After years, now being in my 30's I can totally understand how online gaming changed me and my interactions vs people that haven't played online games etc are completely different. I used to have a complete disregard about anything in life, I wouldn't mind saying to someone 'get cancer', which is quite awful. Only now that I grew up and reduced my online presence by a lot, also understood that life is life and games are games, I understand how awful of a thing is to wish cancer to someone or even joke about that. People losing families and friends over that thing and I used to just have it as a word.

I can't blame it on my parents either. They tried their best and they gave me everything they could. If it wasn't for them I would be a total loss I guess. Its just that they couldn't stop me from playing videogames or convert my life into videogames. That thing was like a junk during my teens.

That said online games definitely helped me mature as well, I mean its not all bad, I definitely got some good values out of interacting in online video games, and some bad.

Just wanted to bring my personal experience on the matter and what you commented.

I certainly recognize the sort of behavior you're describing, and it makes intuitive sense that online gaming would worsen it with anonymity and dehumanized opponents.

But in practice? As a teenager I watched people say "I hope you get cancer" or worse on the field, in the locker room, or even in the cafeteria. Or jump straight to knowingly personal mockery, or just beat somebody up because it was fun to hurt them. And it doesn't necessarily go away when people get out of school. "That guy likes a different sports team than me, let me tell him how he should die painfully" is something people think and act on every day.

It's still quite possible that online gaming sparks this behavior from times and moments it would happen otherwise. I certainly don't mean to presume anything about you personally - you know your own story better than any generalization.

But as a social pattern? I worry that we're mostly upset about online gaming and cyberbullying because they're new and different. We tolerate an amount of cruelty and violence outside of those settings that I think we're very slow to acknowledge that maybe the digital harm has just made more visible something we've been dealing with for a long time.

And it was far from the only thing of that sort that happened. I remember really upsetting people on a couple of occasions because I thought about the likely, harmless consequence of what I was saying, and didn't consider whether it could cut some people much deeper.

None of us were taught to do this by gaming online. Honestly, I'm doubtful that gaming teaches cruelty any more than team sports or school cafeterias do. I get that it's depersonalizing and people say cruel things, but it feels like a boogeyman given how much actual violence gets ignored at that age.

Rather than addressing the real fact that women are treated as sexual objects by men generally, whether in thought or anonymous action in message chat boxes, this sort of comment turns it into an issue of "polite conversation". To me it seems as an (although it seems inadvertent) attempt to divert the attention from the real issue towards a non issue of "poor taste in jokes".

I still like particularly dark, demented, and a "punching down humor".

I've always felt a certain level of dishonesty amongst individuals who use polite discourse as a means of communication. There also seems to be a hint of classism in maintaining polite discourse.

I’m accurately identifying what the article’s subject is, how the commenter’s comment is only tangentially related, distracting and really missing the point. It’s a valid critique of the comment. Critiques can’t be expected to be padded, because it might make someone feel bad that they were wrong. This is illogical and anti-science.

(With that said, there are certain behaviours e.g. support for fascism that seem to be associated with having large numbers of anon accounts.)

I Googled both your anonymity and your fascism claims and couldn't find anything, but I'd love to learn more.

https://www.theringer.com/2016/8/9/16046698/anonymous-twitte...

The closest thing my google-fu got me.

And I question whether anonymity is really the root of this behavior, or if it's just the bravado of crowds. The negativity and bile spouted on Facebook never fails to astound me, and people say things that would be exile-worthy in any normal conversation.

The reason only the female is harassed I think has a very simple explanation, only men behave this way.

Why the same men don’t behave e.g racist or otherwise harassing the male identity can’t say. Best guess there is that these men are simply threatened by women, especially those that are attractive or successful. But I’m way out of my comfort zone of even man-guessing now.

I didn’t intend to detract from the fact that these men are assholes or say sexism isn’t the issue here.

In fact HN is a lot nicer than a number of verified name forums.

HN is relatively niche, it's not mainstream. Even if a troll posts e.g. sexist or Nazi crap here, it will get no attention due to a lack of fellow Nazis to upvote and engage like on Twitter/FB/Reddit, and in addition both the userbase and the mods are quick in removing trolling, thus further reducing the "profit" that a troll can have from trolling.

Also, HN lacks notifications. No matter if upvotes, downvotes, replys, flags - you have to look yourself in your own thread history. This prevents the rapid heating up of discussions - and the lack of a character limit allows users to properly express what they're thinking, unlike Twitter, thus preventing misunderstandings.

