Why is Online Discourse so Toxic and Accusatory?

I know this is basically a meme at this point but I wanted to have a semi serious talk about it because I find it incredibly frustrating.

I've noticed when you have a discussion/debate with someone online they very often interpret what you are saying in the worst possible way, they almost always look at what you are saying from a point of "this person is the enemy" rather than "let me try and understand why this person feels like this or just said this"

It's almost guaranteed that if you criticise something or ask people to question something they will accuse you of supporting the opposite thing. Prime example was during BLM protests, I wasn't 100% on the side of "abolish police" so I was accused of supporting racism/corruption.

Another example: someone did a bad crime, I point out most people commit bad crimes because of their shitty upbringing, trauma or both and we should try and understand what drove this person to this so we can stop it happening again. I am accused of supporting the person doing the crime.

I just find it odd, because you wouldn't do this in person, so why do people do it online?

It feels like so often online you will try and clarify the intent of what you said but people will never say "sorry I misunderstood" because they so badly need to have a "gotcha" moment that they willfully ignore what you're actually trying to say so it's easier for their brains to process. It's maddening and it's part of the reason social media can push people apart.

i would say because the internet has such a reputation of being full of unpleasant people, we've reached the point where we all just assume everyone is being nasty. the same thing happens to me all the time, everyone takes my confusion as me trying to start trouble. but even when i try to explain that to people they just don't believe. i guess some people refuse to accept that not everyone's brains are wired the same way. what gets to me is the hypocrisy of them, now being a hypocrite is perfectly human but the lack of self awareness just makes them really irritable. i'm tired of accused of being an arsehole by people are being arseholes or people doing to me the things they were just complaining about people doing to them. i suppose another factor is people refuse to believe that they could be wrong so they assume their first idea about a person is the right one. even though by all accounts the person is a perfect stranger.

i think about this a lot

I think there are a few points which contribute to either actual or perceived toxicity in political discussions on Twitter.

1. We are currently well into a resurgence in far-right views, with bigots and fascists behaving increasingly boldly in their attempts to gain power and influence our society and politics. At the moment, fascists seem to be gaining ground in many respects, such as with the erosion of abortion rights and trans rights in the US, and with the manufacturing of disgraceful, violent anti-queer rhetoric here in the UK. This has a direct effect on the tone of political discussions -- emboldened fascists are clearly inherently very toxic, but of course, progressives will be understandably tense too. It's the seriousness of what we're facing as a society, and the feeling of being powerless against it, that can make even otherwise friendly people short tempered when discussing politics. I try to bear in mind that this is a completely understandable mindset and emotional response for the world as it is.

2. Lots of people online who call for "nuance and balanced debate" are really saying "it should be OK for me to express bigoted views as long as I couch them in polite language." It's become something of a far-right codephrase. Many people have spotted this pattern and now take a reflexively negative view to perceived "both-sidesing". This is perfectly reasonable in discussions where two sides are diametrically opposed and one side is clearly correct -- no-one should be trying to both-sides whether racism is good or bad, and things of that nature. I think occasionally people carry this energy into discussions which are actually more subtle differences of opinion and then it can be a little unhelpful.

3. It's become more widely accepted particularly on the progressive side of discourse that tone policing is wrong. If you say something offensive, those affected by it can tell you to eat shite without mincing their words -- there isn't much social pressure for them to not be rude to you. I think this is good! But I'm sure it makes discourse seem more toxic for people who are more offended by bad words than by bigotry...

4. Twitter in its particular format strongly rewards pithy put-downs over longer, earnest conversations. This is a double edged sword -- it can be funny or cathartic to ratio a fascist or dunk on them in the quote tweets, but I think it's a bit mean to take those tactics into more benign discussions and you do see that happening sometimes.

Because when you’re connected with everyone you don’t have the capacity to understand the nuance of the personal opinions of everyone you encounter, and have to pigeonhole everybody you’re not deeply familiar with.

If you meet someone for the first time in real life, you don’t just vomit out your takes on all the hot issues of the current times. You get to know them before deciding what would be appropriate to discuss or share. You’d often know how someone would react to a contentious issue before you even make the decision to bring it up or not. Online, though? You can just dive right in to any one of hundreds of millions of total strangers hot takes on the most polarising issues. And not only that, you’re encouraged to dump your own on the pile. You can easily find thousands of people in agreement with you whatever your viewpoint is, and especially, you can and will filter your view to only show opinions you align with, so sharing difficult thoughts that you’re insecure about can get you easy validation and make you feel better about yourself.

