Hi Paul, great little read, I look foward to the next part. This is very helpful for me, thank you😊 I'm sure there's a good crossover into real life skills here too (especially if you didn't have siblings growing up like me😆)
Why validate them though? Why not block and delete? What happens if they escalate? Might pay to talk about personal opsec if you are going to engage with hateful people: eg if you’re a person who shares a lot online, you’re putting yourself at risk of IRL retaliation, which is sadly something that has and does happen.
“You’re excited to share your love for a new hobby, a favourite movie, or a heartfelt experience online.”
Why do we feel this need though? Why are we feeding the Big Tech dopamine machine? Why am I commenting? 😂
Blocking and deleting is totally fine and it means that you don't see it.
However, it does have the effect that such hate sits their unchallenged and that emboldens certain types of trolls. and allows others to think these ideas are common and valid. So from my POV, the trick is how to not lose your voice or your dignity.
But you're not wrong. Seeing hateful stuff is causing a lot of good people to abandon social media and the discourse just gets more and more toxic. I'm looking at you X/Twitter.
The haters are trying to provoke and intimidate and control the discourse.
With regard to opsec, generally, the more online threats people make, the less likely they are to follow through on them. Sadistic talk is cheap, precisely because they never have to front up and face social or physical consequences.
Despite him since having gone a bit anti-vax, Gavin de Becker's book 'The Gift of Fear' speaks to how to tell actual IRL threats from posers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear
Why are we here? Well, humans are a social primate and most of us are motivated to interact with each other. So let's not let the haters win.
True. But I'd hate to encourage folks to push back against obviously damaged trolls and then have that come back to bite them. TL;DR lock down your social accounts people!
"humans are a social primate and most of us are motivated to interact with each other"
But I think this is the mechanism Zuck and others have tapped into to profit.
You don't have to tell the world what you thought about [insert something here] *online*, you can go do it IRL where it is less likely to be met with outrigth hostility.
I feel like we're all just so dead set on telling everyone what we think about everything, all the time. It's easy. You get a dopeamine hit. But maybe, perhaps, another mental health tool is not posting in the first place. Posting is bad. You're giving labour to Zuck. Right now, right here on Substack, I'm giving my time and labour to a platform which won't ban Nazis. lol.
Righto. I'm off to my anarchist/socialist meet up to plot the revolution, I shant be posting any more 👋
I agree that social media exploits our primate nature and it will take millions of years of evo-psych shifts to change that, even if we wanted to.
But I do get the tussle you're talking about. Do we give up on online interaction since it tends to produce bad-faith engagement? Or do we try to improve it?
Well, I think each platform is socially different. X/Twitter is notably higher on bad-faith engagement, partly because of the brevity of replies, and partly because of the subsequent moderation abandonment.
I think you do raise a point which I do plan to speak on. There are two kinds of empowerment I'm trying to offer here. One is just understanding *why* certain people say mean things on the internet. People have told me there is comfort in that, knowing it's not actually about you, it's about them. Once you know that and can spot it, the heat often goes out of the initial jibe you got to see.
Since Griefers and Rage-baiters are not subtle, they can just be ignored if you so choose. If you're not sure whether they are actually dangerous to push back on, I don't want anyone to feel I'm trying to tell you to. I'm just giving options.
Now, it gets a bit different with Concern Trolls and Sealions which often hook you into engaging for quite a while before you realise what they are. They're a bit more insidious in that respect. I'll speak to that next.
However, when it comes to ignoring, you don't always have a choice on that when it comes to persistent harassers, especially if you're a scientist or educator in particular fields, or have any kind of profile. I'll be speaking to that after my article on Concern Trolls and Sealions and interviewing some people who been on the more extreme end of trolling.
And I do hope you will post more, Jackson, at least here. Thanks for all these comments. You're raising some really interesting points and great questions for me to grapple with and hopefully address after some reflection.
