4 ms·
That's the thing. Just by participating in internet forums, all the way up until around 2010s(?), it wouldn't be uncommon to see comments like "I'm going to go
by robswc 3y ago
That's the thing. Just by participating in internet forums, all the way up until around 2010s(?), it wouldn't be uncommon to see comments like "I'm going to go over there and kill you" between two people trying to be edgier than the person they were arguing with. It always gave me an uneasy feeling but I never treated it too seriously.
I don't at all doubt there are people that stupid/crazy. Jw if there are more credible crazies these days or have we changed how we react to them.
- mcpackieh 3y agoIn 90s America (and perhaps elsewhere as well), "I'll kill you for that!" was a fairly common expression of mild displeasure, obvious hyperbole neither intended nor received as an earnest threat. In "IRL" this changed sometime between Columbine and 9/11 when people got super serious about such things, but I think that culture persisted online for several more years. Online was in some sense unreal, so hyperbolic death threats were obviously hyperbolic and were received as such. But as online has become "real life" for more and more people, hyperbolic death threats have been de-normalized online as well. Now it's mostly relegated to out of the way niches, like gamer chatrooms, but echoes of it still reverberate around the web anywhere people can comment anonymously.