Negativity, schadenfreude and such

Rothko

It's hilarious that a couple of the posters on here are complaining about negativity when they're the ones that are chiefly responsible for it and have ruined the site.

EmmetSpiceland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121602307#Comment_121602307

Yeah, would be great if everyone would just hate women, people of colour, immigrants, trans people, refugees and homosexuals together.

taxAHcruel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121597684#Comment_121597684

I think it helps to view social media and forums as a computer game. And the game is designed to amplify negativity and disagreement. While positivity and agreement can be done - it can be a bit like trying to play Grand Theft Auto as a complete pacifistic. Which I have been told can be done and the game completed in that way - but you will struggle mightily.

Like computer games though - online social media and forums lets you vent and act in ways you never would in real life. And likely would not even want to if you could. If I play GTA and sleep with a sex worker, shoot her in the head, rob her money, and then drive off in her car that does not for one second mean I want to do any of that in real life. Similarly if I get into a heated discussion or debate on line it would be because I am "playing the social media computer game" and not because I am actually angry or all that bothered at all really.

Generally if you read over my posts I tend to be positive in most things I do or write on here. Often doing nothing more than describing positive things in my life that happen to me or that I do to/for others. But I am not playing the game by the rules I guess :) I post because I want to post not because I want engagement or replies or attention. And so I do not need to post negatively for no reason than negativity gets more engagement on forums, on twitter, on social media, or on news sites.

So yea I think you are right that the internet attracts quite a few angry men who are likely down on themselves and self hating. But I think a lot of the people who seem that way online likely are not this way in their own lives at all and are in fact entirely happy balanced people.

Which posters are which however can be - I grant you - often very hard to tell :)

freshpopcorn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121602333#Comment_121602333

It would also be great when a troll account pops up here if people just reported it instead of feeding them.

Bobson Dugnutt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121602333#Comment_121602333

A lot of “free thinkers” have the sort of bland, mean spirited, and angry opinions as every other lad who spends too long being exposed to Russian troll farm shïte. No nuance there at all.

Guys if the thread is just going to be a collective discussion about how bad the site is we can just leave it here. There’s plenty of threads on that particular subject already.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121602818#Comment_121602818

Honestly if I could print this and frame it I would.

I don’t own a printer though.

oh well.

z80CPU

Well, speaking of printers, got meself a new printer in Tesco the other day. Working a okay. Not much talk about Printers over in Tech on boards these days. Like Models. No mention of the demise in Model Railways of Hattons Dealers in the uk. Models forum is a backwater. Drones has'nt risen to great heights here either ( as former drone pilot ) .

Baba Yaga

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121607773#Comment_121607773

your drone wont go to great heights...? maybe charge the battery....?

thomil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121597684#Comment_121597684

I think this is too simplistic, to be fair, at least as far as the root causes are concerned. You're not wrong, but there's another aspect to it as well.

I remember being in school during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it was just "cool" to be cynical, dismissive and negative, even over on the continent, where I went to school. Add to that the general explosion of anti-everything sentiment in the years after 9/11, the crash of 2008 and the rise of social media with all its negatives, and you basically have a witches brew of negativity that has had in excess of 20 years to fester and "mature", with the results we see today. You have entire generations that were effectively raised on negativity. Plus, it's just easier to to talk things down than it is to understand them and for a lot of people, that's already enough.

There's certainly something about seeing people who've been f***ing around getting to the "find out" part, annoying or holier-than-thou characters getting their deserved comeuppance, I partake in that to a certain extent myself. However, over the last decade or so, something darker has crept in. Humanity has always needed "witches" to burn, but we're now at a point where literally everyone can be that "witch", and where the cry to "burn" them can travel around the planet in microseconds to be answered with crowds of cheering participants who are just waiting to add their fuel to the fire, to see even more "witches" burn.

thomil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121607986#Comment_121607986

Not too great, if you please, you don't want to inadvertently enter controlled airspace...

Baba Yaga

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121607996#Comment_121607996

oh yeah,forgot about that....semi great then 😁