And on top of all this, these strangers aren’t real. They’re just a username and a profile pic. No need to try understand their lives when all you ever see is their metadata.

So, too many voices, too disconnected from person, too little accountability, too easily accessed. You can often only make snap generalisations or you’d go insane. We basically aren’t supposed to communicate like this, or at least we still haven’t learned how to.

When it comes to in depth serious debates, i prefer generally to not get too involved these days.

Sometimes i'll add my 2 cents but then i just leave it at that, mainly because over the years, i've been dragged into more exhausting arguments with the most hateful, hypocritical, and downright idiotic clowns online than i ever thought possible.

My quick opinion?

Dominance of Twitter and its short form format
Reliance on Twitter by news outlets and media for quoting Joe public or celebs
Growth/weaponising of cancel culture - rather than individuals growing, you get a decision between yielding or staunchly defending.
Algorithms creating echo chambers and "rage content" (probably an official term for content shown to users as it has high engagement because it is so anti their stance)

I don't do Twitter, never really have so my perspective is based on what I hear from secondary sources. GRcade has some similar issues with poor discourse on certain topics and there are certain things here that I think are collective blindspots but I've witnessed others attempt to work on and get negative responses. I want to engage on them but no there is no reason to, I'll get no traction and the counter position will be twisted. But that might be because the collective counter-views are also less well articulated.

But we all have friends with blindspots and we live and let live like we tend to do here. Online, it's a war.

Yep, online discourse is a strange, distilled, heightened facsimile of real life. It just seems like a fundamentally broken framework for proper discussion. I don't bother with it these days.

Piss off n00b

Victor Mildew wrote:Piss off n00b

You don't have the post count to pull this off.

Part of the issue comes down to the political spectrum becoming far more polarised over the last 20 years. The right have turned further to the right and the rise of essentially facist views in a lot of countries around the globe hasn't helped this. There's a great example of our current government, they're parroting views that the National Front were parroting in the 70s which is insane to think about. In turn, because the right are lurching so far to the right now anyone even on the moderate left to them seem like a "far left loony" and with the help of the right wing media any left wing view is now essentially communism and anti-economy or "woke". Nobody can actually explain what woke is when asked, but the people on the right don't care. They've slowly been turned into facists from years of gaslighting by the media and they refuse to accept it.

When you end up with discussions online a lot of people hurt by these facists on a daily basis are often on alert and if you word something strangely or appear to be supporting the same views as one of those people they can over-react or missunderstand and get angry about it. This is made 100% worse by the fact people are absolutely awful at working things - myself included. It's a perfect storm which just leads to discussions getting more and more heated as more and more people start to missunderstand and it leads to arguments.

It's always worth checking your own behaviour and response - are you saying something offensive without necessarily realising it and then reacting defensively when called out? For some people, the topics you're having what you consider a reasonable and balanced input to aren't abstract debates, they're a lived reality. People brutalised by a hostile and rigged system may not appreciate someone not subject to those same experiences popping by to question if it's really all that bad. People on the receiving end of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc, might feel like actually they shouldn't have to be nice about their own oppression and the daily abuses they endure, and getting angry about it is actually the only way to communicate the level of damage and effect meaningful change. So at these points it's always worth questioning if the 'reasonable' input you well-meaningly offered is actually quite unhelpful and offensive and maybe more listening and less talking would be a good thing.

Also Twitter is gooseberry fool.

Red wrote:Also Twitter is gooseberry fool.

Now this is something i think we can all agree on.

Calm and respectful discourse does not garner engagement, which is what human beings crave due to our primitive hardwiring.

Red wrote:Also Twitter is gooseberry fool.

This.

People online do not listen to each other. We have own biases going into any conversation and that rarely, if ever changes.

Basically, bring on the asteroid.

Qikz wrote:In turn, because the right are lurching so far to the right now anyone even on the moderate left to them seem like a "far left loony" and with the help of the right wing media any left wing view is now essentially communism and anti-economy or "woke". Nobody can actually explain what woke is when asked, but the people on the right don't care. They've slowly been turned into facists from years of gaslighting by the media and they refuse to accept it.

Yep.

