Why is everyone on the internet so mean?

0:02 A listener production. Welcome to another solo episode of Crabby or Happy. What I want to talk about today is something that I have observed lately, and I have no doubt you have observed it as well, and that is that people are so mean on the internet. Why are people so unkind? Have you been mean on the internet? Have you been on the receiving end of that? And what can we do about it? As an individual? And I guess more broadly as a community. And I do like the word community because we really are. That's what we are. No matter where we live, we're all on this earth together. The Internet has brought us all together.

0:46 We're interacting with people that we've never met. Sometimes, we're interacting with people in all different ways, in all different places that we would not normally have the opportunity to do. And for some reason, this tends to bring out the worst in people. Times. Throughout history, it's been shown that people tend to turn on each other during times of uncertainty and upheaval, When there are periods of economic uncertainty, economic downturn, for example, then these are the conditions that tend to create society just to separate, to turn on each other. Become very polarized, vary them in us sort of mentality. And so I guess if you think about the last few years, there has been a lot of that.

1:30 There's been a lot of uncertainty. We're currently dealing with some really tough times financially with inflation, recession, etc. And not only are we turning on each other, but we now have this kind of cesspool, which is the Internet, where we can vent all of that anger and all of that toxicity and all of that fear onto other people because we can't see them, we don't know them, they're anonymous. It just gives this temporary sort of relief to offload fire off some sort of nasty comment on the Internet without even thinking about it, and without having any concern for how that's going to land, the impact that's going to have on the other person, and the impact is going to have on all of the other people who see that, who also witness that, how that's going to make them feel, how that's going to impact their decisions about how they choose to interact online or not.

2:25 It's a whole ripple effect. It's not just one comment that's just going to be out into the ether and forget all about it. It has a whole ripple effect, and it ultimately leads to us feeling like the world is just full of nasty people. The world is not an emotionally safe place, and that's not the case. So I hope in this conversation we can just all kind of understand a little bit about what is causing this to happen and what we can do about it. Whether you are on the receiving end of that kind of behavior, whether you are a person who wants to contribute but you're not really sure because you're afraid of those kinds of negative comments, or if you are a person who might be compelled to engage in that kind of behavior, and how you might just take a breath, take a pause, consider the impact, and maybe choose to do something differently.

3:20 So the reason I started, first of all thinking about this was because I hadn't experience myself. Now this was really benign. I don't want to set myself up as some sort of internet victim, because I absolutely am not. All of my experiences mostly have been positive online, and it was the fact that this was so benign that it really jumped out at me as being kind of unnecessary and unusual. So I have a TikTok account and mostly I share content that is around psychology, and I've shared some posts that have gone viral. I have talked about narcissism and imposter syndrome and attachment theory and just all sorts of general things that I'm into. I've also shared podcast clips, and one day I just did a little video which I thought was kind of fun, which was about the things that I have observed that are different living in the UK as opposed to Australia. And I really did deliberately keep this lighthearted because I know what the internet is like. And I talked about things like washing machines in kitchens. You know, in Australia we have laundries for that, and the fact that nobody knows where to walk on the footpaths they're not on the left and not on the right. Just really inconsequential things like that that I have observed, and for the most part, people responded to that in the same sort of lighthearted tone.

4:38 I even made sure in the caption I said, I'm not saying anything's better or worse, it's just different as a foreigner in this country. I was interacting and engaging with the comments, and then there came a point where it just seemed to turn. And it took for one person to say, well, that sounds like you should probably just go back to Australia, or oh, here we go again, with another Australian just moaning, why do you have to make such a big deal of this. Surely people can understand that if you're in another country things are going to be different, Like, get over it. This kind of tone is what started to come through. And now this post meant nothing to me. I was not invested in this.

5:21 I wasn't sharing a strong opinion about something. It was nothing that I thought was going to be particularly polarizing. And I reflected that if it was something deeply personal to me, if it was something that I felt really strongly about, or that was of a more personal nature, and this is the response that I was getting, like how would that have felt? Whereas for me, it was just so unnecessary to have these kinds of comments. So what I did was I just started replying back to people and just saying, well, you know, it isn't a big deal and I didn't mean anything by it or whatever. Some of them I actually deleted and blocked. I thought, you know what, this is my space on the Internet, and we will talk about that later, about what you can do if you start being on the receiving end of these comments. But for the most part, I would look at the person's profile and I would just reply to them. What I found was that when I looked at the people's profile who were leaving the more nasty kind of comments, ninety five percent of the time, they had no real personal user name, they had the random user number blah blah blah, They had no profile photo, and they had made no posts. They were very much anonymous.

