People are frustrated in general and use online as a medium to vent out without much consequences?
No rain drop thinks it's responsible for the flood.
Nicely put, maybe also: "Because no raindrop thinks, it's responsible for the flood."
Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
11–20 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#12> Is it selection bias that commenters on the internet tend to be more depressed/lonely?
Most of what you read on the Internet is written by a small percentage of people (https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...). This was previously discussed on HN as (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18881827) and (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25600274). The clicks and likes they receive also provide positive feedback, can be addictive, and contribute to spending more time online. It's also well established that social networks can contribute to unhappiness.
> Has the demography gone down in age which results in lot of shitty behaviour like witch hunts and trending non-issue outrage? Young generation seems to like these and they especially love twitch from what I have seen. Maybe an impact of that?
Witch hunts and moral panics are part of the human condition. The main difference is the internet makes it much easier to start a witch hunt or moral panic and lowers the transaction costs of participating. Modern moral panics are started by a tweet or post - it used to require authoring a book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse) or months/years of press coverage. It's also much more likely for controversial content to be shared (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...). Your friend or relative on Facebook who shares click bait wouldn't have bothered to do so before the internet.
Another factor is that the woke don't believe in debate (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...). They feel that the deck is rigged against them, debating reinforces the current oppressive system, that all disagreement is illegitimate, and that anyone with power who isn't dismantling the current system is evil.
> What do you think is the biggest reason for the current condition?
I think the biggest reason is that the internet has made it much easier for people to publicize their views. People have always been this awful; you just weren't exposed to their views.
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#13I don't know how large this effect is but confidential memos such as this one https://ibb.co/7pKQCVk are an indicator of great forces at play to alter the relationships between people online by forcing certain types of discussion.
Discussion disruption patterns employed by foreign governments:
1. Say that if something is not reported in mainstream news, it didn't happen, or the claim isn't reliable. "Reading Activistpost.com? Get out >>"
2. Say that if a viewpoint disagrees with the government, it's unpatriotic "Yeah right, Russia-lover. Go >>"
3. Say that only 'experts' who are on your side are qualified to give opinions or facts. "Quoting Dr. Paul Craig Roberts? Opinion Discarded."
4. "Citation needed." It's a little known fact that when a [REDACTED] is hatched from its egg, "citation needed" are the first words out of its beak. "Citation needed" means either a) "I'm too lazy to check this" or b) "Your claim is supported by Encyclopedia Britannica, but I want to imply you're a lying sack of sht." [REDACTED] squawk "citation needed!" even when a citation is given.
5. Become incredulous and indignant, and claim a topic is off limits. "How dare OP say these things? This is going too far! Of course a [REDACTED] invented the pork casserole!"
6. Call your opponent's claim a rumor, conspiracy theory, or urban myth. "Too tinfoil for me! Loony detected! You are obviously crazy! And on drugs!"
7. Only bad people think like your opponent. "OP is a typical stormfag. No wonder he's a laughing stock. He probably lives in a ditch." ([REDACTED] post like this all the time, even though it is similar to holding a 20-foot tall neon sign that reads "I'M NOT ONE OF YOU AND I HATE EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR." They can't help but stand out: they're too arrogant.)
8. Claim your opponent was replaced by some mysterious computer hacker, and all posts after a certain point are obviously fake and not by OP. (It's laughable, but the shills really do this.)
9. Claim an opposing OP is a shill, and post links to your own (newly-created) thread inside OP's - trying to lure away anons. (A favorite tactic of American Spring shills.) 10. Claim your opponent is saying something he isn't. Totally misrepresent him. "So you're saying George Bush flew into the Twin Towers? Idiot." "So you're saying [REDACTED] is a [REDACTED]? And I suppose you want to kill him and lure us all to your own website, is that it?" (Both of these are genuine shill comments. [REDACTED] can be relied on to argue like hysterical teenage girls.)
11. Claim your opponent is exactly what you are: a shill. "NSA detected. Take your lies elsewhere!"
12. Tell anons not to bother reading your opponent's posts, threads, or infographics. "Already read it. Total junk. OP is wasting everyone's time." (Again: [REDACTED] arrogance gives them away.)
