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I think you brush across a couple of the important things to note about social media: 1) The disconnect between people that allows for such othering. Anecdota

I think you brush across a couple of the important things to note about social media: 1) The disconnect between people that allows for such othering. Anecdotally, I can't imagine but a small handful of people I've met who would be willing to walk up to someone and verbally wish for the other person's death. I know we can point to many times in history where that attitude has resulted in the death of many people, but I view those as exceptions to everyday life. Not saying my view is correct, but only explaining my approach with this statement. 2) Scale. Imagine a group of 100,000 people showing up in the real world to yell, scream, and chant death threats at one person. That would be a massive event. Even gathering 1,000 people against a single person would be noteworthy in many locations. So the The Internet, which is mostly comprised of Social Media at this point, has moved to be able to allow people to disconnect others from humanity and gather in vitriol spewing hordes, and a single individual would be hard pressed to deal with such force against them while still trying to engage with their reason for being there.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
You, and I, and everyone else talking about this... we evolved to live in small bands of humans, never more than maybe 200 total. That we would have sane responses or reactions to a gather of 1,000 people haranguing us is impossible. A caveman who had 1,000 people mocking and insulting and screeching at him would shut down mentally. And you and I are still that caveman. 100,000? Brain explodes. And that's what's happening right now, today. It's short circuiting any possible counter-reaction we could have to abuse. This is why everyone's sort of worried about cancellation, but we're also a little reluctant to talk about it too. I see no evidence that the problem is about to correct itself and end up being no big deal. I see alot of evidence that it's only just stumbling around and will become an even bigger problem... the people participating in this stuff, they're learning new tricks, learning to self-organize better. We'll have shit like anonymous tutorials about how to look someone up and ruin their lives perfectly efficiently ("Then, call and ask for the HR department between the hours of 10am and 11:20am local, because that's when they're most receptive. Please use this verbiage, in a slow and calm voice."). Even my example's bad, I can't keep up with the state-of-the-art.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

You, and I, and everyone else talking about this... we evolved to live in small bands of humans, never more than maybe 200 total. That we would have sane responses or reactions to a gather of 1,000 people haranguing us is impossible. A caveman who had 1,000 people mocking and insulting and screeching at him would shut down mentally. And you and I are still that caveman. 100,000? Brain explodes. And that's what's happening right now, today. It's short circuiting any possible counter-reaction we could have to abuse. This is why everyone's sort of worried about cancellation, but we're also a little reluctant to talk about it too. I see no evidence that the problem is about to correct itself and end up being no big deal. I see alot of evidence that it's only just stumbling around and will become an even bigger problem... the people participating in this stuff, they're learning new tricks, learning to self-organize better. We'll have shit like anonymous tutorials about how to look someone up and ruin their lives perfectly efficiently ("Then, call and ask for the HR department between the hours of 10am and 11:20am local, because that's when they're most receptive. Please use this verbiage, in a slow and calm voice."). Even my example's bad, I can't keep up with the state-of-the-art.