Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 233 posts

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#61

Post by paulpauper »

slibhb wrote: post #20

To me, the interesting question here is whether symptoms of BPD (or mental illness more generally) might confer an advantage when it comes to building a following on social media. For example, catastrophizing seems to be a staple on the many popular social media accounts.

No it does not. The most successful people on social media, i have found to be pretty cool and collected. The mental illness symptoms i think are more likely to come from having no following and feeling ignored. That will drive some ppl mad.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#62

Post by sva_ »

Y_Y wrote: post #44

They are missing the wood for the trees. Online behaviour in general is rooted in psychological issues. Well-adjusted mentally healthy people just participate in society normally, they don't sit in front of a terminal for a year inventing some amazing new way of communicating over computer networks, or expounding the modern equivalent of Athenian philosophy on message boards, or obsessing over entries in distributed…

So what are the psychological issues that led you to write this comment?

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#63

Post by kingsuper20 »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #11

The article's actual title is "Are Twitter trolls mentally ill?" It makes me want to talk about how the concept of the troll has evolved from something specific to something very general. I glanced through the article and none of the behaviors it listed are what I'd consider troll behaviors. They're just the patterns of mild mental illness. Trolls, in my old-man's definition, are almost a type of hunter, looking to b…

A troll is it doing it for fun and as an art form, I'd say that the horrid people on twitter are another thing.

As mentioned in an earlier thread, I see a close relationship between the Twitter People and That Guy who goes to all the city council meetings to yell. They don't make up a majority of the population, but they sure can burn up some bandwidth.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#64

Post by falldmg »

nickysielicki wrote: post #33

This sort of wishy washy argument (seemingly accepted by generally educated/reasonable people on HN) is the reason that society is so scientifically illiterate. It has nice sounding arguments that embed themselves into your thought patterns but zero real substance. Articles like this are how you get hordes of people to believe something without cause. The next time you see someone act "bad" online, you'll be able to…

Unfortunately, your critique has even less substantiation than the article, and therefore it would be even sillier to draw conclusions from it...

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#65

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

tus89 wrote: post #60
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite that UnHerd was founded by and funded by “extremist Christian-right propaganda” forces? Considering that its executive editor has frequently featured commentators who are downright anti-religion (e.g. Richard Dawkins), and various commentators who subscribe to old-school 20th-century leftism including its antipathy to religion, that is a claim hard to believe.

So I search google for "undherd Richard Dawkins", first link: https://unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on-richar... "Why the atheists turned on Dawkins - They care more about social justice than whether or not God exists" Written by: Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in Poland. He has written for Quillette, Areo, The Catholic Herald....

Yet at the same time, there is this [0] posted by a higher-ranking staff member. That you have found an article written by a contributor who has also written for a Catholic publication does not served as proof of your claim in the GP that UnHerd was founded to push “extremist Christian propaganda” – the whole point of UnHerd is that it draws on writers from a range of ideological outlooks.

And FWIW, the idea mentioned in these links that early-millennium New Atheism eventually evolved into the current wave of social-justice activism, is something that has been often set forth by people here on HN and is not exclusive to any particular religious or anti-religious viewpoint.

[0] https://unherd.com/thepost/richard-dawkins-scientism-is-a-di...

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#66

Post by Y_Y »

sva_ wrote: post #62
Y_Y wrote: post #44

They are missing the wood for the trees. Online behaviour in general is rooted in psychological issues. Well-adjusted mentally healthy people just participate in society normally, they don't sit in front of a terminal for a year inventing some amazing new way of communicating over computer networks, or expounding the modern equivalent of Athenian philosophy on message boards, or obsessing over entries in distributed…

So what are the psychological issues that led you to write this comment?

DSM-IV or real? I have a number of (diagnosed and otherwise) mental illnesses. I also write Haskell for enjoyment, and help people with Linux on the internet even though it benefits me in no way. I care about mathematics and computation more than climate change and the feelings of people close to me. Is that ok?

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

tus89 wrote: post #60
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite that UnHerd was founded by and funded by “extremist Christian-right propaganda” forces? Considering that its executive editor has frequently featured commentators who are downright anti-religion (e.g. Richard Dawkins), and various commentators who subscribe to old-school 20th-century leftism including its antipathy to religion, that is a claim hard to believe.

So I search google for "undherd Richard Dawkins", first link: https://unherd.com/2021/04/why-the-atheists-turned-on-richar... "Why the atheists turned on Dawkins - They care more about social justice than whether or not God exists" Written by: Ben Sixsmith is an English writer living in Poland. He has written for Quillette, Areo, The Catholic Herald....

Ben Sixsmith is neither a leader or founder of UnHerd, so even if he’s a Christian Right voice whose writing they’ve carried, that hardly cobtradicts the claim that they are diverse and that they don’t focus on Christian Right content, carrying much from sides opposing thst viewpoint.

Also, as Christian but pro-secular-politics left-leaning person, I think the statement you quote as an example of far right Christian propaganda is...just literal factual truth; the negative reactions to Dawkins in some parts of the atheist community is about social justice trumping shared identity around belief in the nonexistence of God.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#68

Post by nickysielicki »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #51
okareaman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't say what is wishy washy or give any supporting evidence to your assertion that HN users seemingly fall for such arguments or how "nice sounding" arguments embed themselves into our thought patterns to control us or how these wishy washy nice sounding arguments lead us to dismiss people. You sound like you may have psychological issues and I say this as a non-neurotypical (bipolar)

That's a little ad hominem to diagnose them from one paragraph. There's actually a well known term for what they're describing. It's called pop science and is a very real thing.

I'm pretty sure they're joking.

Re: Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

#70

Post by bellyfullofbac »

navbaker wrote: post #38
cmckn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I think this sentiment is along the lines of "political correctness run amok" which is a completely subjective interpretation of changing social norms. Whereas I think the article is discussing how some use the impersonal void of social media as an outlet for their anxiety, etc. Personally, I try to limit the amount of time I spend on such websites, and HN is really the only place I read the comments (in mode…

I actively avoid Twitter, but still get force fed Twitter opinions via most news websites. I wish they would stop producing headlines about the latest "backlash" or "outrage" on there.

But, how would they make money otherwise?! /s

I think fucking social butterfly Arianna Huffington [1]'s website Huffington Post is the one that started the trend of headlines like "X {destroys,obliterates} Y" to report on 140 Twitter outbursts. Thanks, lady, for your contribution in destroying the media landscape.

https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1994/11/ariannas-virt...

Post reply on HN