An article about online outrage culture I found worth reading

[cousinshelley]

If only because it's nice to know other people feel the same way about it, especially when they verbalize it better than I can. 

"What all of these arguments have in common is that very few people engage in them in real life. Sure, you might be privately annoyed at your friend who’s always talking about how great their life is when they drone on about their perfect mornings, and you might rightfully point out when an author has an unsavory past, but it’s unlikely that the subject coming up in conversation would lead to mass ridicule. But online, it’s almost a given.

 

A frequently quoted tweet acts as a shorthand for this phenomenon: “Hi, most annoying person you’ve ever encountered here! I noticed this post you wrote in 3 seconds doesn’t line up with every experience I’ve ever had. This is extremely harmful to me, the main character of the universe."

Every "chronically online conversation" is the same at Vox.

Comments

[sweetsorcery]

That's such a good article, and all this is only one reason (aside from the other obvious ones) why I've entirely departed sites like Twitter et al some time ago. It also makes a really good point about no one coming out of these rage threads looking good. Even righteous anger making you jump to anyone's defence only perpetuates the whole thing and keeps it going in a loop.

One of my favourite YT channels, School of Life, has a highly entertaining video on Wisdom, and around about the 2:16 min mark, it starts to cover just this. Here are some particularly relevant bits from the transcript:

2:15
The wise are realistic about social relations.
2:18
In particular, about how difficult it is to change people's minds and have an effect on their lives.
2:24
They are therefore extremely reticent about telling people too frankly what they think
2:28
They have a sense of how seldom it's useful to get censorious with others
2:33
They want above all that things go well between people
2:36
Even if this means not being totally honest.
2:38
So they will sit with someone of an opposite political persuasion and not try to convert them
2:43
They will hold their tongue at someone who seems to be announcing a wrong headed plan
2:47
For reforming the country, educating their child or directing their personal lives
2:52
They will be aware of how differently things can look through the eyes of others
2:56
and will search more for what people have in common than what separates them


3:25
The wise are realistic about other people too.
3:28
They recognize the extraordinary pressures everyone is under to pursue their own ambitions,
3:33
defend their interests and seek their own pleasures
3:36
It can make other people appear extremely mean and purposedly evil
3:40
but this would be to overpersonalize the issue
3:43
The wise know that most hurt is not intentional.
3:46
It's a byproduct of the constant collision of blind competing egos in a world of scarce resources.
3:53
The wise are therefore slow to anger and judge
3:56
They don't leap to the worst conclusions about what's going on in the minds of others.
4:00
They will be ready to forgive from a prone sense of how difficult every life is

[cousinshelley]

Thanks for the the link to that great video!

I stay away from almost all social media anymore too, and the way people are loaded for bear and ready to use the most ungenerous interpretation of anything said to pillory people is a large part of that.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>An article about online outrage culture I found worth reading
If only because it's nice to know other people feel the same way about it, especially when they verbalize it better than I can. <<

I find that lots of people engage in online outrage and/or suffer burnout because they don't have a good toolkit for handling things that bother them, so I have written about this here:

"Activism: Ignore / Complain / Do Something?"

"Outrage and Social Media"

For the fannish aspects (e.g. "Don't like, don't read"), see:

"The Three Laws of Fandom: The Laws Themselves"
"The Three Laws of Fandom: Additional Exchanges"


Things that bother me about online outrage:

* People seem to have forgotten how to walk away or turn things off.
* They feel free to wander into someone else's space to pick on them.
* They are more interested in whining and bullying than actually solving problems.
* It makes the world a less pleasant place overall.
* And since civilization requires privacy and civility to function, it undermines that too.