13. Call your opponent insulting names. "Nutjob", "idiot", "pathetic". "Everyone here is laughing at you." Timid or stupid people will think twice about supporting your opponent.
14. Ignore every good answer that your opponent gives. If you have to, lie and say it's a bad answer. Make up a fake reason. "Of course you would say that, you're a mudslime-lover!"
15. When your opponent raises facts and evidence, lie. Say he made them up. Most people won't check, even if it only takes 20 seconds to do a web search. "Total bullsht! You made that up! It's photoshopped! The link doesn't work! It's not true! It proves the opposite!" Etc.
16. Always claim your opponent is biased. Make up a reason. "You're obviously a Yurropoor/Amerifat/hom/nggr/etc." (My favorite: I'm regularly called an obvious les*an.)
17. Claim you are an expert, have personal knowledge, or personal experience. "I went to school with a victim at Sandy Hook and it was all real, I assure you. In fact she's my mom."
18. Claim that an important issue simply doesn't matter. Your opponent is talking about dull, unimportant things. "This isn't news. Nothing to see here. Who cares. So moot has been arrested for killing prostitutes and eating their livers, and he yelled at the police and TV camera crew 'I'm sacrificing these goy whores to Satan!' That doesn't prove anything. OP is boring me."
19. Claim that an important issue is 'old' and 'dated' - even if it isn't. Say that your opponent is wasting time on issues that have 'expired'. (As if the truth can ever expire.) "Old news, yawn."
20. When you get caught out in a lie, use fake identities to make posts backing up your claim. Most people place a high value on personal opinions, even those of complete strangers.
21. Claim no-one can ever know the truth: it's too complex Cloud the issue with minute details, even if it's clear cut. "We can't ever know for sure, so why are you asking? It's not worth checking your links, so don't check his links anyone. Seriously, especially not the first link. Because we just can't know. So don't check the links."
22. Claim an issue can never be solved. Claim things are the only way they possibly could be. "There's nothing we can do. Why bother, anon?" ([REDACTED] use this weak tactic when an issue has just been solved beyond any doubt, and the evidence is damning.)
23. Pretend your position is unarguably right. The "Everybody knows..." ploy. "Everybody knows only losers support Ron Paul". "Everybody knows you can trust the government." Etc.
24. 'Doing an Alex Jones'. Agree with the facts, but claim that they point to a conclusion that is the complete opposite of your opponent's (and reality). "So you see folks: it's Nazis!" 25. 'Doing a David Icke'. Take the thread down a crazy route. Illuminati, reptilians, aliens, etc. Sensible posters have their image tarnished by all the idiotic comments around them.
26. Encourage laziness and irresponsibility about important issues. "So who cares? Everyone knows already, it's not a big deal..." (Often used by [REDACTED] trying to excuse away incontrovertible evidence that [REDACTED] is a gay [REDACTED] who collaborates with the FBI and freely states that he hates [REDACTED]. Because, you know, that's Just how a genuine [REDACTED] would feel upon discovering that [REDACTED] is a gay [REDACTED] who collaborates with the FBI and freely states that he hates [REDACTED].)
27. When your opponent argues in favor of online privacy, call him or her a "coward". Try to make reckless stupidity seem brave. "Only cowards care what the government thinks! Only cowards hide their identity online! Only cowards would leave [REDACTED] when they realize it's run by [REDACTED] trying to manipulate them! Only cowards don't pss on the third rail!" Etc.
28. Trying to push a spectacularly bad idea (like American Spring) but anons aren't buying it? Try "We have nothing to lose". This 'desperation' gambit works best when the risks are astronomical, and the idea you're trying to sell is batshit insane. (Well, that's what [REDACTED] thinks. It's their favorite ploy for astronomically risky, batshit insane ideas.)
29. Say the facts mean something different. Most people don't understand logic, science, math or statistics very well. They have a patchy knowledge of history. "OP is innumerate. Those statistics clearly show that the economy has grown massively under Obama." "[REDACTED] is a valuable ally: it has never lost a war!" (Translation: "[REDACTED] barely won its wars - and that was only thanks to billions of dollars of cutting edge weapons the USA flew in for free, just before the Arabs overwhelmed them." Translation courtesy of Henry Kissinger. He really said this.)
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#14It is because the people who drive what you see online doesn't care about your wellbeing.
