On so many different news items, threads, etc. People are the first to claim pretty much anyone who has made a mistake, or does something they disagree with deserves to die.
Like, do some people not have the capability to empathise and realise they might have been in a similar place if they were born in a different environment…
I genuinely understand, you think a politician who has lead to countless deaths, a war criminal, or a mass rapists deserves to die.
But here people say it for stuff that falls way below the bar.
A contracted logger of a rainforest (who knows if they have the money / opportunity to support their family another way). Deserves to die.
A civilian of Nazi germany of whom we know nothing about their collaboration/agreement with the regime. Deserves to die.
Some person who was a drug dealer and then served their time. Deserves to die.
Like I don’t get it? Are people not able to imagine the kind of situations that create these people, and that it’s not impossible to imagine the large majority of people in these positions if born in a different environment?
anonymity allows people to be not very nice
There’s a blast from the past.
You’re not nice! I wish you were dead!
same
Wait, you wish thouartfrugal were dead? Or you wish yourself were dead?
Phrasing left your statement vague.
I wouldnt wish death on someone else
That’s horribly unempathetic of you.
I’m so glad we’re all on the same page, does this mean we should be friends now?
Hiding behind keyboard is easy.
Because it isn’t just “nice” not to kill people for these things. It’s what you’d expect that large majority of people to think.
The majority of people probably do think that… but they don’t consider other internet denizens people.
Hard for me not to. I’m disabled to the point I’m unable to communicate in real life (lost ability to speak or hear), and am bedridden with limited mobility. So communicating via texting/phone is my only way.
Life is cheap on the internet, because people feel far removed (and/or “above it”). Social media “engagement” algorithms divide and isolate people from each other.
(I think as far as Lemmy is concerned, it’s just spillover / remnant behaviors from that stuff. There’s no engagement algorithm here other than what we bring in ourselves.)
Here are a some studies on it from people a lot smarter than me. (Note these are more about general toxicity and hate speech and not zeroed in on your exact question, but they may be helpful).
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.744614/full
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/11547/10076
https://scholars.org/contribution/countering-online-toxicity-and-hate-speech
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-021-00787-4
This one looks at the “why” question from a political POV:
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/11/pgad382/7405434?login=false
thanks, appreciate this answer
Part of it is that purity tests are at an all time high. In large part because we are constantly inundated with Content to reinforce our world views (or the world view of the Influencer we glommed on to) constantly. So anything different is not just cognitive dissonance: it is an attack on our very core and a lie. So if someone does something we wouldn’t do? They are the evilest of evil people and are knowingly hurting whoever we care about.
But the other aspect? The internet is a great place to meet people with different life experiences. And in a lot of cases (particularly with certain politicians), we and the people we love have been directly harmed by them. All that steven universe bullshit about needing to love everyone and always finding the good goes out the window when you are increasingly watching organizations try to murder you for embracing who you are and to enslave people and turn them into breeding stock.
And the last aspect is that lemmy has a really bad infestation of tankies. Tankies who, useful idiots or intentional, tend to actively argue for destabilizing The West and increasing conflicts. So advocating for terrorism and murder helps with that.
Appreciated your answers both on this thread and the soviet war crimes thread. Thank you.
It’s the result of the “bombastic” mix of false dichotomy, assumptions, and social media dynamics.
False dichotomy prevents you from noticing nuances, complexities, third sides, or gradations. Under a false dichotomy, there’s no such thing as “Alice and Bob are bad, but Alice is worse than Bob”; no, either they’re equally bad (thus both deserve to die), or one of them is good.
In the meantime, assumptions prevent you from handling uncertainties, as the person “fills the blanks” of the missing info with whatever crap supports their conclusion. For example you don’t know if Bob kills puppies or not, but you do know that he jaywalks, right? So you assume that he kills puppies too, thus deserving death.
I’m from the firm belief that people who consistent and egregiously engage in discourse showing both things are muppets causing harm to society, and deserve to be treated as such. (Note: “consistent and egregiously” are key words here. A brainfart or two is fine, as long as there’s at least the attempt of handling additional bits of info and/or complexity.)
