6 ms·

The dehumanisation of online dialogue is interesting. Is it because of 'anonymity' or is there more at play?

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I think that part of it, is that when we are engaging with people in realtime (especially face to face), our emotional driver is behind the wheel, and when there's a pause between responses, our analytical driver has time to grab the wheel, and that's where the "dehumanization" comes from. That's not always a bad thing. In emotionally-charged situations, that "few seconds of consideration" can help stabilize the interaction. People claim that it's the lack of consequences, and illusion of safety, but I feel as if it's really the emotional disconnection that does it.
lordnacho 1y ago
Anonymity is one aspect, for sure. But also, people often have not taken in the lesson of interpreting generously. They take the worst interpretation of the words, and often add a few imagined things that were never written (oh you like healthcare, you communist?). This is worse in written form because the feedback loop is longer, but it being written makes it feel like the author has had plenty of time to think about it. Forums are also the kind of place that everyone thinks are populated by political bots. Believing every other comment is written in bad faith is going to change how you behave. When you think of arguments as a kind of battle, you end up forgetting the person on the other side.
9rx 1y ago
Dehumanization is a poor framing, really. It was never humanized in the first place. Sure, those of us who have a technical understanding understand that it is likely that there are humans involved as an implementation detail, but from the user perspective there is no other human to be seen. If the technical backend were replaced by a sufficiently capable LLM (or whatever technology) absolutely nothing about the user experience would change. From the user perspective, it is a solitary activity. Human interaction hasn't gone away. Online discussion is a different tool for a different job.
- jv22222 1y ago
  I never thought about it this way. That technically every internet interaction is solo. Mind bending.
  - rapnie 1y ago
    But much of internet interaction isn't solo, in all those places where online and offline have connections. There will be a ton of dehumanization once in the morning we type a quick and lazy "/greet Mary" on the console and the AI agent takes over fully, sends a personalised email to Mary in my voice, and adds a "Welcome back from vacation!" note, after consulting my agent-managed calendar. Fully decoupling us from each other.
    - balamatom 1y ago
      ...and on the other side Mary's agent would summarize your greeting as part of her regular notification digest. There would be no gradient. You and your correspondent would continue to pay equivalent proportion of available attention to each other; thus you would remain equally human as before. At least relative to each other (and to each of the rest of your contacts.) It's one's idea of humanness that will be substituted piecemeal by a "doppelganger concept", as a result of the perceptual decoupling provided by ever-thicker interfaces. That concept would continue to fulfill the exact same function in one's life that formerly would've been fulfilled by one's previous opinions on "what it means to be human" (if any). Happens all the time, things changing people's minds. Happens surreptitiously, too. Of course, it's more comfortable to consider at least our inner lives remain inviolate to the vagaries of technocapital - but where could all their content come from, other than entirely from the outside world, same one that software was proclaimed to be "eating"? Subjectively, you'd hardly (if ever) experience that kind of "world model spoofing" as anything close to a distinctly recognizable perceptual phenomenon (since it's language-based anyway). Rather, you'd continue to experience everything as the usual "being a person comprehending a world" bit - and, as ever, flavored by whatever life-scripts you've been allocated. On average, however, the substitution would result in effects as simple as the population allocating that much more of its resources to, say, the organization representing the machinic quasi-intelligence in question - the one that has interposed itself as normative communication medium by providing useful summaries. Or, not as simple. It's already ended up very much like that "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" meme. Except the 3rd party pictured as JC, should rather be labeled "VC".
subscribed 1y ago
No, I don't think it's anonymity. You can see absolutely rabid, hateful, unhinged things people post under their real names on Facebook, LinkedIn, nextdoor.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  I agree. I think that it's the removal of an emotional connection, and that happens naturally, after a certain pause (an interesting study, would be to find out how long, and I'll bet there are people who can explicitly prevent the analytical part of their mind from taking the wheel).
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Also, you see other people doing it, and it rapidly starts to seem "normal." At least for some.
  - altruios 1y ago
    I disagree that removing an emotional connection removes emotional responses of hate and wild dehumanization. I would categorize all such interactions as emotional. I argue that it is in fact the opposite: Having no analytical consideration for how another human might respond enflames emotions, not dampens them. It's called flame wars, not analytical wars.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      It’s emotional connection that I’m talking about. I feel that you are referring to the inwardly-focused thing that happens when we lose connection. The analytical thing is the loss of emotional connection.
      - altruios 1y ago
        Do you mean empathy, by emotional connection? If that is the case: I disagree that rage is the natural response to a loss of empathy AND switching to an analytical mode of thinking. I don't think rage (an emotion) stems from analytical thinking. Loss of empathy may be a required precursor to rage comments, but I don't see how analytical thinking fits anywhere in there. And if analytical thinking is a function of time: I would expect to find calmer comments after deliberate thought. It would be testable - if you had the data - if it was the case that rage comments are thought out, or spur of the moment. I'm betting on the latter. Rage never seems well thought out to me. If I misread your comment, I am sorry in advance.
pjc50 1y ago
I think it's an exaggeration of the "city effect": the denser an environment is, the more likely it is that people who see you out to talk to you are going to have a negative agenda, because everyone else is trying to keep their head down. If you meet a stranger at the North Pole, where you're the only two humans around, you're going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger in a remote village, you're probably going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger on the street in New York, you're probably going to put your hand over your wallet. Adverse selection wins. It sometimes feels like social media has gone from a place to make friends to a place to make enemies - or at least to bond with a group through the medium of hate. Bonding through hate of the outsider is hardly new, but it's especially negative on the Internet where it can be amplified over and over.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  > where it can be amplified over and over Especially if a corporation that controls the venue, deliberately amplifies the rancor.
- card_zero 1y ago
  What if you meet them in a remote corner of an unpopular online RPG?
  - korse 1y ago
    Is pvp enabled?
    - GoatInGrey 1y ago
      I must invite them to duel. Vampire rules.
  - tzumaoli 1y ago
    It reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIFty-O4rOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIFty-O4rOE TLDR: amazing things can happen, and people are actually nice in this kind of environment!
- deleted 1y ago
lossolo 1y ago
A long time ago, you would only interact with humans from your own tribe. Most of your actions had direct consequences for you, and you interacted with these people every day. Your life and wellbeing depended on that group and your social status. Then came local communities, followed by the global village, with access to eight billion people you will never meet or know. You can say whatever you want to them and face no real consequences, you can simply block them if you wish.
whartung 1y ago
I think it's the bandwidth, or lack there of. A lot of it happens in out of band posts like these. It seems to happen less in interactive (i.e. chat, etc.). Make no mistake, it absolutely happens there. But not as much as in async posts (I don't think). I don't think it happens much at all with video. Most of it is surrounded by context (or lack of). How difficult it is to communicate (typing like this is not easy, and certainly not for the impatient). I have to keep telling folks when they get that Look in their face because of what someone said or didn't say over email or an instant message to not judge on that. If it's that important to you, CALL them. TALK to them, you simply can not rely on typed conversations for anything that impacts you emotionally. "What do you think they meant by that?" Oh no. It's just an awful medium.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  That sort of is what I find. I know that my idea is completely rectally-sourced, but I feel that the less time that we have to think about an element of an interaction, the less likely we are to go into the nasty "flame mode" we see. But there's exceptions to every case (especially when human nature is involved). I actually know people that are so emotionally broken, that every interaction that they have; regardless of the context and medium, is a fight. They tend to be lonely and angry. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]

