Why do online communities feel the need to be so rude towards each other?

[Arkerus]

I don't know, I'm equally rude to people irl that I would be rude to online, I've insulted and taunted people bigger and probably stronger than me, I've taken a few hits and encourage them to do it, doesn't even hurt.

 

In fact I wish I knew where half the people I play with and against online were, the ability to go right said person and kick their *** for what ever reason, especially some of the people on these forums.

 

/rolleyes

 

Seriously? That's your MO?

[DarthDymond]

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/325/699/4fc.jpg

 

 

that explains everything

^ Yup. The official (or at least official sounding) term is Online Disinhibition Effect, but I've always preferred the punchier phrase from that image: G.I.F.T. (Greater Internet F***wad Theory).

[lil_evil_rozzie]

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/325/699/4fc.jpg

 

 

that explains everything

 

I go with this - seen some awful things said in general chat in game and on the forums - I don't normally post because when I do I just end up getting insulted...:/

[NeuroniaSW]

There's different kinds fo rudeness. In a PvP forum where everyone knows each other it's ok to call each other bads or w/e (I'm pretty bad at GSF and mediocre in Warzones so I take the bads label as a badge ) but generally people will just throw out condescencion like rainwater to enforce their viewpoint or whatever.

 

The community here is too large to delete or mod every comment, so people will just get away with antisocial views and so on. Just ignore people ingame and report truly offensive stuff on the forums and ingame. That usually alleviates things somewhat.

[calypsissmexy]

I blame anonymity and hierarchical masculinity.

 

As previously stated, there's no real consequence for being a dick so it's easier to default to it online.

 

But also there is the need to look dominant. To appear to be the most whatever person in a thread. The quickest way to achieve that is to dismiss the thread in a slyly beligerant way. To dismiss others in a way that shows you're the cool one and they're not. This can spoil a thread if successful and that's partly the point, because spoiling it means you've won and winners are on top. No one wants to go against the cool guy so if you can crap on someone's point successfully you can zero out competition and discussion. It's hard to explain especially since most would deny this is what they're doing.

 

Part of being cool (cool being code for dominant/masculine) is not appearing to care/try. This is why any long threads are immediately attacked most times. They are easy targets. They tried too hard. This is basically why tl;dr exists, to poopoo effort and look cool.

 

Also see L2P. Low effort dismissive response to communicate that you are cool and the other is not.

 

People don't argue to persuade. They argue to dominate. This is vividly true on the Internet where there's no real profit in winning an argument except reputation points. Me convincing one other player that what I think is right is in fact right doesn't affect the game in any meaningful way but it does show I'm the smartest/coolest to everyone watching. This is why arguments so rarely ever go to pm. What's the point of arguing if no one can see you trounce your opponent? So at the risk of derailing threads people get into OT arguments all the time. To win and be seen winning.

 

Who needs to be seen winning? The big man. The top dog. The alpha male. What type of person needs to feel that way about their Internet persona? Usually someone who is lacking in other areas of their life. And since most people are lacking in some area, there's a large pool of people trying to be top dog.

 

One could argue that this isn't true dominance or masculinity but its good enough for most. It's a social game and the Internet supercharges it by reducing social restrictions.

[SkyCakeLight]

Thank you so so so much everyone for taking time to reply to this thread! I greatly enjoyed getting a tiny insight into your world and point of view. Edited March 15, 2015 by SkyCakeLight

[Knockerz]

I been at fault for this and I regret every thing that I said to a particular person in another mmorpg. I think when you are on a computer you forget that there is some else on the other end. After going through that experience, I treat people the same as if I were in person talking to them. It was a very painful and regrettable experience I don't wish to repeat ever.

[branmakmuffin]

Who needs to be seen winning? The big man. The top dog. The alpha male. What type of person needs to feel that way about their Internet persona? Usually someone who is lacking in other areas of their life. And since most people are lacking in some area, there's a large pool of people trying to be top dog.

