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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 ev

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 what somebody might mean when they say "a lie repeated frequently enough becomes truth". That's how our brains are built. Part 2: We tend to notice things that are out of ordinary more than normal. Nobody spends time revisiting "normal" comments, but people will notice and spend their focus disproportionately more on mean behavior. Part 3: Internet amplifies things, but mostly things we focus on. This means an extremely mean comment will tend to be amplified more and get more visibility than a perfectly normal comment. Part 4: Even if 1 percent of 1 percent of people write an extremely mean comment just once that is still deluge of meanness that your biased brain will understand as "mean" being frequent behavior on the internet, something that is done by many people and probably frequently.

distributedsean 5y ago
This is an interesting idea, feel free to ignore this comment :)
mysterydip 5y ago
I never made the connection to part 2 in the abstract before, that makes total sense. If you're walking down the street and see someone with two noses, you're going to notice, not the 20 other "normal" people you passed at the same time. Why wouldn't the same carry over to reading text or watching videos?
rossdavidh 5y ago
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.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  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.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    >>most people with mental illness are already afraid of being blamed and targeted. On what evidence do you base this on?
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      Being a person with mental illness in a community of people with mental illness and routinely talking about this all day long every day
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        It could be that the people who have the type of mental illnesses that are associated with fear of social persecution/rejection are the kind that seek a community of people with a similar affliction, while those with anti-social mental illnesses, like sociopathy, do not.
        eyelidlessness 5y ago
        It could be that the people who don't understand mental illness characterize it in harmful ways and people with mental illness who associate together are readily familiar with that.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        How do you know I don't mental illness? And how was the way I characterized it harmful?
jollybean 5y ago
This is interesting, but it's missing the parts around the amplification and institutionalization processes. Imagine if all of the world's troubling content were in the 'comments section'. Would anyone care? No. The 'comments section' doesn't get widely distributed, it's not backed by institutions or influential individuals etc.. In order for these kerfluffles to have impact they need to be picked up on by supposedly credible institutions, with a wide reach. If the 'Cancel This Person' Tweet were to stay entirely on Twitter among regular people - nobody would care that much. But when the media gets hold, backs it, propagates it, institutions start to adjust possibly by making statements, withholding funding etc. - that's what causes major concern and material influence. More powerful systems and forces use statements made by individuals (often decontextualized) as fodder in their wars over attention, money and ideology.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
> Part 3: >Internet amplifies things, but mostly things we focus on. This means an extremely mean comment will tend to be amplified more and get more visibility than a perfectly normal comment. It's not "the internet". It's social media and news. Which is funded by advertising, so optimises for "engagement" (emotional content). A mean comment in Usenet will die unread. A mean comment on Facebook/Twitter will get algorithmically amplified because it causes others to interact with it.

distributedsean 5y ago

This is an interesting idea, feel free to ignore this comment :)

mysterydip 5y ago

I never made the connection to part 2 in the abstract before, that makes total sense. If you're walking down the street and see someone with two noses, you're going to notice, not the 20 other "normal" people you passed at the same time. Why wouldn't the same carry over to reading text or watching videos?

rossdavidh 5y ago

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.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
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.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>most people with mental illness are already afraid of being blamed and targeted. On what evidence do you base this on?
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Being a person with mental illness in a community of people with mental illness and routinely talking about this all day long every day
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      It could be that the people who have the type of mental illnesses that are associated with fear of social persecution/rejection are the kind that seek a community of people with a similar affliction, while those with anti-social mental illnesses, like sociopathy, do not.
      - eyelidlessness 5y ago
        It could be that the people who don't understand mental illness characterize it in harmful ways and people with mental illness who associate together are readily familiar with that.
        CryptoPunk 5y ago
        How do you know I don't mental illness? And how was the way I characterized it harmful?

jollybean 5y ago

This is interesting, but it's missing the parts around the amplification and institutionalization processes. Imagine if all of the world's troubling content were in the 'comments section'. Would anyone care? No. The 'comments section' doesn't get widely distributed, it's not backed by institutions or influential individuals etc.. In order for these kerfluffles to have impact they need to be picked up on by supposedly credible institutions, with a wide reach. If the 'Cancel This Person' Tweet were to stay entirely on Twitter among regular people - nobody would care that much. But when the media gets hold, backs it, propagates it, institutions start to adjust possibly by making statements, withholding funding etc. - that's what causes major concern and material influence. More powerful systems and forces use statements made by individuals (often decontextualized) as fodder in their wars over attention, money and ideology.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

> Part 3: >Internet amplifies things, but mostly things we focus on. This means an extremely mean comment will tend to be amplified more and get more visibility than a perfectly normal comment. It's not "the internet". It's social media and news. Which is funded by advertising, so optimises for "engagement" (emotional content). A mean comment in Usenet will die unread. A mean comment on Facebook/Twitter will get algorithmically amplified because it causes others to interact with it.