6:33 They were very much there not to contribute, not to add value, not to create content that might be interesting, informative, educational, funny, inspiring, whatever. They were just there to consume and to criticize. And I mentioned this to a couple of people in my circle, and this is how the conversation started that this is what we are noticing, that this is coming up more and more, that people are just, for whatever reason, feel compelled to take the most benign social media post and vent in a way that is really unnecessary and rather unkind.

7:16 And like I said, that is low level I've seen, and you have seen people with bigger platforms on the Internet on the receiving end of much much worse behavior than that. From the comfort of their phones and their computers, people feel very comfortable to post insulting remarks, to swear to be sarcastic, you know, just really demonstrate behaviors that I would like to think they would not in their real life. So it got me to thinking, what is this What is going on here? Is it just that these people are unkind, kind of antagonistic in their real life?

8:00 Is this behavior just for their online presence? What causes it, why do they do it? And what can we do about it? So that brings us to today's episode. When I first started asking other people what they had observed and when this really started, like when did people start getting so mean on the internet. A lot of people put it down to the period of COVID and lockdowns and the fact that that time was so scary for people. It was so uncomfortable for people. We'll put into situations we hadn't been in before, and it was very polarizing. You know, people had opinions about vaccines and lockdowns and politics and all of that kind of stuff, and it did tend to set up this very much, this conflict online.

8:47 I actually thought to myself, I recall it being much earlier than that. I remember the Trump election in twenty sixteen, when breaks it was happening. There were big things happening in the world then, and I remember there was very much of them and us. Kind of mental starting to build then, which I observed, and a lot of this year. Other in this camp or you're in that camp. You're other with me or you're against me. This very black and white kind of thinking and very antagonistic, combative kind of communication online. But actually, when I looked at research about this and I started googling articles about this, there are people writing about this phenomenon way back earlier than that, even the twenty twelve election in the US, this kind of behavior is being observed, And there's even an article from two thousand and four which talks about this phenomenon called the online disinhibition effect, which potentially being a contributing factor to why people are so mean on the internet.

9:42 Two thousand and four was the year Facebook started. At that point, in terms of social media, we had blogs, we had online forums. I remember being a member of online forums. We had linked In I think started in two thousand and two, and so did MySpace, and then we had two thousand and four, we had Facebook. Later came along Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and on it goes. And obviously now social media has exploded, but they were talking about this in two thousand and four. This is not a new thing, but I do think it has got worse. So why do people do it? Let's start with that idea of the online disinhibition effect. I mean, common wisdom would tell you that you're anonymous, you can't see the person you're talking to, there's no accountability, and so it's just very easy to fire off a comment that is rude or it's mean. And that's all true.

10:42 I get that, but there is still a question of why if you wouldn't, if I wouldn't say that to a person in real life, why do I feel compelled to save that to a person on the internet. Why do some people feel like it's okay to say those things on the internet? And have you ever you know, the question is have you ever been tempted to say something? I think, if we're honest, we've all got a bit riled up sometimes by what we've seen on social media, and we've all probably had that urge, whether we have followed through or not, we are all susceptible to being drawn into that kind of behavior. And what I have found in my research is that there are some factors that can contribute to the likelihood that you might engage in that kind of behavior, or that somebody might engage in that kind of behavior. So, without going too much into this disinhibition effect, I think it's probably self explanatory, but he really came up with these kind of six factors that he said contributed to changing people's behavior online.

11:49 So one he talked about is dissociative and nonimity. Basically, I'm anonymous. I dissociate my actions because they can't be attributed to to me because nobody can see me. The invisibility factor. You can't see what I look like, you can't judge my tone. I can say whatever I like. The fact that these conversations don't happen in real time, that's a really big one. The fact that you are not in a normal human conversation there is a back and forth, whereas when you're posting online, you're just posting your comment and you're just leaving it out there and you don't know if anybody's going to read it, if anybody's going to respond to it. There's not that same real time interaction going on. There's this kind of dissociation that occurs because it is on a computer screen. It's like it's not the real world, it's not a real person.

