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I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt". I certainly don't remember people saying "I am angry" all the time. I w

I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt". I certainly don't remember people saying "I am angry" all the time. I wonder if this was a coastal thing (e.g., the 'Occupy' movement seemed angry in a way that I couldn't relate to having lived my whole life in the midwest) and social media amplified it and spread it across the country? I do recall online discourse being a lot angrier and less civil (not merely "more critical", but a lot more personal attacks, hateful generalizations, caricatures, etc). It was no longer "politicians are bad", nor even "the other side's politicians are bad", but increasingly "Americans on the other side are the enemy". And of course, conservatives were slow to adopt social media, so (as I recall) this was mostly liberals and progressives punching at conservatives who were still trying to be more buttoned up and play by the old rules, but as they increasingly came online and encountered the new incivility directed towards them (and the incivilizing force of social media itself acting upon them), I think it caused a lot of latent anger to accumulate until they finally embraced incivility in the form of Donald Trump (to be clear, this is a very abridged version of a very complex topic). > I just wonder how we can get out of this. My main observations are only from the US but the thinking that there are “others” who can’t be understood or talked to but need to eliminated is quite deeply ingrained in a lot of people. My hope is that the next generation will see the pointless harm caused by our hate/rage addiction and reject it, and maybe even regard it like an addictive substance (perhaps encouraging people to avoid social media, set up resources for addicted people, regulate social media companies, etc).

rqtwteye 4y ago
"I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt"." I lived in VA at the time and I remember plenty of people who got instantly mad when they just heard the word "Clinton" or "Bush". Since then it just got worse with "Obama=Muslim" and even worse with "Trump".
marttt 4y ago
> I do recall online discourse being a lot angrier and less civil (not merely "more critical", but a lot more personal attacks, hateful generalizations, caricatures, etc). Tangentially related: I wonder how Usenet groups or 1990s/early 2000s mailing lists compare to today's social media in terms of toxicity. Seems like the "netiquette" mostly worked those days; then again, one can probably easily spot ridiculous trolling or bullying in list archives as well (I like old mailing lists, so I think I have seen many remarkable rants over the years -- to the point that they have seemed conceptually interesting, a peculiar form of utterly irresponsible postmodernist stream-of-conciousness-literature if you will). The nature of e-mail -- free-form composition, often resulting in lengthy, thoroughly argued replies -- probably did keep some of the anger and emotional arguments at bay, though. Could be that 1990s/2000s hackers were also more eloquent people, but this feels like more of a myth. Hypothesis: if most online environments would still encourage barebones free-form composition (like e-mail; social media pushes one toward tight and thus sometimes overly straightforward expressions [1]), we would possibly notice more high-quality writing and wordsmiths in the internet. (Proof: go read the lengthy posts of your favorite HN commenter.) 1: See Uni of Chicago-Illinois communications researcher Zizi Papacharissi's work on "affective storytelling". An 2015 article with 250+ citations, analysing Twitter coverage during the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and online iterations of the Occupy movement: https://zizi.people.uic.edu/Site/Research_files/Papacharissi_Affective%20publics.pdf https://zizi.people.uic.edu/Site/Research_files/Papacharissi...
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Toxicity isn't the only factor. USENET[0] may have been nasty but that nastiness was also very public and untargeted. Social media adds the ability to be extremely targeted with your abuse in ways that are nearly invisible to those who aren't clued into it. You can weaponize it way easier than you can a message board. [0] And, for the purpose of this discussion, imageboards and other forums with little moderation, such as 2channel, Futaba, 4chan, etc.

rqtwteye 4y ago

"I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt"." I lived in VA at the time and I remember plenty of people who got instantly mad when they just heard the word "Clinton" or "Bush". Since then it just got worse with "Obama=Muslim" and even worse with "Trump".

marttt 4y ago

> I do recall online discourse being a lot angrier and less civil (not merely "more critical", but a lot more personal attacks, hateful generalizations, caricatures, etc). Tangentially related: I wonder how Usenet groups or 1990s/early 2000s mailing lists compare to today's social media in terms of toxicity. Seems like the "netiquette" mostly worked those days; then again, one can probably easily spot ridiculous trolling or bullying in list archives as well (I like old mailing lists, so I think I have seen many remarkable rants over the years -- to the point that they have seemed conceptually interesting, a peculiar form of utterly irresponsible postmodernist stream-of-conciousness-literature if you will). The nature of e-mail -- free-form composition, often resulting in lengthy, thoroughly argued replies -- probably did keep some of the anger and emotional arguments at bay, though. Could be that 1990s/2000s hackers were also more eloquent people, but this feels like more of a myth. Hypothesis: if most online environments would still encourage barebones free-form composition (like e-mail; social media pushes one toward tight and thus sometimes overly straightforward expressions [1]), we would possibly notice more high-quality writing and wordsmiths in the internet. (Proof: go read the lengthy posts of your favorite HN commenter.) 1: See Uni of Chicago-Illinois communications researcher Zizi Papacharissi's work on "affective storytelling". An 2015 article with 250+ citations, analysing Twitter coverage during the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and online iterations of the Occupy movement: https://zizi.people.uic.edu/Site/Research_files/Papacharissi_Affective%20publics.pdf https://zizi.people.uic.edu/Site/Research_files/Papacharissi...

kmeisthax 4y ago
Toxicity isn't the only factor. USENET[0] may have been nasty but that nastiness was also very public and untargeted. Social media adds the ability to be extremely targeted with your abuse in ways that are nearly invisible to those who aren't clued into it. You can weaponize it way easier than you can a message board. [0] And, for the purpose of this discussion, imageboards and other forums with little moderation, such as 2channel, Futaba, 4chan, etc.