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People on reddit and other forums can be so mean

I could never be mean to someone on the internet, as in an outright personal attack - unless directly provoked of course. Okay I might ramble sometimes and say some conservative things that have offended some people, but that's not really the same as being rude or disrespectful to a person for the intention of bullying. It's just me giving an opinion and making a general statement, and other people do have the option to not take it to heart. But it's more difficult not to feel humiliated or hurt by bad comments that are aimed at you personally, opinion or not.

For example, if I was to say that I don't like children, it's just me giving an opinion and not really meaning it personally against any children. But if I was to criticise YOUR child personally (say if you mentioned your child in a post), I would understand that would hurt your feelings and would be uncalled for on my part.

That's the difference.
 
Anonymous forums are a playground for "Dark Triad" members and ASPDs.

They love creating chaos, and they love participating in chaos, and they enjoy "introducing" it into the minds of normally calm people.

"Creating" includes infiltrating calm places. Given time, every forum will will get visits. We've had a few here, but the moderates figure them fairly quickly, so we're safe from being over-run.

"Participating" includes "stealthing" for a while, then becoming moderators. Unimaginable to a normal person? Of course. That's why it's so easy for them.

"Introducing others" means they like bringing normal people into a stupid fight and watching their stress level go up. Even worse, they get a kick from attacking weak people, and they don't stop.
"Normal but young and full of undirected aggression" people (e.g. stupid, self-centered teenagers (all sexes, genders, and other categories)) don't administer the "coup de grace".
But that's the point with psychos. Polite comments/requests that it's time to stop just encourages them.

ASPDs and the Dark Triad cause a huge amount of trouble to society. Far out of proportion to their numbers - hundreds or thousands of times as much as a normal person.

And FWIW they're completely indifferent to "compassionate" solutions. In forums, they almost always have to be banned. They never adjust their behavior permanently. They can't - for them this terrible behavior doesn't seem wrong at all.

The solution? For almost everyone here (maybe everyone): walk away without regrets, no matter what.

The only way to "stop" them is for all their potential victims to leave. And even then , if there's enough of them they'll enter into a psycho "purity spiral" that can go on for a long time /lol.
 
Lemon Zing said:
I
Usually, though, they just remake games when they get low on creativity, with Hollywood doing the same thing every year as well.
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They remaster games that need an overhaul. Command and Conquer I'm looking at YOU. The game is unfinished and full of countless bugs. They released an unfinished game TWICE and say oh it will upset gameplay balance to change it. Change the balance then. But that requires effort. Shocking. People and media critics uncritically had a love in with it.
 
"Purity Spiral" is a neologism for a process that's quite visible in online spaces but was less obvious in the past.

I suppose the name comes from "Death Spiral" or "Flat Spin" or somewhere like that.

Discussion forums, especially political ones. are quite susceptible to polarization between two "sides".
At first you have L/C/R, with Moderates on the L and R sides (C for center). But let's go with X/Y now, because otherwise we could get distracted by US stuff.
So it's (X, XM, C, YM, Y).
You can apply the "Overton Window" model naturally at this stage.

Two things happen as they start to polarize:
1. X and Y separates a bit, so X moves towards a little towards "Extreme X and XM moves towards where X was before. Ditto for YM and Y.
2. The discussions get nasty.

Sometimes (and we'll go with this because it simplifies things) as X moves towards EX, and Y moves towards EY, one side will shrink and then depart due to the nastiness.
Meanwhile, C shrinks to effectively nothing, , because Center/Moderate people don't change much, and on any topic whatsoever, they leave as the extremists come in.

At this point the Overton Window is separated into two (or three if C stays).
(also take a look at "Horseshoe Theory" (that one has a wikipedia page))

Here's the odd part that leads to the most obvious "Purity Spiral" cases:

After most of the old Center and one side departs (let's say only X is left), the forum will have descended into "groupthink", and will keep moving towards its now singular extreme position. So the "C" has become as hated as "Y" was (this is a sure sign it's now out of control) and what's left is more or less (EX, X, XM).