Then there are the social media dynamics. I feel like a lot of users here already addressed them really well, but to keep it short: social media gives undue exposure to idiots doing the above due to anonymity, detachment from the situation, self-reinforcing loops (“circlejerks”), so goes on.
“AOC slams Trump.”
They may as well be writing articles that say:
“Trump fucking body slams Biden.”
The rhetorical devices are out of control.
That’s because people are insane and unhinged, and love whipping themselves up into frenzies.
Tbh, they probably deserve to die.
Honestly pretty frickin relevant
Its a product of global connectivity but lack of in person connection. If I interact with someone regularly and personally I am unlikely to wish harm on them because they are “part of my tribe.” Via the internet and social media I dont really have a connection with this person, so its easy to think of them as an outsider or them. Once they are outside of my tribe I can remove their humanity and then their death has no moral or emotional cost to me.
I tend to block those users very, very quickly. At best, they’re “knee-jerk” types that react violently without thinking. At worst, they’re sociopaths. There’s a lot in between those, but either way, with them blocked, this place is way more chill.
that’s a good way to construct an echo chamber and not notice that you’re no longer the majority and now society has lowered the bar for murder to include you.
“If we block the people calling for death, they’ll kill us!” 😵
They look around and only see support so they must be right .
Because ignoring problems has worked so well in the past …
While i agree with your sentiment it really depends on the user. While you may be open to calling out bullshit violent users, perhaps this user has no intention to do the same and would prefer a more chill virtual environment
Yep. Plus, people spewing violent bullshit aren’t going to be deterred by a counter keyboard warrior. So I just let them shout their shit into the void (as far as I’m aware of it, anyway).
I’ve got enough stress IRL I don’t need that shit here.
And allowing all of these people unchecked in your discourse allows them to keep going and gain steam. If more people blocked psychos maybe they’d shut up when they realise no one is listening
In my local city subreddit yesterday, something like this happened.
Up until last year, high speed police chases were illegal in my state because of the increased chances of deadly accidents with uninvolved innocent citizens.
A few days ago, the first deadly accident from a police high speed chase happened.
After the cops laid down spike strips and ruined her tires, she kept driving, and eventually plowed into someone, killing them.
To me, seeing that it all started because she’s a drug addict looking for fentanyl, I don’t see it as her doing this on purpose, but it being split between her and the cops. She could have stopped, but the cops could have also chosen to not exacerbate the situation with hot pursuit and shredding her tires.
The people in the thread were comparing her to mass shooters and demanding she be in jail until she’s dead. They even pulled the FOX News and dug up her entire criminal history to show how evil she was. I get it, she fucked up and killed someone, but I would personally still call it manslaughter, not murder, since she clearly wasn’t trying to kill people, she was just trying to escape cops.
This is in a so-called progressive city deep in the US northwest.
Anonymity and group think are serious fucking drugs here - a lot of people struggle with empathy normally but even more fail to empathize across the internet. We’re all fucking people at the end of the day but some folks struggle to see other usernames as anything but “the other”.
Additionally this thread + comment system rewards extremism and controversy over reason and nuance - its much faster to absorb a comment of someone dunking on someone else than reading a well thought out of comment… the highest votes tend to go to shorter simpler statements.
Violence is inherently simple and easy to comprehend - it’s extreme and edgy - and it’s something a lot of us constantly see on these devices when playing video games. A lot of people who espouse it on the internet don’t mentally equate advocacy for violence with actual physical violence or can’t really comprehend what actual physical violence looks and feels like.
Oh, also, memes.
They are children, or act like them.
Jumping to absolutes is generally the wrong move.
Because they are behind a screen, and they see life as videogames and hyperbole.
Along with other things said here, people tend to “forget” that there’s a real person on the other end.
I vaguely recall Nicholas Christakis talking about a study they made, where they created a bot which would simply remind people of the fact that there’s a real person on the other end, and they found that it would help. (That study was done in some university platform and is centuries old in internet time, though. I think he spoke about it about 6 years ago on podcast with Sam Harris.)
It’s essentially virtue signalling, whether it’s online or offline. Since nobody is “for” serial rapists, for example (the current Republican candidate for president notwithstanding), the differentiation is being against “by what degree.” Calling for maiming, execution, torture, etc. positions the speaker as “better than” someone who doesn’t, to some people.