This attitude is what drives posts like "Welcome to my ignore list." If you (and I don't mean you, personally) want to ignore someone, you simply ignore them. Announcing it, often in conjunction with something like "I am too cool/important/busy/mature to reply to you any more" is attention-mongering along with a unilateral declaration of "victory." Truly the tool of the those lacking in self-confidence IRL.

[Jrr_hypernova]

read lord of the flies

 

the internet is the island and were the shipwrecked kids.

[blackkcid]

lol at the wannabe psychologists talking about real life problems cause they got trolled too hard once

[branmakmuffin]

lol at the wannabe psychologists talking about real life problems cause they got trolled too hard once

You don't have to be a psychologist, wannabe or otherwise, to recognize behaviors witnessed over many years of internet use.

 

Think about it. Give me one good reason to announce one's intention to ignore another poster. You might very well post a reason, but it will be a really lame one. Because there is no good reason for doing so.

Edited March 16, 2015 by branmakmuffin

[Ghisallo]

There are definitely rude people. That said many times rude is in the eye of the beholder. I have actually been called rude because I pointed out a factual error. By factual error I mean a literal fact... Dictionary/encyclopedia definition kinda fact. I was told I was rude because I was in essence telling someone "how they should feel" or that their opinion is wrong.

 

Problem is to me we should "feel" and have opinions based on articulable facts and when we articulate how we feel we should do so in a cogent manner (likely a result of first, being the son of 2 college profs and added on top of it 18 odd years of occupational habit). However calling people on this, even in a reasonable and polite fashion, is seen as rude by some.

 

I think you basically have two extremes and the rest of us in the middle. On the one side, the troll who is rude due to a combination of anonymity and likely RL timidity. Tbh in my experience those who are competitive AND confident IRL have no need to be unnecessarily rude virtually. Those who are rude virtually tend to be the person that gets walked on IRL or just has no healthy outlet for the frustrations that RL brings. Being reflexively rude here is essentially making up for all the "crap" they feel like they take IRL, its an outlet.

 

On the other extreme you have those who feel basic RL rules should not apply in the virtual world. They feel that people should be able to voice whatever opinion they want, even if it is uniformed, in an unchallenged environment. Again this is a reflex, a sort of coping mechanism. IRL whether its your boss, your parents or significant other someone is going to tell you that you are wrong at some point. Even when we are wrong we don't like being told we are wrong. Both see these games and not just a place to have fun but a genuine escape from RL and so the rules of RL don't apply. The only difference is the avenue of escape...one hyper aggressive and another hyper passive. Then there are those of us in the middle who act here the way we do everyday, applying the same rules we do IRL.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Ghisallo

[Ghisallo]

I blame anonymity and hierarchical masculinity.

 

As previously stated, there's no real consequence for being a dick so it's easier to default to it online.

 

But also there is the need to look dominant. To appear to be the most whatever person in a thread. The quickest way to achieve that is to dismiss the thread in a slyly beligerant way. To dismiss others in a way that shows you're the cool one and they're not. This can spoil a thread if successful and that's partly the point, because spoiling it means you've won and winners are on top. No one wants to go against the cool guy so if you can crap on someone's point successfully you can zero out competition and discussion. It's hard to explain especially since most would deny this is what they're doing.

 

Part of being cool (cool being code for dominant/masculine) is not appearing to care/try. This is why any long threads are immediately attacked most times. They are easy targets. They tried too hard. This is basically why tl;dr exists, to poopoo effort and look cool.

 

Also see L2P. Low effort dismissive response to communicate that you are cool and the other is not.

 

People don't argue to persuade. They argue to dominate. This is vividly true on the Internet where there's no real profit in winning an argument except reputation points. Me convincing one other player that what I think is right is in fact right doesn't affect the game in any meaningful way but it does show I'm the smartest/coolest to everyone watching. This is why arguments so rarely ever go to pm. What's the point of arguing if no one can see you trounce your opponent? So at the risk of derailing threads people get into OT arguments all the time. To win and be seen winning.

