier to track them down, some even with their real names and photos as avatars.
That, and people get actively encouraged to get aggressive towards people not of their same opinion. I'd even go so far and say it's by design.

 

[Fitato]

I also feel like this has been the norm of the internet for quite some time. But if you're noticing it more the past few months, it's important to figure out what changed. Did you start browsing a different part of the internet? Did something in particular happen to make you aware of hateful comments more often? Or maybe the particular sites you are visiting have become more toxic communities themselves?

It's unavoidable to come across negativity and meanness on the internet, but the websites you visit make a huge difference. Spend less time on the negative websites and more time on the positive ones. Even in places like Reddit, there are certain subreddits that tend to be filled with friendly, goodhearted people, and subreddits full of a lot of nasty users.

 

[koriandr]

I also feel like this has been the norm of the internet for quite some time. But if you're noticing it more the past few months, it's important to figure out what changed. Did you start browsing a different part of the internet? Did something in particular happen to make you aware of hateful comments more often? Or maybe the particular sites you are visiting have become more toxic communities themselves?

It's unavoidable to come across negativity and meanness on the internet, but the websites you visit make a huge difference. Spend less time on the negative websites and more time on the positive ones. Even in places like Reddit, there are certain subreddits that tend to be filled with friendly, goodhearted people, and subreddits full of a lot of nasty users.

I've been using mainstream apps like Instagram for instance. I know it's normal for people to be hateful, but lately the people on those apps have become overly aggressive. Example for this behaviour is a post about someone pushing their limits to complete something, this same person blacks out during said activity and everyone in the comments is attacking him with profanities and wishes he never wakes up...and it was a big post, like it had a lot of views and likes.
Another example was a post about a couple and a huge chunk of comments were "she cheats on him definitely" or "I hope they break up" or "I hope she breaks his heart". Before those comments were hardly noticable, and now they've got thousands of likes and support. Why?

 

[Fitato]

I've been using mainstream apps like Instagram for instance. I know it's normal for people to be hateful, but lately the people on those apps have become overly aggressive. Example for this behaviour is a post about someone pushing their limits to complete something, this same person blacks out during said activity and everyone in the comments is attacking him with profanities and wishes he never wakes up...and it was a big post, like it had a lot of views and likes.
Another example was a post about a couple and a huge chunk of comments were "she cheats on him definitely" or "I hope they break up" or "I hope she breaks his heart". Before those comments were hardly noticable, and now they've got thousands of likes and support. Why?

Honestly, I have no clue. I don't use Instagram. That sounds terrible though. I don't know why people treat others so badly. Why they willingly try to hurt them and take away their happiness. Their hearts are full of poison.

 

[mavie]

Part of the problem may be that a huge amount of "people" on the internet/in social media are not human but bots. It takes only one evil mind to program thousands of hateful contributers. There's also an existing troll industry that spreads hate/propaganda/etc. for various reasons.
Most real people are fairly okay but they are usually not the loud/most visible ones. Maybe keep that in mind.

 

[Sólveig]

Part of the problem may be that a huge amount of "people" on the internet/in social media are not human but bots. It takes only one evil mind to program thousands of hateful contributers. There's also an existing troll industry that spreads hate/propaganda/etc. for various reasons.
Most real people are fairly okay but they are usually not the loud/most visible ones. Maybe keep that in mind.

I definitely forgot about this considering that there is a lot of propaganda bots on Twitter that push certain Trending Topics in my country. Some of those bots can also leave hateful messages in order to provoke people. There was a joke on my country's subreddit about how some users in there were evident bots due to their copied and pasted posts and PMs. I wouldn't be surprised if what you're finding out are bot comments; there's plenty of them in the mainstream social media. In fact, I believe most of those accounts' owners don't even realize their account belongs to a botnet. Either that, or they can be abandoned accounts. People click on anything nowdays.

Funny enough, I had this conversation with someone asking about why so many people online are so aggressive everywhere. They were looking for an alternate platform in order to stay out of toxicity, but I adviced him to actually stay away from those since they are no different. The hate is the same, but with a different coat of paint. I don't know why the subjects of bots never came up.

I think you should stay away from that toxicity too, as best as you can.

 

[legolo]

Welcome to the 21st century... Most of the internet (and humanity in general) is a horrible place. And with political "debates" nowadays being pushed so far away from "neutral and normal" as possible by certain politicians why should the little people behave if the important ones can´t? You either have the same opinion as somebody else, or you´re mortal enemies and they wanna see you die in the most horrible ways possible. And because most countries don´t have laws against harassment and threats in the internet or the corporations that own the social networks don´t give a sh*t about it nothing happens, except everything is getting worse. Because the human psyche always want´s to test the limits. If I can get away with threatening to kill people online today, what even more batshit crazy thing can I do tomorrow and nobody cares about it?

