On so many different news items, threads, etc. People are the first to claim pretty much anyone who has made a mistake, or does something they disagree with deserves to die.
Like, do some people not have the capability to empathise and realise they might have been in a similar place if they were born in a different environment…
I genuinely understand, you think a politician who has lead to countless deaths, a war criminal, or a mass rapists deserves to die.
But here people say it for stuff that falls way below the bar.
A contracted logger of a rainforest (who knows if they have the money / opportunity to support their family another way). Deserves to die.
A civilian of Nazi germany of whom we know nothing about their collaboration/agreement with the regime. Deserves to die.
Some person who was a drug dealer and then served their time. Deserves to die.
Like I don’t get it? Are people not able to imagine the kind of situations that create these people, and that it’s not impossible to imagine the large majority of people in these positions if born in a different environment?
anonymity allows people to be not very nice
You’re not nice! I wish you were dead!
same
Wait, you wish thouartfrugal were dead? Or you wish yourself were dead?
Phrasing left your statement vague.
I wouldnt wish death on someone else
That’s horribly unempathetic of you.
im sorry?
I just said how after a certain amount of time, people begin suffering if they live that long. We’ve never seen what happens if a person live to be 150 years old, but I assume it would be a level of suffering that people who are 105 haven’t even begun to experience, and never will.
You saying that people should live forever, just means they get about 90ish years of decent living, and then an eternity of suffering. I’m saying that everybody deserves to die.
Hiding behind keyboard is easy.
Why should people be nice online when there are no tangible consequences to them being evil?
Because it isn’t just “nice” not to kill people for these things. It’s what you’d expect that large majority of people to think.
The majority of people probably do think that… but they don’t consider other internet denizens people.
Hard for me not to. I’m disabled to the point I’m unable to communicate in real life (lost ability to speak or hear), and am bedridden with limited mobility. So communicating via texting/phone is my only way.
I’m with you on the confusion because it’s like… I don’t feel the need to act this way, why do other people? What drives them that, in a void, they resort to these thoughts and behaviors? Is this who they really are, or is it an act, like doing an evil playthrough in a game. “I want to because I can here, and I can’t anywhere else?”
Really relate with your comment.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
-Gandalf the Grey / J R R Tolkein
This is a great quote and one I often remember, but I would also add this:
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death or to let live in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Live and let live works, but only if the other also does so. When one does not allow you to live as you want, because what they do harms you, then that ends there.
Life is cheap on the internet, because people feel far removed (and/or “above it”). Social media “engagement” algorithms divide and isolate people from each other.
(I think as far as Lemmy is concerned, it’s just spillover / remnant behaviors from that stuff. There’s no engagement algorithm here other than what we bring in ourselves.)
Here are a some studies on it from people a lot smarter than me. (Note these are more about general toxicity and hate speech and not zeroed in on your exact question, but they may be helpful).
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.744614/full
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/11547/10076
https://scholars.org/contribution/countering-online-toxicity-and-hate-speech
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-021-00787-4
This one looks at the “why” question from a political POV:
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/11/pgad382/7405434?login=false
thanks, appreciate this answer
In my local city subreddit yesterday, something like this happened.
Up until last year, high speed police chases were illegal in my state because of the increased chances of deadly accidents with uninvolved innocent citizens.
A few days ago, the first deadly accident from a police high speed chase happened.
After the cops laid down spike strips and ruined her tires, she kept driving, and eventually plowed into someone, killing them.
To me, seeing that it all started because she’s a drug addict looking for fentanyl, I don’t see it as her doing this on purpose, but it being split between her and the cops. She could have stopped, but the cops could have also chosen to not exacerbate the situation with hot pursuit and shredding her tires.
The people in the thread were comparing her to mass shooters and demanding she be in jail until she’s dead. They even pulled the FOX News and dug up her entire criminal history to show how evil she was. I get it, she fucked up and killed someone, but I would personally still call it manslaughter, not murder, since she clearly wasn’t trying to kill people, she was just trying to escape cops.
This is in a so-called progressive city deep in the US northwest.
I’ve found that people on the internet generally have low empathy. If it’s not animal or child abuse, the responses are all over the place.
Because it’s a bit of an echo chamber and people get too involved in stuff with anonymity. You will find this sort of social behaviour all over the internet and from any “camp”. It’s just bad people.
Anonymity and group think are serious fucking drugs here - a lot of people struggle with empathy normally but even more fail to empathize across the internet. We’re all fucking people at the end of the day but some folks struggle to see other usernames as anything but “the other”.
Additionally this thread + comment system rewards extremism and controversy over reason and nuance - its much faster to absorb a comment of someone dunking on someone else than reading a well thought out of comment… the highest votes tend to go to shorter simpler statements.
Violence is inherently simple and easy to comprehend - it’s extreme and edgy - and it’s something a lot of us constantly see on these devices when playing video games. A lot of people who espouse it on the internet don’t mentally equate advocacy for violence with actual physical violence or can’t really comprehend what actual physical violence looks and feels like.
Oh, also, memes.
deleted by creator
It’s a psychological consequence of polarization, which occurs when you have too many people in a social group agreeing with each other.
Groupthink elevates extreme opinions.
Along with other things said here, people tend to “forget” that there’s a real person on the other end.
I vaguely recall Nicholas Christakis talking about a study they made, where they created a bot which would simply remind people of the fact that there’s a real person on the other end, and they found that it would help. (That study was done in some university platform and is centuries old in internet time, though. I think he spoke about it about 6 years ago on podcast with Sam Harris.)
-
It’s a lot easier to feel like you’re not involved when you’re behind a screen hundreds of miles away.
-
A lot of perceived suffering in this world can make a person feel as though a lot of people do on fact deserve to die.
-
It’s the one thing we all deserve, the great equalizer. That’s not what you are asking, I know but still.
Because they’re a stranger. I don’t know them and probably never will. Oh they did something shitty that cost someone else their life? Good, they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell.
Because I don’t know them and they commited something I think is evil. There’s no purpose in me humanizing them. I humanize the actual people in life I interact with.
Also its impotent rage
I think there’s a part of our brains that treats these stories as fiction—in particular, the kind of folk fiction used to reinforce community mores. The strength of our reaction to such stories signals how strongly we support the standards, not necessarily what we think should be done in real life to those who violate them.