 

Who needs to be seen winning? The big man. The top dog. The alpha male. What type of person needs to feel that way about their Internet persona? Usually someone who is lacking in other areas of their life. And since most people are lacking in some area, there's a large pool of people trying to be top dog.

 

One could argue that this isn't true dominance or masculinity but its good enough for most. It's a social game and the Internet supercharges it by reducing social restrictions.

 

You are right that anonymity is part of it but throwing in "hierarchical masculinity" and the like smacks more than a little bit of pop psychology. Why?

 

This game has raiding and PvP...including ranked PvP. PvP in general and raiding when you get to the bleeding edge (here NM modes) are by their nature Competitive. A game like this by its very design intentionally attracts both the laid back AND the competitive type A personality. So if you want to blame anything in addition to anonymity you need to also blame the game itself. To do other wise would be like cursing the deer tearing apart your shrubbery when your partner put a salt lick or corn feeder in the yard. Your partner set up bait specifically designed to attract the deer so yell at your partner for inviting them, not the deer for simply doing what deer do.

 

And really these games are no different in terms of competition than things IRL. I work with guys who are in a flag football league. They practice multiple times a week, cut people who are under performing. I am an amature cyclist and runner with a mixed group of men and women. Some of us actually race on teams. All of us use Strava (the women too) to try and beat someone else's personal best on a loop of a KOM (who got up a classified climb the fastest.).

 

Competition is essentially hardwired in the human condition, it is not specifically masculine or feminine (ask Mia Hamm). We live in a thoroughly modern world and in some cultures patriarchal views of femininity may try to suppress the competitive aspect in women, but that hunter-gatherer that roamed the savannah's is still there in the back of our minds, its simply a matter of how we suppress or channel it. When you have a game with features intentionally designed to feed on mankind's competitive nature, don't expect it to be surpressed.

[AlrikFassbauer]

This game has raiding and PvP...including ranked PvP. PvP in general and raiding when you get to the bleeding edge (here NM modes) are by their nature Competitive. A game like this by its very design intentionally attracts both the laid back AND the competitive type A personality.

 

Very true.

 

Besides, im my opinion, human sports competition among women is relatively new, compa<red to the competition of men for getting the "best" (whatever this means) woman ...

Edited March 17, 2015 by AlrikFassbauer

[branmakmuffin]

Competition is essentially hardwired in the human condition

I agree with much of what you say, but this is something competitive people trot out to excuse their zealousness ("Yeah, I'm competitive, but it's just human nature"). My understanding of so-called primitive hunter-gatherer societies is that they do not exhibit, as a society, the competitive individualism much of the modern world suffers under. But, I am not an anthropologist.

 

It is also, to use your own phrase, pop psychology.

Edited March 17, 2015 by branmakmuffin

[Orizuru]

Its because there are no real consequences for being rude to each other.

 

Even if Bioware were to return to the over-the-top style of moderation that was used shortly after this game launched, the fact of the matter is there are more posts than their moderators can read in a day. There are probably more reported posts than can be read in a single day. This means moderation is always behind the curve, so most players can get away with saying whatever they want with little fear of any lasting consequences.

 

All we can really do as players is ignore it and be the change you want to see in the community.

[Ghisallo]

I agree with much of what you say, but this is something competitive people trot out to excuse their zealousness ("Yeah, I'm competitive, but it's just human nature"). My understanding of so-called primitive hunter-gatherer societies is that they do not exhibit, as a society, the competitive individualism much of the modern world suffers under. But, I am not an anthropologist.

 

It is also, to use your own phrase, pop psychology.