Yes, that´s a really bleak way to see things, but just look around. It´s just as bad in the real world. I´m not gonna name any politicians, cause we already know enough examples, they´re everywhere, but branding your political rivals as traitors and enemies of the state is pretty much normal. Nobody cares about truth anymore, our century is the century of opinion. And the more extreme, the better. Cause extreme generates the most attention...

That´s why I stay away from every single social network. You won´t believe how many times I had to justify myself this week infront of my new co-students for not having Insta, Tik-Tok, Twitter or whatever the hell else people use nowadays. The real world is already horrible enough, why should I spend time in the internet which is just an even more toxic hellhole?

 

[TopNotch]

Envy. People want what other people have - a happy relationship, a good job, nice clothes, whatever - and if they can't have it, they get nasty. Darebee is my sole social media whatsit, though I do have a couple of other accounts on WhatsApp and Messenger but they are solely for Club-related Taekwondo business. I reckon if anyone wants to let me know what they are up to in their lives, they can send me a text.

 

[JohnStrong]

Perhaps much of it is rooted in a feeling of powerlessness? Most of us have been on the internet for years now, and understand hateful behaviour can come from all ages, genders, etc. I believe the one commonality in people who are heavily invested in attacking people online is that their lives aren't that great. Happy people, enjoying life are typically better connected to a sense of humanity and will approach discussion as though they are a guest at a dinner party: patiently, curiously, respectfully.

If someone believes no one likes them, then they probably don't like themselves, which slowly accumulates deposits of anger/resentment. Human beings can't contain those deposits forever, it's self-erasure, self-hate, anti-life. I believe finding an outlet is akin to a survival mechanism for souls in this tragic situation.

Tapping a few angry keys into a text field directed at another person is one of the most low-effort, effective ways of venting today.

 

[lofivelcro]

Oh, bots are probably another factor. And a very interesting one. I had a conversation once with my partner about bots and how some Twitter accounts with 10 thousand followers suddenly were left with only a few hundreds at best after a bot purge.
If one thing makes huge leaps in developement at the moment, it's AI and scripts. It's fascinating, really. On one board I frequent some guy has written a bot that can fill the board with dozens of threads with dozens of posts in minutes. Took some time for the experienced users to spot that and newbies have a harder time still.
If you view the internet and especially big social media platforms as one giant playground for pastime developers, idiots, and what-have-you, it starts to get fascinating and kind of fun, trying to spot behaviours and signs of generated content.

 

[Nevetharine]

I watched a video on YouTube a little while ago. She posts what I eat in a day videos and I sometimes watch that because she's plant-based and I find it inspiring.

For some reason I decided to go through the comments (I rarely do because of this very issue) and there was literally someone that said "Nice diet if you want to be infertile".

Things like this make me stay away from humans and social media. I'm never on FB anymore. Literally just Darebee, and I have my close family on WhatsApp. That's it.

I'd rather go walking and have a chat with the neighborhood of weavers in the sugarcane next to my house. (No I'm not kidding. I talk to animals. All of them. Even flies. Though I have less nice things to say to them - poor flies.)

 

[lofivelcro]

@Nevetharine I use a custom script to block everything in Youtube aside from the search and the video itself. I don't see comments or recommendations, only if I want to. Might be something to look into.

 

[Sólveig]

I watched a video on YouTube a little while ago. She posts what I eat in a day videos and I sometimes watch that because she's plant-based and I find it inspiring.

For some reason I decided to go through the comments (I rarely do because of this very issue) and there was literally someone that said "Nice diet if you want to be infertile".

Things like this make me stay away from humans and social media. I'm never on FB anymore. Literally just Darebee, and I have my close family on WhatsApp. That's it.

I'd rather go walking and have a chat with the neighborhood of weavers in the sugarcane next to my house. (No I'm not kidding. I talk to animals. All of them. Even flies. Though I have less nice things to say to them - poor flies.)

Interesting fact about comments like those: they are pretty much Poe's Law taken up to 11. Nowdays, it's almost impossible to differentiate between the one who has an extreme viewpoint, the one who parodies said extreme viewpoint, the troll, and the bot.

But yeah, I only use Facebook for the memes and checking up on some old contacts. WhatsApp gives me a headache (and I hate the bloat), and even then I find people that take WhatsApp way too seriously, like, calm down! I'm not always in the mood to talk, and I don't have to answer immediately! It's unrelated, but it stresses me out.