Hi Paul, great little read, I look foward to the next part. This is very helpful for me, thank you😊 I'm sure there's a good crossover into real life skills here too (especially if you didn't have siblings growing up like me😆)
Thanks. Siblings are indeed useful for helping us develop our ability to express healthy contempt :-)
Why validate them though? Why not block and delete? What happens if they escalate? Might pay to talk about personal opsec if you are going to engage with hateful people: eg if you’re a person who shares a lot online, you’re putting yourself at risk of IRL retaliation, which is sadly something that has and does happen.
“You’re excited to share your love for a new hobby, a favourite movie, or a heartfelt experience online.”
Why do we feel this need though? Why are we feeding the Big Tech dopamine machine? Why am I commenting? 😂
Blocking and deleting is totally fine and it means that you don't see it.
However, it does have the effect that such hate sits their unchallenged and that emboldens certain types of trolls. and allows others to think these ideas are common and valid. So from my POV, the trick is how to not lose your voice or your dignity.
But you're not wrong. Seeing hateful stuff is causing a lot of good people to abandon social media and the discourse just gets more and more toxic. I'm looking at you X/Twitter.
The haters are trying to provoke and intimidate and control the discourse.
With regard to opsec, generally, the more online threats people make, the less likely they are to follow through on them. Sadistic talk is cheap, precisely because they never have to front up and face social or physical consequences.
Despite him since having gone a bit anti-vax, Gavin de Becker's book 'The Gift of Fear' speaks to how to tell actual IRL threats from posers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear
Why are we here? Well, humans are a social primate and most of us are motivated to interact with each other. So let's not let the haters win.
True. But I'd hate to encourage folks to push back against obviously damaged trolls and then have that come back to bite them. TL;DR lock down your social accounts people!
"humans are a social primate and most of us are motivated to interact with each other"
But I think this is the mechanism Zuck and others have tapped into to profit.
You don't have to tell the world what you thought about [insert something here] *online*, you can go do it IRL where it is less likely to be met with outrigth hostility.
I feel like we're all just so dead set on telling everyone what we think about everything, all the time. It's easy. You get a dopeamine hit. But maybe, perhaps, another mental health tool is not posting in the first place. Posting is bad. You're giving labour to Zuck. Right now, right here on Substack, I'm giving my time and labour to a platform which won't ban Nazis. lol.
Righto. I'm off to my anarchist/socialist meet up to plot the revolution, I shant be posting any more 👋
I agree that social media exploits our primate nature and it will take millions of years of evo-psych shifts to change that, even if we wanted to.
But I do get the tussle you're talking about. Do we give up on online interaction since it tends to produce bad-faith engagement? Or do we try to improve it?
Well, I think each platform is socially different. X/Twitter is notably higher on bad-faith engagement, partly because of the brevity of replies, and partly because of the subsequent moderation abandonment.
I think you do raise a point which I do plan to speak on. There are two kinds of empowerment I'm trying to offer here. One is just understanding *why* certain people say mean things on the internet. People have told me there is comfort in that, knowing it's not actually about you, it's about them. Once you know that and can spot it, the heat often goes out of the initial jibe you got to see.
Since Griefers and Rage-baiters are not subtle, they can just be ignored if you so choose. If you're not sure whether they are actually dangerous to push back on, I don't want anyone to feel I'm trying to tell you to. I'm just giving options.
Now, it gets a bit different with Concern Trolls and Sealions which often hook you into engaging for quite a while before you realise what they are. They're a bit more insidious in that respect. I'll speak to that next.
However, when it comes to ignoring, you don't always have a choice on that when it comes to persistent harassers, especially if you're a scientist or educator in particular fields, or have any kind of profile. I'll be speaking to that after my article on Concern Trolls and Sealions and interviewing some people who been on the more extreme end of trolling.
And I do hope you will post more, Jackson, at least here. Thanks for all these comments. You're raising some really interesting points and great questions for me to grapple with and hopefully address after some reflection.