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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 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.

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".

IMO, there's a lot of factor playing part in this. (Copying from my fedi personal fedi acc!)

1. 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'

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

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.

I am getting old.

When I was a kid, my parents, my siblings and I would go to very crowded beaches during the summer. Sunny weather, vibrant colors, cool water. It was nearly impossible for me to bother with whatever everyone else was doing. My attention was focused to everything that was fun and new to me. I would swim for hours, climb rocks and attempt the most challenging dives I could, run on the wet sand. Even build castles!

And then, gradually, every next year each summer visit to the beach would become less magical. Every next year, my attention would start to focus less on the beach and more on the people. And not just people who were calm, friendly and enjoying themselves there. No. I would focus on people who were rude, stressed out and annoying. Loud people who would disregard everyone else around them.

Until, at some point, it started actually feeling bad visiting crowded places. Felt like there was no way I could enjoy being at the beach if I were to share it with other people. Now, I can point you to places that very few people know how to reach. And they are great. As long as you have your own company.

I envy my kid self. If you were to ask that kid what it felt like to be at the beach, you would get a lot of excitement and zero negativity.

Now, even though I will mostly avoid crowded places it's not always possible to do so. So, when I end up in a crowded place I actively focus on what is important for me to enjoy my time. Laughter is music for my ears. Kidding around my friends, swimming and all the good stuff my kid self knew how to do better. I try. Sometimes I succeed, others I feel old and tired ;-)

There is hope.

https://theindieweb.com/

i wholeheartedly agree with you. i severely limited my social media usage in the past 10 years. took extra care to be mindful of what kind of content i was spending time on. it's shocking to me how much the online social norms have shifted in the past few years, since the start of the pandemic.

for me, it's not so much about the shitty behavior and hot takes, but the fact that this type of behavior is commonly accepted. i'm not down with being treated that way, but it's exhausting to deal with these attitudes everywhere. this is why i decided to join beehaw. i'm happy with my choice.

I think there was a "snarkiness" to the earlier web that I still appreciate. I'm fine with a one-word answer or a shit post if it's funny and not hateful. I think the tone became a more extreme and worse version of itself over time. The internet is a place for everyone, not just enthusiasts, we gotta do better.

Problem is, as other comments have rightly said, we're incentivized to do the opposite. And bad actors find it useful to encourage extreme opinions and division.

While i think something has been lost now that twitter, reddit and centralized communities are in decline, i also think this is an opportunity to build better communities with different incentives. While i don't the fediverse is going to take over the internet, i think it's part of a broader and encouraging trend.

❤️ leaving a heart for you

A lot of social engagement through social media is driven by impressions such as up votes, favorites, likes, etc. Unfortunately, an easy way to promote engagement and such lies in rage bait. This is likely due to the visceral emotional response generated by rage baiting. I would also extend this issue to how ubiquitous instant gratification is to the internet and social media. People tend to acquire clout through reacting to something quickly, which isn't always well-thought out. Add in the notion of mob mentality, and you have a recipe for the rapid exponential propagation of negative words, thoughts, and emotions. People also tend to not have productive ways of channeling their frustrations and issues, so they often see other entities on the Internet as just a name, sometimes less than that.

There's also a heavy amount of tribalism across a variety of domains which allows one to take refuge from this rage baiting by finding other like-minded individuals to identify with. In some cases, the stress of everyday life or what have you removes a sense of agency or power in one's life and sometimes people cope with this by developing a sense of superiority through whichever group or ideal that they identify with. This cycle repeats itself until there is a constant battle between any given groups where people attempt to elevate their self-worth by putting those that they dont agree with down, while emphasizing the superiority of their own ideal, IMO. I could be totally wrong ofc. I'm hardly perfect.

It's been a pretty exhausting experience. I'm tired of it as well; my fondness for engaging with people has diminished greatly.

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..

That's true especially in gaming circles.

There are big misconceptions about game development jobs. People tend to think that implementing X or Y feature "surely can't be that hard". They have absolutely zero experience in game design or game programming and yet they take on such a condescending level when you read their posts.