12:43 We sort of we find it easier to engage in anti social ways with when we're dealing with an abstract We don't actually identify text on a page or text on a screen as a real person. That's a psychological effect that happens, and the minimization of authority. So there's nobody here to judge me, there's nobody here to be the boss of me. Basically, I could do what I like, I couldn't say what I like, and I can't see these people, so all in all, basically what that boils down to is that I'm invisible, I'm anonymous, and I don't have to deal with your feedback. I can just do what I like. Another really interesting point is that, especially if you see these people who go into these lengthy arguments or lengthy monologues on the Internet, that doesn't happen in real life, no matter how angry you are on no matter how convinced you are of your argument, when you are talking to somebody in person, there is a back and forth that happens. You don't get to stand on a podium or stand on a stage, or stand in a room and just deliver a monologue that you've crafted, that you've had time to think about and edit and go back and do a bit of research and shift a sentence around, and then deliver this monologue without any feedback from somebody else. This is why people's behavior on the internet is so different from how they are in real life. No matter how angry you are or how convinced you are in real life, if you start to talk, somebody is going to interject, Somebody is going to share an opposing viewpoint. You're going to see

14:16 somebody else's facial expression, their tone. All of this is not present in an online interaction. I think this is all self explanatory. Like I think we all see why this happens, and we get why it happens. The question is what do we do about it and how do we minimize its impact? Even if we can't minimize it occurring. One thing that I think is really interesting is that when we talk about trolls online, and we all have heard the expression of online trolls, we tend to think of trolls as this small subset of people that have particular dark kind of personality traits, people who are prone to be a little bit narcissistic, a little bit sadistic, bit psychopathic, maybe sociopathic. These are the people who engage in online trolling behavior the devoid of empathy, don't care, basically their assholes in real life and so their assholes online.

15:10 In actual fact, there has been some research that shows that ordinary everyday people, very nice, kind people, can be prone to engage in this kind of behavior online in certain circumstances. This is the bit that really fascinates me. I think we've all seen examples of somebody who looks like you'll see their profile photo like on Facebook or something, if you're on Facebook, they look like the nicest, most normal, kind of grandmotherly type, and they write this vitriol online. So two things they have found. One is the mood that you were in. Having a low mood. Basically, being in a not a pleasant mood is more likely to result in you posting something mean online if you come across something that antagonizes you, rather than scrolling on by or ignoring it or walking away. The other thing I think is really interesting is that if there is already an unkind comment, if there is already an antagonistic kind of combative kind of comment, people are more likely to pile on. If there is already one negative comment, people are more likely to throw in theirs. So rather than if everything is generally positive or neutral and you don't agree with something or something's kind of irritated you, you might be more likely to continue scrolling because you don't want to be the one person who goes in with the negative comment. But if you see that somebody else

16:43 has already left one, it's like this pile on effect happens. And I think we've all seen that happen as well, And to be honest, that's what I saw happen on my very benign TikTok video about the difference between living in London versus living in Australia. As soon as there was one, as soon as there was one person who said go back to Australia or why are you even here, or something, they started to pile in. It took one comment and then everybody got on board. So it's just interesting the psychological factors that can influence you to behave in a way that you might not behave in real life.

17:30 So one of the impacts, I think, for a start, if you're a person who is on the receiving end of a lot of negative commentary, a lot of negative interaction on your social media platforms, if you're a person who's out there putting yourself out in the world, if you're an influencer, if you have a public profile of any kind, and you have got people who don't know you, who've got nothing to do with you, who feel compelled to post unkind comments, that can be really hurtful. Let's just acknowledge that it is really painful to open up your social media and see people who don't know you saying unkind things to you. There seems to be this idea that if you put yourself out into the public domain, if you have a public social media account or any kind of profile, or even myself, I'm a psychologist, but I have social media, I've got books, I've got a podcast that you're asking for it, that there should be an expectation that anybody can say whatever they want to you.