A lot of online arguments boil down to this:

Right winger: "strawberry floating *Blacks/Muslims/Jews/Trans/Gay/Woke* (delete as appropriate) banana splits need to be *silenced/killed/deported/beaten up/imprisoned* (delete as appropriate)!"

Left winger: "You are a fascist"

Right winger: "GROOMER banana split! strawberry float YOU!"

Left winger: "NAZI banana split! strawberry float YOU!"

Centrist: "Both sides are the same here"

Red wrote:It's always worth checking your own behaviour and response - are you saying something offensive without necessarily realising it and then reacting defensively when called out? For some people, the topics you're having what you consider a reasonable and balanced input to aren't abstract debates, they're a lived reality. People brutalised by a hostile and rigged system may not appreciate someone not subject to those same experiences popping by to question if it's really all that bad. People on the receiving end of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc, might feel like actually they shouldn't have to be nice about their own oppression and the daily abuses they endure, and getting angry about it is actually the only way to communicate the level of damage and effect meaningful change. So at these points it's always worth questioning if the 'reasonable' input you well-meaningly offered is actually quite unhelpful and offensive and maybe more listening and less talking would be a good thing.

Excellent post, fully agree.

I disagreed with someones view yesterday on Twitter..... I was calm and made an argument that was thought out, they responded with swearing and character accusations, someone else made the same argument as me, the original poster then shared a screenshot of mine and this other persons opinions to there wall thing and basically tried to character assassinate both of us, when I was told about this and told them that it was a rather knife in the back thing to do I ended up with lots of venom and then blocked..

The argument was about the fact the first individual thought the new Harry Potter game should be out on ps4 and xbox one now, my argument was that being 2 and a half years into a new console generation its lucky its coming at all as old consoles who are going to get dropped at some point... apparently this makes me elitest scum that doesn't pay my bills and doesn't think about the plight of poor people who cant afford anything (funny how they can afford a £50 Harry Potter game though).

The issue is some people dont want to debate and consider both sides, they just want to live in an echo chamber were they are told they are right.

kerr9000 wrote:I disagreed with someones view yesterday on Twitter..... I was calm and made an argument that was thought out, they responded with swearing and character accusations, someone else made the same argument as me, the original poster then shared a screenshot of mine and this other persons opinions to there wall thing and basically tried to character assassinate both of us, when I was told about this and told them that it was a rather knife in the back thing to do I ended up with lots of venom and then blocked..

The argument was about the fact the first individual thought the new Harry Potter game should be out on ps4 and xbox one now, my argument was that being 2 and a half years into a new console generation its lucky its coming at all as old consoles who are going to get dropped at some point... apparently this makes me elitest scum that doesn't pay my bills and doesn't think about the plight of poor people who cant afford anything (funny how they can afford a £50 Harry Potter game though).

The issue is some people dont want to debate and consider both sides, they just want to live in an echo chamber were they are told they are right.

When I read "new Harry Potter game", that's not the direction I expected the argument to take.

Moggy wrote:

kerr9000 wrote:I disagreed with someones view yesterday on Twitter..... I was calm and made an argument that was thought out, they responded with swearing and character accusations, someone else made the same argument as me, the original poster then shared a screenshot of mine and this other persons opinions to there wall thing and basically tried to character assassinate both of us, when I was told about this and told them that it was a rather knife in the back thing to do I ended up with lots of venom and then blocked..

The argument was about the fact the first individual thought the new Harry Potter game should be out on ps4 and xbox one now, my argument was that being 2 and a half years into a new console generation its lucky its coming at all as old consoles who are going to get dropped at some point... apparently this makes me elitest scum that doesn't pay my bills and doesn't think about the plight of poor people who cant afford anything (funny how they can afford a £50 Harry Potter game though).

The issue is some people dont want to debate and consider both sides, they just want to live in an echo chamber were they are told they are right.

When I read "new Harry Potter game", that's not the direction I expected the argument to take.

To be fair im not surprised lol

In case you wondered where I stand on the more common arguments on this game I thought the potter books were ok, I enjoyed the films a lot, I think JK Rowling is a nutter , im only ever likely to buy the game second hand or new if its in a stupid stupid sale and if I do I will donate to a Trans/LGBTQ+ Charity to take the bad taste out of my mouth. While this is true though I dont believe on starting on people for buying it or not buying it, its a complex situation the only certain part of which is that JK is a colossal knob jockey.