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Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

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

#171

Post by 908B64B197 »

ylee wrote: post #94

Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The n…

> This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The network's design has several flaws, most importantly no way for any central authority to completely delete posts (admins in moderated groups can only approve posts), since back in the late 1970s Usenet's designers expected that everyone with the werewithal to participate online would meet a minimum standard of behavior. Usenet has always had a spam problem, but as usage of the network declined as the rest of the Internet grew, spam's relative proportion of the overall traffic grew.

Should have been forked into a version with only *.edu allowed.

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

#172

Post by shard »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #167
shard wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was on Usenet regularly until the mid 2000's, I don't think it was the trolls that killed Usenet. They were easy enough to ignore. The younger generations simply never found it, as the WWW forums were much easier to find and grew more popular. For the two dozen or so groups I visited regularly, over time they became the playground of only the old guards, and conversation slowly died out.

> They were easy enough to ignore not the skilled ones [0], who though rare are, unlike the usenet days, now able to command their own private upvote brigade to amplify their powers significantly beyond the scope of whatever particular forum or network they call home. trolling has gone pro. " The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than…

Ok FINE. They were easy enough to ignore in Usenet the 2 dozen or so groups I frequented. There were no noticeable brigades in the groups I used, and upvotes are not a thing in Usenet.

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

#173

Post by hypnoscripto »

PaulHoule wrote: post #141
ylee wrote: post #94

Nothing has changed since Jerry Pournelle wrote 35 years ago when discussing online forums: >I noticed something: most of the irritation came from a handful of people, sometimes only one or two. If I could only ignore them, the computer conferences were still valuable. Alas, it's not always easy to do. This is what killed Usenet,[1] which 40 years ago offered much of the virtues of Reddit in decentralized form. The n…

The spam problem started in 1993 w/ Robert McElwaine spamming all of the groups relentlessly with crackpot content from WUSTL. WUSTL did nothing for a long time because he sued them (and won) when they stopped him putting ads in the campus paper. I developed a zero day email amplification attack and launched it on a Friday; it worked better than expected and filled the disk on their VAX and the whole campus was down…

Are you talking about Washington University in Saint Louis?

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

#174

Post by PaulHoule »

hypnoscripto wrote: post #173
PaulHoule wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spam problem started in 1993 w/ Robert McElwaine spamming all of the groups relentlessly with crackpot content from WUSTL. WUSTL did nothing for a long time because he sued them (and won) when they stopped him putting ads in the campus paper. I developed a zero day email amplification attack and launched it on a Friday; it worked better than expected and filled the disk on their VAX and the whole campus was down…

Are you talking about Washington University in Saint Louis?

Yep.

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

#175

Post by heavyset_go »

mcguire wrote: post #85
wpietri wrote: post #25

I"m glad to see this point made: > I’m not saying that all online bad behaviour is because of mental health issues or personality disorders: lots of people are just dickheads, and there’s no need to pathologise them. One of the important lessons I took away from a milestone book on abuse, "Why Does He Do That?" is that people really want to excuse harmful behaviors as illness. When often, repeated bad behavior happen…

I would agree; "homophobes" are not afraid of homosexuality.

Many of them are afraid of a spectrum of things between being thought of as gay to actually being gay, to being afraid that their kids are/will be gay.

It wasn't that long ago that they were claiming that gay marriage and acceptance would cause society to collapse, and believing that God would punish everyone for it. I had a neighbor who claimed that hurricane devastation is God's doing because gay marriage was legalized.

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

#176

Post by Tainnor »

faeriechangling wrote: post #156
krapp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of disagree. To me, there does seem to be an element of fear behind homophobia, and homophobes often act as if "the gay" is something they can catch like a disease, or be talked or tricked into. It's practically a stereotype for homophobes to present as hypermasculine in order to avoid doing or saying anything that might be perceived as "gay." Some men won't even wipe themselves out of fear that the sensation…

It's disgust not fear, which explains the disease analogy. Although I suppose we do call people germophobic.

I think it's often specifically the fear that condoning homosexuality will somehow undermine your masculinity (or that of your nation or whatever).

