[disintegore]

A community grows and eventually reaches the point where users cannot recognize who they're interacting with nearly every time, where the submission queue is trailing down too fast for any single reader to process. When that happens, it can no longer function as a cohesive community. It becomes about as personal as a magazine about the very same topic. Furthermore, the incentives to post change due to the higher potential for "karma" (and posts therefore become more like clickbait), and the barrier for the admissibility of submissions becomes lower as a result of the "expert" or "enthusiast" segment of the population becoming a tiny minority.

In my experience, these larger communities typically grow less tolerant of antisocial behavior, most likely due to acceleration of the process known as "dogpiling". Trolls get more exposure, and better reactions, in small-to-medium communities.

It's still conjecture, but I think I prefer my hypothesis.

[dang]

> Armchair psychology, coupled with pure distilled condescension.

Please edit out name-calling from your comments on HN, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your comment would be fine without the first sentence.

[disintegore]

The edit window for that post is sadly over, but I'll be more careful in the future.

[dang]

If you want to edit it out, I've reopened the comment for editing.

[endothrowho333]

The above was from personal experience and observation from having been a part of many online communities -- pre-dating reddit -- in all ways including: here-and-there member, first-hand maintainer and manager, and antisocial member causing a ruckus.

Armchair psychology? No, I've made many friends and acquaintances, both online and in real life. The ones that bubble around posting online heavily, have developed antisocial tendencies that were reinforced through social exclusion. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I know this, because I know those people well and because I was there at one point in my life as well.

Neither is it condescension. Perhaps I may have been in-exact and may have offended some that do post online very regularly, but there must be a distinction between what they consider "regularly" and what I consider "heavily." Heavily, in my observation, is someone that puts aside a significant amount of time, usually involuntarily, to do nothing but interact with online communities for the sole purpose of social interaction. No value judgements were made either, but those characteristics are common among the aforementioned group.

I won't address your hypothesis, because I'm not here to argue.

[SkyBelow]

>Armchair psychology? No, I've made many friends and acquaintances, both online and in real life. The ones that bubble around posting online heavily, have developed antisocial tendencies that were reinforced through social exclusion. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I know this, because I know those people well and because I was there at one point in my life as well.

This would still qualify as anecdotal data, and thus armchair psychology. Now, it works perfectly valid as a hypothesis and can be rigorously tested and determined if data reject or supports (fails to reject) it. But without peer reviewed research, that last step hasn't happened.

It also sounds good. Makes sense. Fits our notion of common sense of how humans works. The problem is that psychology is filled with examples of where these kinds of intuitions are wrong.

[endothrowho333]

You got me there.

My connotation of armchair psychology is more informal and doesn't match the more rigorous, APA definition.

I'll make one note: the psychological profile I wrote of, is based on first-hand experience, as well as pieces of mental notes recovered from internet-addiction and FBI profiling papers.

[disintegore]

If I understand correctly, your anecdotal evidence is what makes this not "armchair psychology"?

[krn]

What's wrong with simply sharing personal observations based on the decades of related personal experience? Anyone who has some training in science has learned to always be looking for patterns.

[rakasaurus]

Theres nothing wrong with it. Calling someone an armchair psychologist is an anti social behavior.

[disintegore]

Nothing. I simply don't value this kind of loaded and facile analysis very much.

[gameswithgo]

that is armchair psychology.