18:31 We see this with celebrities. Oh you put yourself out there, well, then you've got it coming. I feel like I'm stating the obvious. I feel like I'm having a conversation, and I don't mean to sound like this, but I think we all need to remember that these are human beings on the other side of the screens. The other thing is that when you witness those negative comments, if you're a person who might want to have a public profile, if you have something you want to say, if you want to if you're a psychologist and you want to start a podcast or write a book or put yourself out there, and you see those comments on other people's posts, that can be really scary. It's like a collective trauma that happens when you observe hostility happening to somebody who you relate to. So this applies to for example, women or people of a particular race, people of Asian descent, or people of color. You see other people who look like you, who you relate to, being treated a particular way, being abused, or being treated with hostility, and you feel that there is a resonance that occurs. It is a collective trauma like it hits you as if it was you on the receiving end of that. Because you can relate to that person, you see yourself in that person.

19:51 Do you think you're going to put yourself in the position to potentially be on the director receiving end of that? Of course not. So people are held back. So people who've got something value to contribute and to share are potentially not sharing it because they're so afraid of the inevitable hostility and the attacks and the denigration, the insults that they're opening themselves up to by sharing what they feel that they want to share. And if you're the person who's making the comment, I'm going to say, I don't think that feels good either. I think what happens for most people is there, in a shitty mood, they see somebody else piling on. Something pushes their buttons, somebody triggers them, and it's just so easy to fire off a rude or a negative, antagonistic comment and then walk away and not think about it again until potentially maybe you open up your phone or your laptop later that day and you see that somebody has responded, and then oh, suddenly there is some accountability and suddenly you're having a conversation or an argument with somebody that you never really wanted to be having. So there is some blowback occasionally. Also, it just doesn't feel good. I don't think it necessarily feels good to be nasty to anybody. And actually, what they have found there have been instances where people online have confronted in person the online trolls, the person who has been antagonizing them or attacking them online. When they

21:22 have been instances and there are reported instances of those people meeting and that person who's been mean on the internet having to have a face to face with the person they've been attacking. Suddenly the empathy is there. Suddenly it was just they honestly, they're genuinely didn't think. Suddenly they're so apologetic, they feel so much regret for the way they behaved when they have to be face to face with that person. So can we not just jump to that and just remember that this is another person, the other end that you're talking to. Going back to my situation, I started responding to people. I went back to those people if they had their name and their profile, I called them by name. I just responded. I didn't argue with anybody. I just said I wasn't complaining. I was just making an observation for the people who were engaging with me in a really lighthearted way. We had a bit of a back and forth about different things in different countries. But what I found was that comments started disappearing when I started to actually engage with people, some of the comments that i'd seen. I knew that the people had made comments because I was getting notifications.

22:37 When I went to find the comment to respond, it had actually disappeared. I think sometimes depending on the level of attack or insult that you're dealing with, sometimes actually going back to the person and responding but in a way that is actually non confrontational, that is not defensive, that it's not that you're not feeding into this aggressive that tone of the conversation. Then that can be really helpful to diffuse the situation. It can be really helpful just to remind that person that you are a real person. The best example of this that I saw was quite a few years ago. I don't even remember. I wish I could remember who it was. It was somebody who was a celebrity I believe who did a post on Instagram and somebody made a very unkind comment and insulting comment, argumentative on that person's post. And I saw this celebrity, I really wish I could remember who it was. Respond to that person with kindness and actually, like, not in a condescending way, but just said, basically, I feel like you must be in a really bad place for you to have made that comment. Seems like you're really struggling.

23:52 Are you really hurting right now? And whatever it was that they said, it was sort of it was relevant to the person's comment. It was basically just like, I see you like it was almost like for you to have been so mean, something must have happened. What can I do? And it completely diffused the whole thing. And what it also did was it got a whole lot of people commenting and responding saying there is a perfect example of how to deal with bullies on the internet. Classic example, masterclass and how to deal with bullies on the internet. Respond with kindness and watch them just crumble.

24:32 All of the defenses come down. You go back and you attack, and you're defensive and you're just feeding the antagonism it's just escalating a situation. We don't do that in real life, so why do we do it online? Typically, if you're trained in sort of conflict resolution or conflict management, basic conflict management training is never to respond at their level. If somebody is highly aroused and angry, antagonistic and aggressive, you never go back and respond on that same level. You always come back with a low level response and with the aim to bring them back down to your level, as opposed to escalating the whole thing. So I guess that's one example. If you do happen to be on the receiving end of a comment like that, you know you can choose to engage and respond, but in a way that is not aggressive or antagonistic or defensive, not go back on the counter attack. You can also choose to delete and block people. I did that on my TikTok if somebody was just I started to respond and then I thought, you know what, this is my part of the internet, this is MySpace. I'm here to provide helpful content, useful entertaining and I don't actually have to have you in my space if I don't want you to.