Of course there is karma whoring, I won't deny that - but there's no way you get thousands of karma points/likes/rts/claps/whatever for a simple Fuck Trump/Fuck Clinton. For gobbling up karma on HN one has to write either high quality content or be the lucky one who first submits a link to a SpaceX success or a critical security issue.

edit: Oh, there is one other thing which explains "nicer" for me. HN definitely leans towards the leftie-libertarian side. Usually, hate speech, offensive insults, derogatory vocabulary, discrimination, pointless trolling and other aspects associated with "unpleasant environments" are found on the right-wing/authoritarian/alt-right/gamergate/masculist spectrum.

Reducing credibility of right minded folks by categorizing them all as authoritarian You can be right wing And an upstanding citizen

The user's age on HN is in the ballpark of 25-40 years old, as it's a tech website.

The website in OP is a meme generator, and I'm sure the ballpack would be 12-18 years.

Now considering this, I agree with alkonaut.

Oh no, I'm aging out, I'm 41.

I'm curious why you put 40 as the top end there. If I were going to guess at an age range for this site I go lower and much higher.

I imagine he meant in the normal distribution sense, where 25-40 comprises ~70% of the userbase; entirely anecdotal but I get the feeling that's a reasonable assessment.

Honestly, though, there are some corners of real life (especially in those early teen years as you allude to, but even among full grown adults that should know better) where you will find people with this sort of personality. These type of reactions are not surprising in that context. Social media does seem to do something to amplify raw vulgarity and classless behavior though.

Exactly the target audience when we are discussing <topic> in tech, isn't it?

Edit: I misread / didn't read. My broader point is there is a lot of talk about how bad tech is, and yet here we are on a very technical and at the same time reasonably civil forum.

HN has users well outside that range though, it is probably under-represented on the lower end and I would suspect over-represented on the higher end based on my IRL interactions with a fairly large number of HN'ers.

The people who shape this forum are mostly not anonymous. Most of the people at the top of the leaderboard use their real name or some portion of it. In many cases, you can find articles about them or profiles on an employer's website or other third party verification of their identity that is far stronger than Facebook insisting I go by Doreen.

Furthermore, you have to have a handle here to apply for YC, the incubator that owns this site and has fostered companies that include Reddit and AirBnB. So being an asshole on HN can be a great means to guarantee you will never have a shot at a successful startup.

The stakes for participating here in good faith can run into the millions of dollars. Anyone with any sense at all will make some attempt to restrain themselves, plus the most influential community leaders will set a better example than you are going to see on most forums that lack such table stakes.

There are plenty of people that don't realize any of that. I seem to be the only person who ever points that out. But the fact that it seems to go largely unrecognized in conversation here doesn't mean the effect isn't there. People who would never state that money is a big part of why they behave here will, nonetheless, behave here because of the serious consequences that can occur if they don't.

Paul Graham has written articles about the YC "don't be an asshole" rule. They are quite open about the fact that they don't want to work with such people. So anyone who has any aspirations whatsoever of applying to YC and 2 functioning brain cells is going to try to not be asshole here.

That has more power than what your public handle is. And I am completely fine with it.

It's a tradeoff. There are both good and bad things with anonymity and real name policies:

1. Anonymity: people can express themselves without anxiety, but that gives space to assholes to be assholes (barring other control mechanisms).

2. Real names: lots of people will hold back due to anxiety that what they say may come back to haunt them years later [1]. The more timid assholes will inhibit themselves as well, but not all assholes are timid. The main people who will participate (asshole and non-asshole) will have the personality types that DGAF.

In short: anonymity is somewhat more favorable to assholes, but also more favorable to good discussion. I also prefer it, because I'm the kind of person who will just shut up in a deanonymized space.

[1] In ways they may have never even imagined at the time.

People know that their actions will never come back to them. An anonymous but long-standing account will see less of this than a throw-away account.

You are pretty anonymous if you walk into a bar and don't tell anyone your name. (Depending on the bar) They will kick you out and put your picture on the wall if you start talking aggressively to the civil regulars. More than that there is the immediate risk of a fist to the face.

Just like bar owners ask themselves what kind of patronage they want, online operators should ask themselves the same question.

I'd expect the rate of abuse to decline fairly significantly with the simple addition of the text "This conversation is being monitored by a supervisor", appearing a few moments after the first message is sent.

Internet anonymity ( or semi-anonymity ) does not affect the character. It exposes the character.

So if you go to The_Donald, a bunch of the views expressed are just teenagers being awful (or normal teenagers basically), but the adults who line up with their views don't realize they how many of their peers are children.

