[steven2012]

Honestly, when you're dealing with the scale of the Internet, ie. billions of people, do the disgusting comments of a few dozen, hundreds or even thousands of people matter? It's not something you encounter in the "real" world, but it feels like we need to change our scales logarthimically when talking about Internet comments.

Probably a million people read about that article and 99% didn't think those horrible thoughts, but maybe less than 1% did and commented on social media. Just by sheer numbers, you're going to get a lot of terrible comments, it seems like this is the "new normal" and growing thicker skin is something we all need to deal with, unfortunately. To a regular person, a few dozen shitty comments will be hard to take from real people, but when considering the scale of the Internet, it's probably not significant and it's something we all need to learn, unfortunately.

[bArray]

Even in person you'll probably get a considerable number of awful comments, there are simply a large amount of insensitive people out there. It doesn't help that they feel emboldened by anonymity.

[Waterluvian]

Insensitivity, I think, can be a coping mechanism for some. I was a teenager during 9/11. I remember having a good cry about it and then spending the rest of the day looking at and sharing wildly inappropriate photos (that we now call memes).

[bArray]

I agree. Perhaps evidenced by yourself, the people who we call insensitive or trolls today, could be the pillars of society tomorrow. We should be very careful when trying to answer the question "what do we do with these people?".