 

It is not pop psychology, it is actually something that is key in the field of Evolutionary Psychologists and even documented in PET scans. I think you may have missed my point, or maybe I expressed it poorly, it happens lol. One of the effects of going from hunter-gatherer to agrarian and then urban society was to place a check on competition for the sake of the health of the community BUT you can't completely eliminate it in everyone. So we have "healthy" outlets for that competitive spirit, sports, games, heck chess and debate teams.

 

When I spoke about it being hardwired in humans it was only to dispute the notion that the competitiveness is in part of

hierarchical masculinity...part of being cool (cool being code for dominant/masculine)... Who needs to be seen winning? The big man. The top dog. The alpha male

 

I was just trying to make clear that both men and women can be "Alphas". I ride with alpha women who are going to attack at the base of the climb just as likely as the men (I am not to proud to say more than one women has dropped me on a climb lol) and I work with them as well.

 

Hell I will admit that qualify as an Alpha as does my wife. If we weren't Alphas we would possibly be incapable of doing our jobs. My wife is very feminine, loves pink and is obsessed with Jimmy Choo's, Manolos and, of all things. Since men and women are both capable of being alphas...they are equally capable of engaging inboth healthy, and yes, unhealthy competition. That was my main point...to dismiss the " its a guy thing" argument. It isn't...not to excuse unhealthy competition or to confuse unhealthy or healthy.

 

I also want to raise issues with one other thing from that same post...

People don't argue to persuade. They argue to dominate.

as a universal statement is patently false. I see many of very informed and persuasive posts that are responded to with the equivalent of "you are wrong and being abusive because you confronted my emotionally driven argument with logic and demonstrable facts." The only way one can accept the "arguing/debate is universally a tool of dominiance" is if you start with the presumption that the other side is completely dug in and regardless of the evidence will not change their mind. The problem is where is the problem there? With the person that dared to have a debate and used facts to support their position, or the recalcitrant person who refuses to look at the facts and possibly reconsider theirs argument. Sometimes this doesn't even require changing your conclusion. Imo at least your argument is as important as your point.

 

Again though there are people who do use argument as a tool of dominance...the thing is this is NOT universal.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Ghisallo

[branmakmuffin]

It is not pop psychology, it is actually something that is key in the field of Evolutionary Psychologists and even documented in PET scans. I think you may have missed my point, or maybe I expressed it poorly, it happens lol. One of the effects of going from hunter-gatherer to agrarian and then urban society was to place a check on competition for the sake of the health of the community BUT you can't completely eliminate it in everyone. So we have "healthy" outlets for that competitive spirit, sports, games, heck chess and debate teams.

Primitive hunter-gatherer societies, based on my understanding, only "competed" when they played leisure games, and that was a friendly competition. They did not "compete" out on the steppes hunting mammoths or mastadons or whatever humans hunted 12,000 years ago. They had to cooperate since one guy couldn't kill a mammoth all by himself. Sure, in a time of low supply different tribes might "compete" to get the food first, but I don't think that was the norm since presumably low food supply was not the norm. So it seems to me humans' natural state regarding competition or cooperation is much more on the cooperation end. From my perspective, competition is an artifact of civilization.

 

I was just trying to make clear that both men and women can be "Alphas". I ride with alpha women who are going to attack at the base of the climb just as likely as the men (I am not to proud to say more than one women has dropped me on a climb lol) and I work with them as well.

On that bit of tangent, and on a personal note, I generally find hyper-competitive people annoying since many of them do not know when to "turn it off." Also, many hyper-competitive are bad winners (bragging and gloating) and bad losers (excuses makers; I remember seeing a snippet of a Picabo Street interview after a poor run in an Olympic race and one of her replies to the interviewer was "I don't want to make excuses but ..." And then of course she proceeded to make excuses)

[Ghisallo]

Primitive hunter-gatherer societies, based on my understanding, only "competed" when they played leisure games, and that was a friendly competition. They did not "compete" out on the steppes hunting mammoths or mastadons or whatever humans hunted 12,000 years ago. They had to cooperate since one guy couldn't kill a mammoth all by himself. Sure, in a time of low supply different tribes might "compete" to get the food first, but I don't think that was the norm since presumably low food supply was not the norm. So it seems to me humans' natural state regarding competition or cooperation is much more on the cooperation end. From my perspective, competition is an artifact of civilization.

