Community Chat

[sylviahomeatlast]

I worry

[Tinkrbl44]

Anonymity .... and bad parenting.

Kids are allowed to do things nowadays that my parent would never have let us get away with !!

[newziesuzie]

THANKS! for the comments! I'll end where I started with this quote I started with since I like it and the picture is so cute!

[sfnative]

"Angry people on the Internet nowadays, Why?

I've read through perhaps 1/3 of the replies and am not really getting an answer to your question.

The answer to your question can be found in the state of our nation and world - the many crises with which we are bombarded on a daily basis. It is gut wrenching and heartbreaking and people are angry about this.

The internet has provided us with a quick and easy means of expressing our angst about all of this and so we "get it in the face," so to speak.

***

On Sunday, two days prior to Prime Mininster Netanyahu's address to Congress, I had had enough. Was extremely angry about the political mess that this had morphed into I could scream, but didn't. Not having screamed, I had a horrible nightmare about Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday night.

I'm glad that the internet had provided me with a copy of his speech, which I've had the opportunity to read. It was most excellent. I cried. If only someone in THIS country could make me cry. That's what has me angry right now.

[YorkieonmyPillow]

Oh, you should watch the speech itself, it was incredible.

[Buck-i-Nana]

On 3/4/2015 Bjjo said: Now I got s message that I will have to have my 4 digit pin # if I order. I threw that away,when they requested a new sign in months ago. Guess I can no longer order. What do I need to do?

That is not new. When they implemented the password, they advised you would still need to use your 4 digit pin # to order over the phone. If you log in here a .com and order here, you don't need the 4 digit pin.

[newziesuzie]

I wish posters wouldn't add political controversy comments to every thread (post 53, 54).

[dobiesrule]

I totally agree with you, Newzie. I don't know why people have to interject politics.

[madzonie]

Anonymity Ignorance Low information Fear Rigidity Bias Bigotry

[SuiGeneris]

If you really want to know "Why is Everyone on the Internet So Angry," there is an excellent online article on the Scientific American website. [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-everyone-on-the-internet-so-angry/] Here are a few excerpts:

Psychologists say this addictive form of vitriolic back and forth [flame wars] should be avoided — or simply censored by online media outlets — because it actually damages society and mental health.

These days, online comments "are extraordinarily aggressive, without resolving anything," said Art Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. "At the end of it you can't possibly feel like anybody heard you. Having a strong emotional experience that doesn't resolve itself in any healthy way can't be a good thing."

If it's so unsatisfying and unhealthy, why do we do it?

A perfect storm of factors come together to engender the rudeness and aggression seen in the comments' sections of Web pages, Markman said. First, commenters are often virtually anonymous, and thus, unaccountable for their rudeness. Second, they are at a distance from the target of their anger — be it the article they're commenting on or another comment on that article — and people tend to antagonize distant abstractions more easily than living, breathing interlocutors. Third, it's easier to be nasty in writing than in speech, hence the now somewhat outmoded practice of leaving angry notes (back when people used paper), Markman said.

And because comment-section discourses don't happen in real time, commenters can write lengthy monologues, which tend to entrench them in their extreme viewpoint. "When you're having a conversation in person, who actually gets to deliver a monologue except people in the movies? Even if you get angry, people are talking back and forth and so eventually you have to calm down and listen so you can have a conversation," Markman told Life's Little Mysteries.

Chiming in on comment threads may even give one a feeling of accomplishment, albeit a false one. "There is so much going on in our lives that it is hard to find time to get out and physically help a cause, which makes 'armchair activism' an enticing [proposition]," a blogger at Daily Kos opined in a July 23 article.

And finally, Edward Wasserman, Knight Professor in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University, noted another cause of the vitriol: bad examples set by the media. "Unfortunately, mainstream media have made a fortune teaching people the wrong ways to talk to each other, offering up Jerry Springer, Crossfire, Bill O'Reilly. People understandably conclude rage is the political vernacular, that this is how public ideas are talked about," Wasserman wrote in an article on his university's website. "It isn't."

. . . . . To read the rest of the article, click on the link; if you don't trust links, enter the title of the article [Why Is Everyone on the Internet So Angry] on google or other web search engine.