I think that part of it, is that when we are engaging with people in realtime (especially face to face), our emotional driver is behind the wheel, and when there's a pause between responses, our analytical driver has time to grab the wheel, and that's where the "dehumanization" comes from. That's not always a bad thing. In emotionally-charged situations, that "few seconds of consideration" can help stabilize the interaction. People claim that it's the lack of consequences, and illusion of safety, but I feel as if it's really the emotional disconnection that does it.

lordnacho 1y ago

Anonymity is one aspect, for sure. But also, people often have not taken in the lesson of interpreting generously. They take the worst interpretation of the words, and often add a few imagined things that were never written (oh you like healthcare, you communist?). This is worse in written form because the feedback loop is longer, but it being written makes it feel like the author has had plenty of time to think about it. Forums are also the kind of place that everyone thinks are populated by political bots. Believing every other comment is written in bad faith is going to change how you behave. When you think of arguments as a kind of battle, you end up forgetting the person on the other side.

9rx 1y ago

Dehumanization is a poor framing, really. It was never humanized in the first place. Sure, those of us who have a technical understanding understand that it is likely that there are humans involved as an implementation detail, but from the user perspective there is no other human to be seen. If the technical backend were replaced by a sufficiently capable LLM (or whatever technology) absolutely nothing about the user experience would change. From the user perspective, it is a solitary activity. Human interaction hasn't gone away. Online discussion is a different tool for a different job.

jv22222 1y ago
I never thought about it this way. That technically every internet interaction is solo. Mind bending.
- rapnie 1y ago
  But much of internet interaction isn't solo, in all those places where online and offline have connections. There will be a ton of dehumanization once in the morning we type a quick and lazy "/greet Mary" on the console and the AI agent takes over fully, sends a personalised email to Mary in my voice, and adds a "Welcome back from vacation!" note, after consulting my agent-managed calendar. Fully decoupling us from each other.
  - balamatom 1y ago
    ...and on the other side Mary's agent would summarize your greeting as part of her regular notification digest. There would be no gradient. You and your correspondent would continue to pay equivalent proportion of available attention to each other; thus you would remain equally human as before. At least relative to each other (and to each of the rest of your contacts.) It's one's idea of humanness that will be substituted piecemeal by a "doppelganger concept", as a result of the perceptual decoupling provided by ever-thicker interfaces. That concept would continue to fulfill the exact same function in one's life that formerly would've been fulfilled by one's previous opinions on "what it means to be human" (if any). Happens all the time, things changing people's minds. Happens surreptitiously, too. Of course, it's more comfortable to consider at least our inner lives remain inviolate to the vagaries of technocapital - but where could all their content come from, other than entirely from the outside world, same one that software was proclaimed to be "eating"? Subjectively, you'd hardly (if ever) experience that kind of "world model spoofing" as anything close to a distinctly recognizable perceptual phenomenon (since it's language-based anyway). Rather, you'd continue to experience everything as the usual "being a person comprehending a world" bit - and, as ever, flavored by whatever life-scripts you've been allocated. On average, however, the substitution would result in effects as simple as the population allocating that much more of its resources to, say, the organization representing the machinic quasi-intelligence in question - the one that has interposed itself as normative communication medium by providing useful summaries. Or, not as simple. It's already ended up very much like that "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" meme. Except the 3rd party pictured as JC, should rather be labeled "VC".