At the dinner table: We shouldn't talk about politics, just brings heated arguments and makes us miserable. As long as nobody brings it up we can get a moment of calm and happiness.
At the community management table: We should encourage people to talk about politics by constantly showing them posts about politics, brings so much engagement!
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#15> I feel like most things come down to people wanting to have enough resources to live happily. If they just had enough money, most of their problems would be solved.
So how do we get people the money they need to be happy? Is making young people go 50k+ in debt to enter the workforce, while creating conditions that cause rent and housing prices to skyrocket the way to do it?
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#16I believe it's mostly an unsetting bitter feeling. Underrepresented and marginalized people are fighting back structural society norms, the internet is the new medium[1], and social media resembles a lot the `Cercle social`[2].
I remember reading research that notes the music, poesy, and literature to carry cynic and political narratives preceding and during society changes (could find the link).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_in_the_French_Revolu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Friends_of_Trut...
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#17I don't know how large this effect is but confidential memos such as this one https://ibb.co/7pKQCVk are an indicator of great forces at play to alter the relationships between people online by forcing certain types of discussion.
Here we are in a thread about why the internet has become so pessimistic and we have someone spreading disinfo.
Go ahead and perform a TinEye or reverse Google search on that image of the so-called "confidental memo", check out it's origins. Lots of posts on 4Chan, /r/The_Donald, reposts on sites like "JewWorldOrder".
Zero attribution to which organization this is supposedly from. This poster, Solid_Applaud, uploaded this photo to ibb and created his HN account at the same time.
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#18I don't know how large this effect is but confidential memos such as this one https://ibb.co/7pKQCVk are an indicator of great forces at play to alter the relationships between people online by forcing certain types of discussion.
Here we are in a thread about why the internet has become so pessimistic and we have someone spreading disinfo. Go ahead and perform a TinEye or reverse Google search on that image of the so-called "confidental memo", check out it's origins. Lots of posts on 4Chan, /r/The_Donald, reposts on sites like "JewWorldOrder". Zero attribution to which organization this is supposedly from. This poster, Solid_Applaud, uploaded…
The origin is unknown. Does it read like something a loser from one of those sources you mention would write? No. It is actually well written and a lot of thought went into it. Analyze the text yourself and consider the choice of words to draw your own conclusions.
Funnily enough the commenter is guilty of the same thing I am accused of: creating a new account recently.
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#19> I feel like most things come down to people wanting to have enough resources to live happily. If they just had enough money, most of their problems would be solved. So how do we get people the money they need to be happy? Is making young people go 50k+ in debt to enter the workforce, while creating conditions that cause rent and housing prices to skyrocket the way to do it?
tenebrisalietum asks >" Is making young people go 50k+ in debt to enter the workforce, while creating conditions that cause rent and housing prices to skyrocket the way to do it?"
If there is an abundance of people foolish enough to incur such debt then I see no way to prevent capitalism from doing so.
Despite our social advances the situation today remains the same as that which Charles Dickens' characterizes in "A Christmas Carol" where the main obstructions to progress are "Ignorance" and "Want"(poverty). In particular, Ignorance is difficult to extinguish w/o doing something abhorrent (at least for most of us). Although far from a Christian, more and more I find appropriate the phrase:
"The poor you will always have with you..."
- Matthew 26:11
Re: Ask HN: Why has the internet become so pessimistic and political?
#20There is no single reason for why this is happening but I do have a few suspicions on what is contributing to it. 1) The internet is directly and indirectly incentivizing this kind of attention seeking behavior. It's rewarding to be noticed, upvoted, and retweeted. Pleasant, well reasoned, and evenhanded discussion rarely gets as much attention as sassy clapbacks. 2) Younger generations have been raised to believe th…
I've noticed what you say about younger people. I'm in my early 40s and my sister is her early 20s.
My Dad is an aerospace engineer and we were discussing the work that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is doing with their rockets. When my sister buts in and goes on a 20 minute rant about how it is unethical for billionaires to exist. It really pissed me off as I don't get to talk to my Dad much[1], especially about things he is excited about. That's not the only time she has done it, it happens all the time.
Or maybe I'm just an apathetic Gen Xer.
[1] I live 500 miles away and my Dad doesn't like to talk on the phone.