Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by Dracophoenix » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #171

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 sta…

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

That's what the Internet/NSFNET and Gopher were until the mid-90s

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

#182

Post by Tainnor » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

jmcgough wrote: post #23

I think there's some truth to this, but the trans community is a really awkward group to try to fit into your argument. As a trans person, I think there's a lot of toxicity to the online trans community, and there's certainly more prevalent mental illness (not surprising when you deal with frequent harassment, discrimination, being disowned by family). But trans people act like that because they feel like they're con…

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

I think it's important to emphasise that having to live with the continuous fear of not being accepted as an equal part of society or worse can create a significant amount of stress. The same is true (albeit to a much lesser extent nowadays) for gay and lesbian individuals, and let's not forget that if you grew up, say, in the 90s, the world was still a significantly different place back then. As far as I know there have been studies showing increased stress levels in LGBT individuals even long after coming out.

In a sense, I often feel that trans people are now facing what gays and lesbians were facing a couple of decades ago. Let's hope that your road to acceptance will be as swift as it was for us.

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

#183

Post by skissane » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #179

skissane wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within

I don't think anti-Trump conservatives are particularly unwelcome in mainstream American conservatism though. Take someone like the Orthodox Christian journalist Rod Dreher, who says very negative things about Trump ("Donald Trump is flat-out lying to manipulate the political process", [0]), but who has also written a book (Live Not By Lies) claiming that American progressivism is evolving into Soviet-style totalitarianism. Getting invited on to Tucker Carlson's show is a pretty clear sign of being welcome by mainstream American conservatism, and Carlson has invited Dreher (in September last year) on to promote his book, and I'm sure the Fox News audience loved it. Carlson just avoided asking Dreher about his opinions on Trump, he knows what his audience likes and he didn't get where he is by upsetting them.

[0] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-...

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

#184

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #183

dragonwriter wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within I don't think anti-Trump conservatives are particularly unwelcome in mainstream American conservatism though. Take someone like the Orthodox Christian journalist Rod Dreher, who says very negative things about Trump ("Donald Trump is flat-out lying to manipulate the political process", [0]), but who has also written a book ( Live…

> Carlson just avoided asking Dreher about his opinions on Trump,

Right, there's no market for dissent, only for the tribal-conformist views.

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

#185

Post by Dracophoenix » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

paperwasp42 wrote: post #124

Having worked in the publishing industry, my experiences support the conclusions of this article. About ~40% of authors I worked with had diagnosed mental health issues, and were quite open about their struggles. Most were a delight to work with--I strongly admire people who can be open and honest about their struggles. But about ~15% were... not so delightful. Working with them was hell, because they'd flip-flop con…

If you wouldn't mind my asking how does someone get in contact with a publisher to write a book? Not to sound condescending, but if someone with mental health issues can get a good deal, what makes this industry difficult for most others to break into?

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

#186

Post by skissane » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #184

skissane wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within I don't think anti-Trump conservatives are particularly unwelcome in mainstream American conservatism though. Take someone like the Orthodox Christian journalist Rod Dreher, who says very negative things about Trump ("Donald Trump is flat-out lying to manipulate the political process", [0]), but who has also written a book ( Live…

> Carlson just avoided asking Dreher about his opinions on Trump, Right, there's no market for dissent, only for the tribal-conformist views.

It could be worse though – in a more polarized environment, Tucker Carlson would feel unable to invite someone anti-Trump on to his show, even to talk about some topic unrelated to Trump. It is interesting to contemplate, that no matter how bad America's political polarization has become, it could be worse.

Actually I do wonder whether centre-left media outlets have the same freedom that Carlson has, to platform dissenters to talk about matters unrelated to their dissent.

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

#187

Post by pseudalopex » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #161

pseudalopex wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phobic doesn't just mean afraid. Hydrophobic molecules for example.

Phobic literally means fear, from the ancient Greek 'phobos', meaning... fear. It's used for things (like hydrophobic molecules) that avoid other things (in this case water) as if they fear them . Unless we're doing one of those "literally literally means figuratively" things here in which case... meh? Just to be crystal clear here, I'm not saying we don't have groups who are anti-X for whatever value of X. I'm sayin…

That's the etymological fallacy. Phobic literally means having an intolerance or aversion for.[1]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phobic

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

#188

Post by slipframe » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #75

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…

Yes, there's a feedback loop, same as with alcoholism. It's nice and good to consider alcoholism a disease, but there's a point where the not yet completely dependent person should say "It's not even 4 o'clock yet and there's no social reason, what am I doing with this can of beer?"

Well, most people aren't alcoholics, so I presume most people are able to reason that out and control themselves. But for those who do become alcoholics, I suspect it's because the question "what am I doing with this can of beer?" has an answer along the lines of "because being sober hurts more." That is to say, they are self-medicating for problems that seem even worse.

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

#189

Post by dlivingston » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #134

unethical_ban wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I'll follow the rules, but I think shadowbanning is really tacky to do except in the case of actual spam. Note my name. I was shadow-banned for one sarcastic comment eight years ago, despite being an otherwise good-faith, decent contributor. Maybe things are different now, but I've never gotten over the feeling of wasting my time putting thoughts together and responding to a conversation and finding out I m…

We don't shadowban established accounts—we tell people we're banning them and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... . That's been the case for many years. I wrote about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27573675 . The exceptions are spammers and serial trolls. For those we continue to use shadowbanning, for different reasons. In the case of spammers, telling them…

You rock Dan. If HN were Game of Thrones, then you’d be the Night’s Watch.

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

#190

Post by eyelidlessness » Sat, Jun 26, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #119

lmilcin wrote: post #15

I don't buy it. I think there is simple statistical/neurological explanation. Part 1: We are exposed to much more information and interaction that we have evolved for. Our brains have very biased/impractical approach to understanding the world: if you hear about something happening many times in large number then it automatically gives large weight to it and treats it as normal/prevalent/dangerous etc. This is also w…

I think your four points are all absolutely true. However, I cannot plausibly think of a reason why we _wouldn't_ have a disproportionate amount of online bad behavior from the mentally ill. There's really almost nothing in the online environment to prevent it, and quite a lot of mental conditions result in manic phases of some sort that would cause them to spew a lot of it online.

I can think of a reason, in two parts: lots of people are motivated by things other than mental health to behave negatively online; most people with mental illness are already afraid of being blamed and targeted.