Programming is hard. Balancing is hard. Developing a game while you have a whole player base against you is hard. The game industry is most infamously known for its crunch times and high turnover rates. And yet players do not respect that.

Whenever a game gets released at all, it's such a ton of work that have been done. Even if the game turns out to be not as fun as people wanted. Or even if there are bugs. In fact, i am sure that half of the people that complain aggressively will never do something that impressive in their life, ever.

We should be in awe and respect our fellow devs because this job is one of pure passion.

I'm frustrated too. So much toxicity and bigotry. It hurts the soul and makes you wonder if it's even worth it. But.. there ARE great communities out there. The fantastic ones that make it all worthwhile. I've made some really great friends in my niche communities I've found.

Don't give up, and keep searching for the good people in your online life. Keep them close!

Get off the internet. I've been trying to have a social event on every weekday so that I'm not sitting bored at home. You forget about politics. I also have one room in my house I've dedicated as internet-free, where I go to do stuff like drawing.

In the german reddit and lemmy we circle jerk about the forums of old, because of their toxic culture. E.g. things like "use the search function, this has been answered a thousand times" "just google it" "you didn't provide the exact specs of your computer, even if it is just a software issue" and so on.

I think it was easier back then, because we did not have the huge networks like facebook or youtube, where there is no sense of community. But you still had to finde the nice communities and the vileness was always there. It was just easier to steer clear from

It made interactions easily available and there is no "need" to preserve etiquette, because there is no accountability to the community. I also have the feeling that the modern internet, smartphones and strong hardware made people too entitled to things just working and being available at every moment. So we develop back to being toddlers that are quicker to throw a tantrum.

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 don't know whether you're using other fediverse services, but here is a link that only shows nice servers: https://fedi.garden/

About toxicity and negativity, I'm only on two Mastodon servers, two Lemmy servers (active only here), and on Kbin. Depending on where you're engaging, you can notice more or less of those bad traits, but their levels are sickening to me. Two or three days ago I commented to a reply I was given, stating what I thought about their opinion. And suddenly I was involved in that toxicity and other bad behaviours made by other random people.

Things can be said in another way, in a nicer and good faithful way, but people consider that, because you cannot see the other party in the conversation, they can behave however they want without consequences for them. But there are consequences, and unfortunately they're for the receiver. I'm sure outside internet those behaviours would be more limited, in general.

And this is not something that occurs recently or during the last 5 years. I've been browsing internet since 2006, and it was as bad as it is now, just with other intermediaries, like online chats, forums, etc. People don't have legitimacy to act in any way they want, but they do nonetheless. And here is my last thought. What if you are toxic to an user, on the other side of your screen, who happens to have depression or other mental disorders, and you don't know that fact? Would you feel OK knowing that you're driving someone to hurt themselves, or worse?

I've faith on Beehaw, because I notice admins and moderators are really serious about being nice, and conversations, as far as I can notice, are superb. We all just need to defend this way of acting, pointing out the bad actors and censuring their bad actions.

I agree and thats why I end up in Beehaw. There is still some hostility but compared to the world wide web out there, its much better.

Now I just reduce my time online and try to find friends who share an interest.

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.

Humanity really does not have a good history interacting with the Earth or with each other. People have to make a choice not to follow signals or create powerful leaders that don't get so competitive that they just start wrecking things on larger and larger scales.

People have to choose to create something better and enjoy it. And many are deciding that peace and kindness is just 'too boring' for them. Take care.

Being shitty to each other is a big driving factor in a lot of human innovation. We are typing angry words instead of throwing rocks, most of the time, so at least there is that.

Hey OP. I try myself to make a positive out of this. I'm verbose online, and want to have discussions. But frequently I am... deeply ideological, and I am sharing strong opinions with little room for positive discourse. I've realized now, being non-toxic and careful about what I say doesn't make me less exhausting to talk to. I think maybe I just have to balance fun and approachable with moving a conversation along.

Even when I do the perfect thing - share links related to a topic people are excited about - they aren't interested in following those links. They are more casual, and I need to adjust.