The toxicity in the comments section

I've recently seen a video of a musician, that started with him reading (turning it into a cacophony of several voices mixed in) all the nasty comments he receives in his Youtube channel. Some of them are intellegible and a group of words resonated: «you should kill yourself».

In this case, it wasn't about a life threatening decision made by the musician, he just did an album. And then I got to thinking that those words, along with others sounding in a similar vein, are being flung around *so damn easily*. What drives someone on the Internet to write such terrible words over so menial things? Why they have to spend the time writing that?

Whatever happened to the nettiquete?

I just don't know. It bothers me that people just think that the common decency, the politeness are constrained to the "Real World", just because they hide behind a screen and a username.

It bothers me that people are not aware on how impactful the interactions over Internet can have. You can actually make someone feel better about themselves, feel supported and loved. Or you can make them feel hated or that what they are doing isn't worth anymore, like recently another known musician decided to stop doing gear reviews because he had stopped having fun with it.

Bravo, furious commenters. I hope you are happy. This is why we can't have nice things.

I would add this to the netiquette rules if I had my way:

If don't have anything nice or constructive to say, having a comment section is not the place to write it.

Addendum: Never write a comment either if you feel angry, upset or directly enraged.

🦉 ResetReboot

2023-12-02 · 6 months ago · 👍 chluehr · 👋 1

5 Comments ↓

👻 N10A · Dec 03 at 03:07:

I've always wondered what makes these people so angry. There's plenty of content on the internet that annoys me, makes me cringe, or is just plain souless, but even if some super video combined all of those things I would never tell someone to kill themselves over it. Maybe I was just raised better, or maybe they just lack a basic component of human empathy. Who knows.

🏕️ Yretek · Dec 03 at 09:59:

Very well said... it's not about politics, religion or sports... it never was; it's about holliganism, ego, not caring and parroting whatever runs for 'cool' these days

🚀 Minko_Ikana · Dec 03 at 10:40:

We live in a world of rampant sadism. When people hurt they want to spread their misery and inflict pain on others so they are not alone. But it is never going to change. So all we can do is grow tough skin or don't go to these places. If we click on it then it is on ourselves, we have the option not to click it.

🦂 urbanhacker · Dec 05 at 12:29:

You also have to take into account how various algo are designed to make us spend as much time as possible on a given website. So when they make us angry.

It’s sad

🐉 gyaradong · Dec 08 at 07:09:

in my view, it's not anger, it's a strange kind of honesty. And I don't think it comes from anonymity, as is visible from Facebook and real names. Basically people act differently when surrounded by others and there seems to be a physical aspect to that. On a computer we are "alone" even though we are publishing something. This, alongside the idea that the only way of knowing that something is read is by having a reply, it encourages people to share their worst thoughts.