subscribed 1y ago

No, I don't think it's anonymity. You can see absolutely rabid, hateful, unhinged things people post under their real names on Facebook, LinkedIn, nextdoor.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I agree. I think that it's the removal of an emotional connection, and that happens naturally, after a certain pause (an interesting study, would be to find out how long, and I'll bet there are people who can explicitly prevent the analytical part of their mind from taking the wheel).
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Also, you see other people doing it, and it rapidly starts to seem "normal." At least for some.
- altruios 1y ago
  I disagree that removing an emotional connection removes emotional responses of hate and wild dehumanization. I would categorize all such interactions as emotional. I argue that it is in fact the opposite: Having no analytical consideration for how another human might respond enflames emotions, not dampens them. It's called flame wars, not analytical wars.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    It’s emotional connection that I’m talking about. I feel that you are referring to the inwardly-focused thing that happens when we lose connection. The analytical thing is the loss of emotional connection.
    - altruios 1y ago
      Do you mean empathy, by emotional connection? If that is the case: I disagree that rage is the natural response to a loss of empathy AND switching to an analytical mode of thinking. I don't think rage (an emotion) stems from analytical thinking. Loss of empathy may be a required precursor to rage comments, but I don't see how analytical thinking fits anywhere in there. And if analytical thinking is a function of time: I would expect to find calmer comments after deliberate thought. It would be testable - if you had the data - if it was the case that rage comments are thought out, or spur of the moment. I'm betting on the latter. Rage never seems well thought out to me. If I misread your comment, I am sorry in advance.

pjc50 1y ago

I think it's an exaggeration of the "city effect": the denser an environment is, the more likely it is that people who see you out to talk to you are going to have a negative agenda, because everyone else is trying to keep their head down. If you meet a stranger at the North Pole, where you're the only two humans around, you're going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger in a remote village, you're probably going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger on the street in New York, you're probably going to put your hand over your wallet. Adverse selection wins. It sometimes feels like social media has gone from a place to make friends to a place to make enemies - or at least to bond with a group through the medium of hate. Bonding through hate of the outsider is hardly new, but it's especially negative on the Internet where it can be amplified over and over.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
> where it can be amplified over and over Especially if a corporation that controls the venue, deliberately amplifies the rancor.
card_zero 1y ago
What if you meet them in a remote corner of an unpopular online RPG?
- korse 1y ago
  Is pvp enabled?
  - GoatInGrey 1y ago
    I must invite them to duel. Vampire rules.
- tzumaoli 1y ago
  It reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIFty-O4rOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIFty-O4rOE TLDR: amazing things can happen, and people are actually nice in this kind of environment!
deleted 1y ago

lossolo 1y ago

A long time ago, you would only interact with humans from your own tribe. Most of your actions had direct consequences for you, and you interacted with these people every day. Your life and wellbeing depended on that group and your social status. Then came local communities, followed by the global village, with access to eight billion people you will never meet or know. You can say whatever you want to them and face no real consequences, you can simply block them if you wish.

whartung 1y ago

I think it's the bandwidth, or lack there of. A lot of it happens in out of band posts like these. It seems to happen less in interactive (i.e. chat, etc.). Make no mistake, it absolutely happens there. But not as much as in async posts (I don't think). I don't think it happens much at all with video. Most of it is surrounded by context (or lack of). How difficult it is to communicate (typing like this is not easy, and certainly not for the impatient). I have to keep telling folks when they get that Look in their face because of what someone said or didn't say over email or an instant message to not judge on that. If it's that important to you, CALL them. TALK to them, you simply can not rely on typed conversations for anything that impacts you emotionally. "What do you think they meant by that?" Oh no. It's just an awful medium.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
That sort of is what I find. I know that my idea is completely rectally-sourced, but I feel that the less time that we have to think about an element of an interaction, the less likely we are to go into the nasty "flame mode" we see. But there's exceptions to every case (especially when human nature is involved). I actually know people that are so emotionally broken, that every interaction that they have; regardless of the context and medium, is a fight. They tend to be lonely and angry. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]