It can definitely normalize that viewpoint and spread into the wider adult conversations. I also have noticed a few times on Reddit when someone says something insanely terrible, I will check their history to see if they are a White Nationalist or what else they are interested in, and dozens of times every post in their history is about video games. And the only time the venture out of the video game bubble it is with bizarrely hateful political commentary.

Maybe its an anomaly and if I clicked all the good posters history's they would be about video games too.... but it's starting to feel like there may be a genuine and unique culture developing around gaming that is distinctly racist, homophobic and celebrates almost any form of cruelty.

And I say that as someone who is in their 30's and still LOVES video games.

I generally agree that the kids should get off my lawn, but the G.I.F.T. meme was created in 2004, and Usenet was a rough neighborhood even back before most posters here were born:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-abuse-faq/troll-faq/

Actually, the a.s.t trolls were probably more vicious and effective than today's variety. That's just how people are.

My point is merely that anonymity simply magnifies the same things we would see in non-anonymous settings.

The #1 comment, the one I'm replying to, expresses the belief that what someone does anonymously does not reflect their character or their underlying attitudes towards women. It's just an "asshat" "short anonymous interaction". Boys will be boys. This isn't real. Don't read too much into it! Women, a bit too sensitive are we?

I looked through the 101 sub-comments to #1, and nearly all trivialize this as issues of "anonymity", "kids", "jokes", "gaming" "trash talk". One even said "It's worth noting that all of this behavior is normal and healthy." He (I think I can safely assume he is a he) also added "Additionally, this is a part of establishing or figuring out your position in the social dominance hierarchy." Yes. Male social dominance.

I did find four sub-replies (out of the 101) that focused on what this meant for women[2].

> Most would probably never say any of this to someones' face, not out of fear of consequences but simply because they know better. Yet in anonymous contact they don't think twice about it.

What you do when you don't think twice is a reflection of some truth about you (your character, your biases, your raw attitudes, your inner values, your insecurities and inadequacies) or about the culture you are a part of. It's usually both. The comments Julia received are not random insults. They are misogynist. Misogyny doesn't appear out of thin air.

> It might help to explain that everthing typed anywhere* online is usually recorded forever, and that true anonymity doesn't exist either.*

It might be more helpful to explain that it is deeply oppressive, injurious and misogynist.

As with police killings of black men, it is important that all this is recorded forever. Because without records, the oppressed are never believed by those in the same class as the oppressors. But as HN is proving right now, they are still not believed.

Many comments claim that Julia's experience is the result of some small number of trolls, not reflective of the vast majority of men, or of male tech culture. The volume of HN comments coming to the defense of men rather than women doesn't do much to bolster the "just trolls" theory. The comments here are a reflection of HN readership, and it is a good thing that this and all the other overwhelmingly dismissive comments on many other similar posts are recorded forever. They are the perfect example of what women have to live with. Trivialization. Dismissal. Ridicule. Sexism. Misogyny.

-

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16390796

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394063 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394187 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393947 (down-voted to gray) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16392373

> expresses the belief that what someone does anonymously does not reflect their character or their underlying attitudes towards women. It's just an "asshat" "short anonymous interaction". Boys will be boys. This isn't real. Don't read too much into it! Women, a bit too sensitive are we?

That's not at all what I was trying to say! I genuinely do believe that the attitudes expressed are genuine. My point was that the anonymity is what lets these guys get over the treshold of expressing them (so why anonymous chats seem more full of misogynist assholes than elsewhere). And I do believe their attitudes towards women is so bad that they don't even understand how bad it is. And that's a sad reflection on society. I didn't mean to express that as a "boys will be boys"-excuse on their part.

> What you do when you don't think twice is a reflection of some truth about you (your character, your biases, your raw attitudes, your inner values, your insecurities and inadequacies) or about the culture you are a part of. It's usually both. The comments Julia received are not random insults. They are misogynist. Misogyny doesn't appear out of thin air.

Yes. This is much closer to the point I'm trying to make. This should be the top comment. Were were you earlier? (I have not missed the irony of my parent post being written quickly and anonymously and obviously without afterthought, so it must reflect my character and biases then...)

> Many comments claim that Julia's experience is the result of some small number of trolls, not reflective of the vast majority of men, or of male tech culture.

Whether these interactions were in fact a small number of people I think wasn't clear from the article but I'm willing to bet that statistically it would look the same if repeated. You could make all kinds of statistics (like were the bad guys more willing to interact at all, etc) but I don't think it makes a difference to the point of the article.

I think there are huge problems with male/tech culture. I'm going to argue that the vast majority of men would never behave like this regardless of what beliefs we hold. But the fact that even a few behave like this is of course a problem that not only lies with a few. All of us create a culture which in turn creates these assholes. So even if we think we aren't assholes ourselves, we more than likely are part of making a culture of assholes.

