Re:Alienated, Alone and Angry: What the Digital Revolution Did?
by jlokier on Friday December 20, 2019 @02:17PM
(#21846669)
I think a big part of why there is so much antagonism in Twitter threads, Facebook politics and the like, is due to the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle.
Even if people weren't actually more angry online, and even if communications in text didn't come across as more antagonistic, the BAP tends to amplify the negative in any large group.
Closely related is the way that it only takes a Tiny Number Of Assholes to ruin things for a large group. That happens in verbal discourse, face to face social groups, and community organisations too.
The effects on targetted individuals can be devastatingly traumatic, and sometimes take years to recover from, especially when they interact with other difficult things happening in people's lives. It's hardly surprising, if some people's lives are turned upside down completely, that for a larger circle of people in the vicinity there's an instinct towards unhappiness and anger in general, just from proximity, without necessarily having a clear, fixed target.
If we can ever figure out how to create a Bullshit and Asshole Damage dampening field, that would be great.
Even if people weren't actually more angry online, and even if communications in text didn't come across as more antagonistic, the BAP tends to amplify the negative in any large group.
Closely related is the way that it only takes a Tiny Number Of Assholes to ruin things for a large group. That happens in verbal discourse, face to face social groups, and community organisations too.
The effects on targetted individuals can be devastatingly traumatic, and sometimes take years to recover from, especially when they interact with other difficult things happening in people's lives. It's hardly surprising, if some people's lives are turned upside down completely, that for a larger circle of people in the vicinity there's an instinct towards unhappiness and anger in general, just from proximity, without necessarily having a clear, fixed target.
If we can ever figure out how to create a Bullshit and Asshole Damage dampening field, that would be great.