The dehumanisation of online dialogue is interesting. Is it because of 'anonymity' or is there more at play?
If you meet a stranger at the North Pole, where you're the only two humans around, you're going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger in a remote village, you're probably going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger on the street in New York, you're probably going to put your hand over your wallet. Adverse selection wins.
It sometimes feels like social media has gone from a place to make friends to a place to make enemies - or at least to bond with a group through the medium of hate. Bonding through hate of the outsider is hardly new, but it's especially negative on the Internet where it can be amplified over and over.
Especially if a corporation that controls the venue, deliberately amplifies the rancor.
I like what you said about the kinship through hate, I feel no connection to a city though rather I see the segregation of suburbia as the breeding ground for hate.
I am trying to understand how your concept about a common hate connects to cities. You are comparing leisure time "the wilderness" to work time "the big city". A city lets you choose your interactions, and it forces you to see things that are not only the hate in your bubble. The possibility to have an interaction that changes your world view is greater in an integrated city.
Hate can grow even if we all sit in a corner of the woods on the internet, or if we listen to the same radio host.
There are too many cultural aspects in your view of the city, I do not know where you come from here. FWIW I have lived in mega cities, and also for years outside of cities in some of the least populated spaces in the "developed world". My experience do not reflect yours at all.
You're simply not going to have time to speak to everyone in a subway to fish out that positive interaction, even if you wanted to.
I don't think most interactions will be hateful, but if the odds are .1%, you have some 50/50 shot of a bad interaction with 1000 people. It's just statistics.
Sure, those of us who have a technical understanding understand that it is likely that there are humans involved as an implementation detail, but from the user perspective there is no other human to be seen. If the technical backend were replaced by a sufficiently capable LLM (or whatever technology) absolutely nothing about the user experience would change. From the user perspective, it is a solitary activity.
Human interaction hasn't gone away. Online discussion is a different tool for a different job.
At least relative to each other (and to each of the rest of your contacts.)
It's one's idea of humanness that will be substituted piecemeal by a "doppelganger concept", as a result of the perceptual decoupling provided by ever-thicker interfaces. That concept would continue to fulfill the exact same function in one's life that formerly would've been fulfilled by one's previous opinions on "what it means to be human" (if any).
Happens all the time, things changing people's minds. Happens surreptitiously, too. Of course, it's more comfortable to consider at least our inner lives remain inviolate to the vagaries of technocapital - but where could all their content come from, other than entirely from the outside world, same one that software was proclaimed to be "eating"?
Subjectively, you'd hardly (if ever) experience that kind of "world model spoofing" as anything close to a distinctly recognizable perceptual phenomenon (since it's language-based anyway). Rather, you'd continue to experience everything as the usual "being a person comprehending a world" bit - and, as ever, flavored by whatever life-scripts you've been allocated.
On average, however, the substitution would result in effects as simple as the population allocating that much more of its resources to, say, the organization representing the machinic quasi-intelligence in question - the one that has interposed itself as normative communication medium by providing useful summaries.
Or, not as simple.
It's already ended up very much like that "isn't there someone you forgot to ask" meme. Except the 3rd party pictured as JC, should rather be labeled "VC".
There is no doubt a lot of truth in that statement at some kind of fundamental level, but as far as language goes, that's literally the opposite of what we consider a solitary activity. Staring at a computer screen on the other hand...
It's called flame wars, not analytical wars.
I feel that you are referring to the inwardly-focused thing that happens when we lose connection.
The analytical thing is the loss of emotional connection.
If that is the case: I disagree that rage is the natural response to a loss of empathy AND switching to an analytical mode of thinking. I don't think rage (an emotion) stems from analytical thinking. Loss of empathy may be a required precursor to rage comments, but I don't see how analytical thinking fits anywhere in there. And if analytical thinking is a function of time: I would expect to find calmer comments after deliberate thought.
It would be testable - if you had the data - if it was the case that rage comments are thought out, or spur of the moment. I'm betting on the latter. Rage never seems well thought out to me.
If I misread your comment, I am sorry in advance.
Anyway, that's not my wheelhouse. I've spent a lot of time, around a lot of pretty damaged folks, and this is just an observation that I've come up with, on my own.
I've just noticed that direct, realtime communication, has a lot more emotional connection (for both good and bad), than ones where there's a "handshake," so to speak.
It's not always bad. I think we've all been told to "Think about what you're going to say in response." "Count to ten", etc.
If we want to be angry, then the pause allows us to ramp it up, but if we want to be reasonable, it gives us the chance to defuse it, but, at the same time, maybe leach some of the emotional warmth from it.
If I was in a grocery store and someone "cut me off" and forced me to slow down because they misjudged the timing, I would think nothing of it. I certainly wouldn't make an obscene gesture and shout at them.
I find it amazing, that, when I'm driving, and some knucklehead does something that almost makes me crash (and thus, maybe kill me), I get incandescent with rage, but, five minutes later, I've all but forgotten the incident.
I could easily see myself fanning that rage into something that could result in self-destructive road rage.
A lot of it happens in out of band posts like these.
It seems to happen less in interactive (i.e. chat, etc.). Make no mistake, it absolutely happens there.
But not as much as in async posts (I don't think).
I don't think it happens much at all with video.
Most of it is surrounded by context (or lack of). How difficult it is to communicate (typing like this is not easy, and certainly not for the impatient).
I have to keep telling folks when they get that Look in their face because of what someone said or didn't say over email or an instant message to not judge on that. If it's that important to you, CALL them. TALK to them, you simply can not rely on typed conversations for anything that impacts you emotionally.
"What do you think they meant by that?" Oh no.
It's just an awful medium.
I know that my idea is completely rectally-sourced, but I feel that the less time that we have to think about an element of an interaction, the less likely we are to go into the nasty "flame mode" we see.
But there's exceptions to every case (especially when human nature is involved). I actually know people that are so emotionally broken, that every interaction that they have; regardless of the context and medium, is a fight.
They tend to be lonely and angry. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That's not always a bad thing. In emotionally-charged situations, that "few seconds of consideration" can help stabilize the interaction.
People claim that it's the lack of consequences, and illusion of safety, but I feel as if it's really the emotional disconnection that does it.
Forums are also the kind of place that everyone thinks are populated by political bots. Believing every other comment is written in bad faith is going to change how you behave.
When you think of arguments as a kind of battle, you end up forgetting the person on the other side.