> Where were you earlier?

Finding time to write a thorough and thoughtful reply to such an important subject. ;)

> But the fact that even a few behave like this is of course a problem that not only lies with a few. All of us creates a culture which in turn creates these assholes. So even if we think we aren't assholes ourselves, we more than likely are part of making a culture of assholes.

Well said.

But now I'm confused. How did your comment go from being #1 for many hours, and then drop to #31, behind a bunch of nothing-special comments? Did you suddenly get a bunch of down-votes? Did the YC team come in and penalize your comment to make this forum have better optics? Also, there were 101 sub-comments to yours, and now there are 86. Smells fishy.

Yes it does, you are mistaken. An IP does not identify you if it's a proxy server or a VPN or a Tor node. All existing tracking methods can be fooled.

OPSEC is hard. Even people for whom it's a matter of life and death fail at it routinely. Angry trolls even more so. Your first message may be anonymous, but by your third message there's a good chance someone dedicated could find you if they cared enough.

In case of angry trolls, that's usually quite a long time.

Those underlying ISPs have data that can be used to correlate (with a scary amount of accuracy in a remarkably short space of time) your flow to the VPN server against a flow from the VPN server to a remote host.

Without exaggerating, lives have been saved through this technique. Once the technology exists for one purpose, it can be repurposed very easily.

Money

>Why would you assume that the majority of VPN providers lie to customers?

Money. There's no way to confirm their claims, and if logging+selling data= more money, there's a reasonable assumption that is indeed the case.

>Why do you think people who want to stay anonymous don't know how to throw off browser fingerprinting?

Even if they do, it's difficult, ever changing, and easy to slip up.

There are literally businesses out there that gives you a snippet to embed in your site, and then they employ all the tricks of tracking to give you email, name, address, etc.

It's not perfect every time, but probably more that you would like. And I wouldn't be surprised if incognito mode or VPN isn't always enough to disappear.

It can't be just me who thinks and acts like this? Context matters a lot in my opinion.

Although, I am never rude to someone IRL or even on a more serious note outside of online gaming. It's nice to vent and I don't think other players in PUBG care at all.

Examine what you're saying here. You're saying because YOU don't feel bad when you do it to others, it's okay. And because people retaliate, that makes your initial act of rudeness ok, as if that's what the other party wanted.

Just because someone returns your behavior doesn't mean they LIKE that sort of behavior, or are even okay with it.

> It's nice to vent and I don't think other players in PUBG care at all.

How would you know if they did care?

Trash talk has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trash-talk

The whole point is for the other side not to like it and get knocked emotionally off-kilter and lose focus, giving you a competitive edge. It's part of the metagame.

For most online games I don't see how the latter could ever be considered an improvement to the game.

You can "regulate" this away as a tournament organizer/gamedev company if you wanted to (i.e. allowing allied team only chat or allowing players to disable chat visibility altogether)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_gold

This isn't what I said, you're putting meaning where there is none. I just think it's fun when people retaliate.

> How would you know if they did care?

I wouldn't, that's why I wrote "think".

Your comment and all the downvote tells me people at HN probably don't play PUBG that much.

Context is interesting, but it just means that overall, you’re only sometimes acting like a jerk.

You might just be a jerk.

These days I don’t bother because everyone’s a jerk.

Trash talk is also not the same as engaging in trolling. Telling someone you’re going to kick their ass is perhaps reasonable trash talk in some cases. Calling someone racist or sexist epithets is not.

Please don't take my comments to mean that insulting/mean behavior is OK, though. IME many commenters across the web are far to quick to hurl insults in situations where they have no idea how they'll be received.

I see quite a lot of the latter, but I try to play on well moderated servers and servers with votebans.

In the game I play when someone joins who is annoying they are generally called out as "whoa did you just arrive from CoD?"...

When I see rude chat messages, I just instantly block that person.

Its not enjoyable and it makes it hard to use chat to coordinate the team.

Although this thread is so loaded it seems that any suggestion of the possibility of a benign explanation is met with being downvoted into oblivion like you... so let me finish with "this is terrible and all men are bad", there I think I've covered myself.

You're right about how in some context trash talk is expected & part of the game, but maybe it'd be better to play games in which one doesn't practise insulting, mocking & killing others. Maybe it'd be better to play games which encourage our better virtues rather than our worse vices. Maybe the world would be a better place if we pretended to love one another rather than hate one another.

Sounds like very boring games. Being rude in PUBG helps me being nicer IRL. That is what matters to me.