The internet doesn’t turn nice people into a..holes

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Woodchopper
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The internet doesn’t turn nice people into a..holes

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Aug 28, 2021 11:33 am

Here’s the article:

The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... ED631916E4

Here’s the preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/hwb83/

And here’s the Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/m_b_petersen/status ... 82084?s=21

tl:dr People who are a..holes online are also a..holes offline. Nice people don’t change their behaviour when they go online.
We see more a..holes online because we are exposed to more of them.

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bjn
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Re: The internet doesn’t turn nice people into a..holes

Post by bjn » Sat Aug 28, 2021 7:08 pm

Is there a loudest shouting thing as well? a..eholes tend to shout more often and be louder than nicer people. So are a..eholes more visible online and appear to make a larger proportion of the population than in real life?

Al Capone Junior
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Re: The internet doesn’t turn nice people into a..holes

Post by Al Capone Junior » Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:28 pm

Warning: opinion and wild speculation, tho ironically, not much anger.

Anecdotally, social media definitely makes ppl angrier, especially me, and I don't need ant help there. So I stay off facefuckingbook, twitter, instagram etc. My confirmation bias feed on youtube is pretty well trained, but some aggravating b.llsh.t does still creep into my feed/suggestions. The rest of the internet doesn't seem to be that much of a problem, just social media.

I do believe the feed/suggestions, and the algorithms they use to try and keep your attention a little longer, are much of the problem. Feeding outrage and controversy seems to really work as far as schmuckerberg getting richer goes, but it polarizes society and makes every issue extreme and everyone bipolar. This just seems to be very bad for everyone. Just like google f.cking recommending alex f.cking jones billions of times in one year. There's absolutely no way that can be anything other than f.cking asswipingly terrible. And google damn well doesn't give a f.ck.

But I get it. Yes, facefuckingbook is terrible for society, it drives polarization, extreme-izes viewpoints, amplifies tribalism, and makes everyone angry and pissed off. But they want to keep making money, just like google.

As an aside, I'm not anti technology. But I am very much against the widespread acceptance of really crappy technology, i.e. the mosern cell phone, google, facefuckingbook etc. How did this bat dung become so widespread and accepted?

I fear that Steven Pinker's better angels phenomenon has a real chance of actually reversing in the near future.

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Boustrophedon
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Re: The internet doesn’t turn nice people into a..holes

Post by Boustrophedon » Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:07 pm

The internet didn't change me: I was an a..eh.le well before that.
Hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död.

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