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

#177

Post by heavyset_go »

stevenicr wrote: post #98

How fast can an algorithm be put together to find evidence of mental health issues via social media posts and then trigger a waterfall of rights removals? It could be easy to argue that society may be better off without those folks having rights. Flagged as mental - - loose free speech - blocked from posting on networks, email capabilities removed via isps, library and cell phone companies. - Flagged so can not purch…

People who express thoughts of self-harm or suicide on social media can experience something very close to this.

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

#178

Post by skissane »

nitrogen wrote: post #55
3grdlurker wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone I'm not sure what you're talking about--I wonder if this is just your extremely subjective experience of the internet? Because I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement.

I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement. Perhaps it's disagreement across tribes, but mandatory agreement within each tribe?

> but mandatory agreement within each tribe?

There's seems to be a decent market for contrarian opinions within each tribe though. Such as "Conservatives against Trump" [0] and "Liberals against Cancel Culture" [1]

[0] e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/disaffect...

[1] e.g. https://medium.com/arc-digital/the-whispered-left-wing-disse...

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

#179

Post by dragonwriter »

skissane wrote: post #178
nitrogen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement. Perhaps it's disagreement across tribes, but mandatory agreement within each tribe?

> but mandatory agreement within each tribe? There's seems to be a decent market for contrarian opinions within each tribe though. Such as "Conservatives against Trump" [0] and "Liberals against Cancel Culture" [1] [0] e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/disaffect... [1] e.g. https://medium.com/arc-digital/the-whispered-left-wing-disse...

Both of your examples, I think, counter rather than support your point, because neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within, but are trumpeted by the opposing tribe (but only for their dissent, not for the views that mark them as in the tribe thet dissent from.)

Unless by “...against cancel culture” you mean “...who deny thr existence of ‘cancel culture’ as a significant new or especially liberal/left phenomenon”, but then, those arent dissenters at all.

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

#180

Post by Tainnor »

falldmg wrote: post #93
bingidingi wrote: post #9

>About 70% of DID patients are also diagnosed with BPD, and the two conditions are often considered part of the same spectrum. >I’m certainly not saying that all trans people have personality disorders or that being trans is a mental illness. A little bit of whiplash on this one. Despite the sentence or two claiming what the author is purportedly not doing, the rest of the article seems to indicate otherwise. If you…

To say there is no issues with irrational behavior in the LGBT community online would be criminal dishonesty. This is not a personal indictment against trans people or LGBT people as a whole, who have existed before Twitter, before Tumblr, and before Live Journal. The author, IMO, should not have to jump through Olympic hoops in order to distance themselves from the transphobic conclusion being pushed on them. They s…

There are "issues" with irrational behaviour within the LGBT community [1] online and offline,[2] just as there are such issues with any other community or group of individuals, including e.g. HackerNews. That said, I'm feeling that your comment is implying something rather specific and I'm not sure what it is, so I think it would enhance the quality of the discussion if you made some claims that were slightly less vague and therefore more amenable for debate.

That said, you'll find more LGBT people "online" on dating/hookup apps (or even just on Instagram) than on Twitter, Tumblr and co.

[1] The term is always a bit difficult, as obviously, LGBT people are not a monolithic bloc (and I think that, in particular, gay, lesbian, bi, inter and trans, each differ significantly from each other in terms not only of their challenges but also of their daily lives, interaction patterns, etc.). The term "LGBT community" also often fails to specify whether we're talking about political activists which are a very small subset of the "wider" community. It is true that LGBT people face similar challenges and have shared experiences that may lead them to share certain viewpoints, and it is true that there are certain venues and safe spots that many (though not all) LGBT people will frequent occasionally (some very often, others more rarely); also, just very naturally, LGBT members often interact e.g. through dating and friendship patterns. So I don't want to say that the term "LGBT community" is wrong or doesn't mean anything, as there is certainly something binding all these experiences together however loosely, but the term is certainly fraught with complications when used so broadly.

[2] Though which ones these are often differ between the different "sub-communities". E.g. the average attitude towards high-risk sex behaviour is definitely not the same for gay men as for lesbian women.

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