I read an article in the New York Times by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (article) bemoaning the fact that all too often, responses to one of her articles include ugly, mean-spirited comments. She described a piece she wrote for Salon about suffering from postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder after the traumatic delivery of her son. A slew of nasty comments followed.
She wrote:
"I don’t write this to say how hurt my feelings are. Rather, I’m confused. It’s O.K. if people would like to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the opinions and facts discussed in my work. It’s also O.K. with me if people simply don’t like my work. What confounds me is why online commenters are so gratuitously nasty; why, when given the opportunity to have an educated disagreement with an author or other readers, they use the space allotted to spew venom instead of presenting a well-reasoned argument."
One of the thoughts she had was that perhaps it's the anonymity that allows such cruelty. I completely agree. Happily, for our Granite State College blogs, all responses are "vetted" by our enthusiastic and hardworking middle-person. As a matter of fact, when first asked to write a blog, that was my first question, since I know how thin-skinned I am and nasty responses would be likely to crush me. Kate B. assured me that all responses go through her first, so anything nasty would never see the light of the internet. "Phew," I thought.
One of the things we know from studies in Social Psychology (which you can take in an adult online course at Granite State College - here's a list of online courses), is that being anonymous can contribute to people doing things they wouldn't be likely to do if they could be identified. It's called "deindividuation." Think of the actions of people in the Ku Klux Klan, for example: They wear white hoods to disguise their identities. Negative behavior is also more likely to take place under the cover of darkness or in a crowd - when it's harder to identify someone. You can probably think of a lot of things that people do if no one can actually identify that they are the person doing or saying it.
Kathleen Taylor, the author of Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain, is quoted in the article, and says, interestingly, “We’re evolved to be face-to-face creatures. We developed to have constant feedback from others, telling us if it was O.K. to be saying what we’re saying. On the Internet, you get nothing, no body language, no gesture. So you get this feeling of unlimited power because there is nothing stopping you, no instant feedback.”
So the suggestion that people who respond online should have to provide their name is probably an effective one. (Providing they use their real name!) There are a lot of thought-provoking ideas you can learn in a psychology course!
She wrote:
"I don’t write this to say how hurt my feelings are. Rather, I’m confused. It’s O.K. if people would like to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the opinions and facts discussed in my work. It’s also O.K. with me if people simply don’t like my work. What confounds me is why online commenters are so gratuitously nasty; why, when given the opportunity to have an educated disagreement with an author or other readers, they use the space allotted to spew venom instead of presenting a well-reasoned argument."
One of the thoughts she had was that perhaps it's the anonymity that allows such cruelty. I completely agree. Happily, for our Granite State College blogs, all responses are "vetted" by our enthusiastic and hardworking middle-person. As a matter of fact, when first asked to write a blog, that was my first question, since I know how thin-skinned I am and nasty responses would be likely to crush me. Kate B. assured me that all responses go through her first, so anything nasty would never see the light of the internet. "Phew," I thought.
One of the things we know from studies in Social Psychology (which you can take in an adult online course at Granite State College - here's a list of online courses), is that being anonymous can contribute to people doing things they wouldn't be likely to do if they could be identified. It's called "deindividuation." Think of the actions of people in the Ku Klux Klan, for example: They wear white hoods to disguise their identities. Negative behavior is also more likely to take place under the cover of darkness or in a crowd - when it's harder to identify someone. You can probably think of a lot of things that people do if no one can actually identify that they are the person doing or saying it.
Kathleen Taylor, the author of Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain, is quoted in the article, and says, interestingly, “We’re evolved to be face-to-face creatures. We developed to have constant feedback from others, telling us if it was O.K. to be saying what we’re saying. On the Internet, you get nothing, no body language, no gesture. So you get this feeling of unlimited power because there is nothing stopping you, no instant feedback.”
So the suggestion that people who respond online should have to provide their name is probably an effective one. (Providing they use their real name!) There are a lot of thought-provoking ideas you can learn in a psychology course!
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