 

I think you are looking too narrowly at what it means to compete. In Evolutionary Psychology and anthropology they look at competition over resources between social groups, competition inside the same social groups as it relates to procreation and/or social status. Now the later were often, as u said, more often acted out via events analogous to modern sports. However the Apache and Navajo Indian tribes are good examples of times that would raid their neighbors to take plunder and resources. The Pueblo tribes were their preferred targets. Now while Navajo were only semi-nomadic the Apache were still largely a hunter gather society.

 

On that bit of tangent, and on a personal note, I generally find hyper-competitive people annoying since many of them do not know when to "turn it off." Also, many hyper-competitive are bad winners (bragging and gloating) and bad losers (excuses makers; I remember seeing a snippet of a Picabo Street interview after a poor run in an Olympic race and one of her replies to the interviewer was "I don't want to make excuses but ..." And then of course she proceeded to make excuses)

 

You can be an Alpha without being hyper competitive. The two are simply not synonymous...if you use the actual definition of Alpha as it relates to humans. Yes they are often seen as assertive but simply being confident and assertive does not make you hyper-competitive. Example, a Doctor (often seen as classic type A/Alphas) often has to be assertive with his patient but he is not being competitive, let alone hypercompetitive. He simply has the data and the knowledge to interpret the data and is articulating it in a direct manner. Now sometimes people equate assertive with being bossy but all assertive really is is expressing confidence.

 

There are Functional Alphas.. These are the people we see as those who can turn it off, who we see as leaders and are not HYPER-Competitive because to be a leader (vs a manager) you need people to cooperate and collaborate with you. They take responsibility for their actions.

 

Then you also have the dysfunctional alpha...these are the people who allow their competitive nature to get unhealthy...they are seen as bossy or bullies... The ones who expect a pat on the back when they do well and look for excuses. There are also Functional and dysfunctional Betas.

 

Tl:dr on the last bit... There is no single paradigm for an Alpha and a Beta... like anything else in human nature there are variations, some constructive and some not so much. An Alpha need not be an hyper-competitive control freak anymore than the Beta has to be the timid loner who let's everyone walk on them.

 

The idea that the Alpha personality type amounts to being a hypercompetitive jerk by definition is a myth. A popular one make no mistake but a myth none the less.

[branmakmuffin]

I think you are looking too narrowly at what it means to compete.

And I would say you are taking it too broadly. We could say that humans are in competition with ants, to keep our living quarters free of them. Or you could use the term to describe any situation where 2 or more sides have conflicting interests in the same setting (are zookeepers in competition with their animals because the zookeepers want to keep the cages clean and the animals "want" to crap in their cages?). But if a term becomes so broad as to encompass nearly anything, it no longer has any meaning.

[Sarfux]

Those who attack, antagonize, troll, call names or feel the need to pick on the other person are some of the most narrow minded, hurt, scared, angry, self conscious people in all reality. They hide behind the screen and act as if they are legends from the gods in their head.

 

Due to mental conditions, a bad upbringing, bad parents, distorted reality or living in a dream world, whether they want to admit it consciously or not because of their gigantic ego that may have been formed to protect themselves from incidents that happened in the the course of their life and to protect themselves from future "attacks" or what they perceive to be so, that is what you get. Especially on the internet and especially on gaming forums.

 

It's best to not even answer back to a antagonizing person or an internet supreme overlord ruler of the planet earth because they will always be right in "their head" and to them there is NO convincing them they are wrong or something is wrong with them.

 

In other words the "Greater Internet Theory" applies here.