[michaelchisari]

The problem we're experiencing is what I've been calling "humanity at scale." The vast overwhelming majority of people can be perfectly fine, courteous, thoughtful, engaging, but if just 0.1% of the 3 billion internet users are lacking empathy, argue in bad faith, harass, threaten, etc., we're still dealing with 3 million people. And if those people don't particularly have much better to do, and can post pretty often, then you have the worst segments of humanity having a magnified voice.

The recent focus of troll farms and political interference increases that number by introducing people who wouldn't be interesting in doing it for free, but will gladly do it for a paycheck.

And then you have the social influence of all these voices saying and doing the worst thing and modifying the behavior of internet users who otherwise would never consider doing these things at all. This behavior becomes normalized where it wasn't before.

We used to think it was a matter of anonymity, but I don't think that's it, we've all encountered plenty of people willing to do these things under their real (or easily traceable) names.

I think it's just good ol' fashioned peer pressure, where the worst elements get the most influence and the best elements are easily ignored.

[eropple]

> And if those people don't particularly have much better to do, and can post pretty often

...and because a huge chunk of them are economically null NEETs and ironic fascism has mutated into real fascism...

We're pretty well boned unless something changes, huh.

[IntronExon]

I’m genuinely curious if it ever was ironic, or if irony was just a convenient excuse and recruitment tool. What do you think?

[eropple]

From my experience, I suspect it was a little of both. A little sugar makes the medicine go down, and all that. Sell it to kids who don't know any better, and let the ironic nature filter away over time. What comes to mind the ironic/pseudoironic use of fascist and totalitarian tropes for Warhammer 40K now turning into the use of the same memes and ideas in a new context, celebrating Donald Trump as the "God Emperor" and portraying liberals/cucks/whoever-they-hate-the-most-in-that-particular-moment as the "xenos".

[mercer]

I think we often underestimate how much pretending to be or do something can make it real.

[michaelchisari]

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut

[dredmorbius]

I don't know that you've hit on the whole dynamic, but you've hit a lot of it: scale.

In 30+ years of online engagement, I've seen again and again and again numerous transition points for communities as they've grown and hit various sets of problems. These seem to pop up fairly regularly at specific points. The small group (a handfull, maybe two), then the social circle of 20-50. Most online groups seem to fist start hitting behavioural issues that surpass a single admin/moderator after a few thousand or so active members, maybe 100k on the outside.

Facebook, in one view, was successful in surpassing these limits, but in doing so it's discovered others.

Scale matters.

As does speed, cycle time, UI/UX dynamics, incentives, (media system) memory, and so much more.

And it's not just anonymity. Not by a long shot.

[ianai]

I think it’s more of a selection bias. The people most likely to comment online are the disgruntled people. I.e. in order for someone to take the time to comment or contribute to an online discussion or forum that person needs to surpass a certain amount of “care”. That desire to comment or contribute is much greater in aggrieved people than happy people. It’s a fundamental characteristic of psyche.

So I think social media does two things. It gives people a very small barrier to post. But it also combines them with other, like minded people. Those like minded people then ruminate on their shared aggregations and wind up more outraged than they would have been without that rumination.

[joe_the_user]

Well, one thing is the mere act of commenting on X tends to make one more committed to X. The process of becoming what you say is accelerated by people posting links, memes, cut-and-paste-me's and so-forth.

A person may not fully believe meme X but they may "find it interesting", may want to "rattle people's chains a bit". Then someone else launches a full attack on meme X and the person feels, attacked, and defends, attacks the other person and so-forth. Polarization is powerful and well-documented dynamic on the net.

[TYPE_FASTER]

This has been my experience since my first online communication experience in the mid-eighties. We got a 300 baud modem, logged onto CompuServe, joined a chat room, and some troll immediately started insulting us.