And because you can’t punch me in the face over the Internet (yet).
Comment on The fediverse has a bullying problem
queermunist@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Why are people so vindictive and personal, and why do they double down so enthusiastically about taking it to this personal place where this person involved is being bad on purpose and needs to be attacked for being horrible, instead of just being a normal person with a variety of normal human failings as we all have?
I have a pet theory about this!
Humans can’t easily empathize with strings of text the way they do with voices and faces. When you read my posts you read it in your voice; I might as well be a figment of your imagination. As far as your subconscious is concerned, I am not actually a person. I’m an imaginary friend at best and an imaginary enemy at worst.
When someone beats up on me it’s because they’re imagining me as an enemy NPC, not a person with thoughts and feelings.
This is why arguing on the internet is basically pointless. We’re all just random encounters in the posting RPG.
catloaf@lemm.ee 6 days ago
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 6 days ago
Yeah. There are a lot of subtle cues that keep things in check, that let people express frustration or disagreement with each other and it still be okay and kept in a balanced fashion, when it’s happening in person. In typing that all goes out the window. It takes conscious effort to be able to remember the social aspect and not just get carried away with your typing and decide the other person is horrible and you need to attack (or just take something without the right context and think they’re going on the attack when they’re not.) Like I say, I’m guilty of treating it pretty carelessly sometimes too.
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Just as a mild counterexample, I’ve personally changed my views quite drastically over my time on reddit and now lemmy, and most of it was from individuals just sharing their own perspective.
I held some latent bigotry and misogyny, part of which I picked in my day to day life, and partly from 4ch. I won’t say I’ve eliminated it completely, but I think I’ve become a better person from my interactions online.
If we’re not out here trying to actively learn from and help other people, then what the heck are we doing?
queermunist@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
I think you can overcome the empathy gap caused by the anonymous text format if you make the effort to empathize with people on the internet, but it requires you to want to make the effort in the first place.
Empathy offline or over video or on the phone is much more instinctual - in fact, it requires effort to resist empathy.
kudra@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Honestly? I live in a small town, and face to face isn’t much better. People are incredibly bigoted, and might be polite to your face but incredibly judgemental and small minded, especially to anyone perceived as different. Empathy is a skill that needs to be practised, like meditation. And many people lack it both online and off.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
But people are polite to your face. On the internet there’s no face, so that goes away.
I think part of that comes from empathy, though obviously part also comes from fear of confrontation and habit. It all adds up to offline interactions being far less hostile than on the Internet because they’re not face-to-face.
This is also known as Internet Fuckwad Theory.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 6 days ago
Yeah. I do think communicating over the internet even with people you disagree with is possible to do, and it can be super productive. Can be. It just takes conscious effort to do so, I guess not much different from when you can talk them out face-to-face.