25:49 Just remember that as well. You have control of the delete and the block and the report buttons on social media, you can use them, and I think just remembering to close the screen and walk away occasionally. And that goes for whether you are on the receiving end or you're inclined to engage. If you were the one who is inclined to post something that is nasty, and you know it's unnecessary, no matter how tempting it is, to close it down, walk away, deal with your real people in your real life, pat your dog, walk out on the grass, feel the sunshine. It's so easy to become absorbed into these screens. They pull our attention in the algorithm, feeds us content that keeps us in an echo chamber where we're just surrounded by our own opinions, and we just become more entrenched in our own point of view and more likely to want to then have an argument with somebody who's got a different point of view. And if you know that you're not in the best mood, if you're not in the best frame of mind, then maybe think about doing something that's going to put you into a better frame of mind. We're all more likely to be mean on the internet. The research shows if you're not in the best mood and if you're seeing other people behave badly on the internet. So if we can just go back to our real life, remember what's important, reconnect face to face with people, do things that we find uplifting and inspiring, and get us away from all

27:23 of that, then the more likely we're able to come back to the world of social media in a way that we are in a frame of mind that we can engage in a constructive kind of a positive way, because there's so much that is constructive and positive about social media. There is so much there to be gained and so much to learn, and there is so much entertainment, and we just need to be better at managing our interactions and our engagements so that it can stay a healthy, happy, safe place, because right now it feels like it's not. Right now, it feels like it's a really unsafe place.

28:03 It can feel like when you see so much negativity and just meanness, unnecessary unkindness on the internet, it can feel like that's the world we live in, that the world is full of unkind people. It feels emotionally unsafe. It causes us to feel like people are just not nice and the majority of people really are people are actually good. So the more that we're witnessing or engaging in this kind of behavior online, the more it narrows our perspective and narrows our perspective about people and about life. The more it filters us silos us into these echo chambers where we're just surrounded by people who share the same opinion as us, and therefore we're being pitted against each other constantly, which is not the whole problem, but it's a big part of the problem. When we witnessiness an argument online, even if you're not directly involved in it, what it does is, naturally your mind goes to picking aside.

29:09 You decide which side of the argument you're on. And what that does is it kind of firms up your view. It firmly entrenches you in your position. It doesn't lend itself to you considering nuance or shades of gray or the complexities of a certain topic when you're witnessing these black and white kind of arguments, even if you're not directly involved in them. So we have to start exposing ourselves to different people who have different points of view. We have to make eye contact with people, get off the internet, and make eye contact. Research is very clear you are far less likely to say something that is mean if you are making eye contact with somebody then if you are not. That's even in real life. If you are in real life with somebody but you can't see their eyes, you're more likely to behave badly. If you are writing a letter as opposed to talking on the phone, for example, you're more likely to be mean.

30:09 And the Internet is basically it's all text based. There's no facial expression, there's no tone, there's no room to interpret body language, which is such a massive part of communication. All we're seeing is text on a screen. We're separated from our own empathy from that other person. It's abstract, it's distant. It's potentially just an invitation to not be our best selves. So let's all try to be our best selves on the Internet. Let's try to contribute positively, and if nothing else, let's try to avoid to scroll on and to not get involved in stuff that is unnecessary and unkind. If you haven't listened to my episode with Johann Hari called Stolen Focus, he has a whole lot of information in there about what happens with the Internet and the algorithm and how it pits us against each other. My conversation very early on with Mark Manson.

31:09 We had a very similar conversation about how the fact that most people, at the end of the day, our values are the same, just how we express them sometimes is different. But when we just look at different people's opinions, all we see is the differences we don't necessarily connect with what we have in common and as much more in common than separates us. So I'm going to put those links to those previous episodes in the show notes because I think they're all part of this conversation. For now, I'm going to keep sharing online and I'm just going to ignore the trolls or kill them with kindness. I will catch you on the next episode of Crabby They're Happy listener