Why do people tend to lose their manners on the Internet?

Anonymity + Audience = Assholism

I think it is the anonymous nature of the internet that seems to give insecure or angry people the bravado to be jerks.(@johnpowell posted an awesome cartoon in the Askville thread today that really made this point)
In some places the internet has become a venue for people who are angry or frustrated at the world to feel important and be the top dog (no offense to dogs of course).

Often this seems to mean being a bully or downright hostile to others when they would never have the courage to do this in person.

In regards to your asking if they will ever realize and change. Only if they lose the anonymous part and people can put a name to the user.

I think the people who choose to engage in this sort of behavior are the kind of people for whom going through everyday life politely is an act. They’re not civil because it’s their nature to be civil. They’re civil because they know there would be consequences if they weren’t. The anonymity of the Internet removes those consequences (for the most part), so they’re free to be just as anti-social and misanthropic and rude and they would secretly like to be all the time…

I sometimes worry that the way society is changing to be more remote and less face-to-face may increase the occurance of sociopathology (though I am not a psychologist, and this is just a fearful hunch, not based on any data).

I got so mad about an anonymous comment left on our online newspaper in my area that I called the editor and demanded they take it off. A woman had died of swine flu and her picture in the paper showed that she was very heavy. The comment was something along the lines of “Oink Oink, no wonder the pig died of swine flu.” This woman’s family probably read the comments and it had to hurt. The comment was removed, but it won’t stop the internet bullies.

@chyna that’s disgusting. That poor woman. :(

I don’t know, I think internet bullies are just people who don’t have brass enough to be real life bullies.

You answered your question yourself in your comments: “how rude people can be to others just because they are “hidden” behind their computers.”

The fact that they feel anonymous makes it easy to put others down. However, in a few cases the “rudeness” is actually the fact that there is no inflection or accompanying facial expressions on the Internet. As a result sometimes folks over-react to a perceived but nonexistent “attack.”

In addition, on the Internet young people mix freely with everyone else, and, more often than in more mature folks, they may make a hurtful comment because they haven’t developed a sense of empathy yet. It will come in time, but in the meanwhile, rude statements are made.

People with real manners don’t drop them. Anonymity like alcohol brings out your real self. Bullies, internet or otherwise, are afraid of a fair fight.

@chyna WHAT??? I can’t imagine any site allowing such disrespect & rudeness!

@galileogirl This is true. They feel safe behind the screen.

Hmm… Maybe once we’re directing our bodies from an ambient state in a glue like pod, we’ll be more sublime and detached. Of course, that risks lapsing into a time of social repression and abstinence – that is, as the web becomes more natural, we become more unnatural in it. Ok, so yeah, I think reverse psychology might apply and render disembodied bull bots a futile race and select against it.

The less aspirational view is no, NO, NO, NO. People are, generally, socially incapable of trying for good behavior on the web and off.

I pretty much agree with the notion that the people who consistently act like assholes on the internet haven’t lost manners, they just never had them to begin with and the anonymity of the internet allows them to express themselves fully without fearing judgment from people they know. Additionally, the ones who are consistently unkind are probably very angry people in real life and don’t have a good vent for their anger in real life, so they head to the internet. Other people may just be a little deranged…

@Darwin

For the record, the worst trolls/assholes I have come across have all been over 20. The people on wis.dm who bickered the most (and were most frequently accused of ruining it for the rest of us) were all grown men over 30. It isn’t just young people.

@jbfletcherfan They do it all the time here. If teenagers die in a car wreck, some idiot or idiots will always post a comment like “they’re teenagers, they deserve to die”, or “they were probably on their cell phone, they should die.” Unbelievable that it is allowed.

@DominicX SO TRUE it is totally more the older folks who can’t modulate their behavior as they might in public because they have not grown up with the web. They still view it as a platform, and a separate hyper space and that makes them act out.

@DominicX – You aren’t necessarily mature once you are older than twenty. However, those teens that do act like idiots on the web do have a chance at maturing and developing empathy, while those who are older than twenty (or thirty or forty or…) and haven’t yet matured may never do so.

The absolute worst troll I ever ran across was a school teacher in her fifties. Ooooh! She was nasty! However, most of the nasty comments I run across tend to be from younger folks.

@DominicX Clearly you have never visited a gaming website. :)

@Darwin

School teacher in her fifties, huh? Interesting…the worst troll I ever came across was this motorcycle-rider from LA in his 30s who felt the need to belittle me constantly for being gay. The wis.dm guys were awful too. They fought with each other like kids. They were constantly trying to show they were better than the other meanwhile making everyone else hate them and they turned every question into an argument with personal attacks against each other and the other users. Part of the reason I love the moderation here so much. It doesn’t allow people to be that way.

@Grisaille

And God willing, I never will. :)

Yeah for moderation!

@Grisaille – Oh good point, forgot about that. They get ugly – but at least it’s not in passing on a blog. Which raises a good question, do people distinguish between zones? For instance, are you more tolerant of bad behavior on a gaming site because it’s like a football stadium and less tolerant when you’re just trying to exchange opinions about the news, or is that more like a Town Hall? In, which case, guns are allowed in some states.

Excellent question.

side note, I was speaking about video gaming, but being an occasional sports fan, I can safely say they operate the same way :P

And yes, I think there’s a certain level of tolerance with regards to “trollism”. How that operates is the subject of introspection, however – it cannot be directly applied on a macro level, in my opinion. There is no objective “tolerance”. I will submit that perhaps that the more is known on a particular topic, the less tolerant a person becomes. The party lines become very distinct and clear when you are knowledgeable on both sides of the spectrum, and hearing false arguments over and over again gets – for lack of a better term – boring.

@DominicX: We wis.dm guys are fully justified in disparaging rude, ignorant nasties who make asinine generalizations without regard or respect for others.

@grisaille Got that (huge geek). I am too liberal with my analogies, it gets confusing. :-)

Expanded metaphors ftl ;)

@grisaille Loose Metaphor.

…damn.