Now the Purity Spiral kicks in.
As a natural side-effect of Groupthink, the online space often keeps moving towards its extreme position.
Our "X" group starts testing each other to make sure they hold the (ever shifting) orthodox position, and will mercilessly attack previous friends if they don't agree with the current extreme position in every detail.

So soon it's (EX, X). At some point it's barely practical to move further into EX (maybe one more step into EEX), but it's not unlikely that "X" itself (the original core) is destroyed.

(Note: I just discovered there's now a wikipedia page on this - probably better to read that than this post /lol)

Anyway, given time people get attacked for quite trivial things.

And while it's not obvious from the way I set this up, the topics can be quite trivial. Here's a copy/paste from the wikipedia article (in wikipedia it's a link to an external article:

Gavin Haynes: "How knitters got knotted in a purity spiral". /lol.

BTW this might be an example where they started with only one side. You don't need more than one side to get a Purity Spiral, but my personal experience is limited to 2-sided cases.
 
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Reddit is full of extreme toxicity. And it has mods that will ban you for the most ridiculous reasons because they are also very very toxic and are always changing the rules. Also even though at least half of people on Reddit are not from the USA, many Americans on the site love to assume everyone is American and therefore has the exact same culture as they do. And they've ruined many subreddits with their politics. People on Reddit also seem to think women don't exist on it, or anywhere else on the internet, therefore it's "okay" for them to be misogynist.

I go on Facebook and I don't find it anywhere near as toxic. But then again, Facebook is for "old people" and not 12 olds pretending to be edgy 18 year olds. :rolleyes:
 
Hypnalis said:
The only way to "stop" them is for all their potential victims to leave. And even then , if there's enough of them they'll enter into a psycho "purity spiral" that can go on for a long time /lol.
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Sometimes bullies can invade other parts of the internet, taking their poison with them to other places where their victims may have taken refuge to. Sometimes they can even become mods on some sites, which is a great way to get their victims like flies in a cobweb. Oh, the evilness of them. I hate them. They ruined my life.
 
I won't even be covering this heap of trash. Sorry.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/27/resi...-remake-resident-evil-0-development-20919258/
Yeah, but loads of other users on awful gaming forums are gonna rejoice, knowing full well that another old RE game from over 20 years ago will be wrecked for greed.

I see no end in sight when it comes to RE being milked every year or so. But I'm tired of the series being degraded, and nobody should be excited about this.
 
Lemon Zing said:
I won't even be covering this heap of trash. Sorry.

https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/27/resi...-remake-resident-evil-0-development-20919258/
Yeah, but loads of other users on awful gaming forums are gonna rejoice, knowing full well that another old RE game from over 20 years ago will be wrecked for greed.

I see no end in sight when it comes to RE being milked every year or so. But I'm tired of the series being degraded, and nobody should be excited about
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yeah boring isnt it bring back tank controls! :P
 
I finally did it. I just deleted my reddit account and it was not easy. No wanting to delete it my choice was easy but they did not make it easy on the site. I had to create a password then figure out my username and it took a few tries but I am now free from that filth. I am just sick of having to remember to do -reddit.com -quora.com after every Google search.
 
It's even harder to delete a Facebook account. I've tried it before but addiction really got the better of me and I just couldn't do it. It said it takes 14 days for my Facebook account to become deleted, and 14 days is a long time in which you could change your mind, which I did. Anyway, there are things I like about Facebook and I haven't faced as much toxicity there as I have on another autism forum.
 
I was just shocked and saddened how some guys meet attractive best female friend on Reddit while I found profanities and hate. Meanwhile I tried places like park events and churches and all I got were women with husbands/boyfriends, feminist snobs and a female textationship.

Meanwhile here I actually connected to more closer people even though many of you are faceless.
 
WildCat said:
I take a "look, but don't touch" approach when browsing certain subreddits or other forums with questionable moderation. Though I've got an account with one of those default generic names (I didn't bother with a proper name), I don't participate in any of the discussions on there. There may be subreddits that won't eat you alive for having a difference in opinion, not fitting in, etc., but when it comes to Reddit I'd rather keep myself at arm's length.

Another thing I've noticed (that's also been discussed here in a way), especially with certain subreddits centered around video or popular content, is that it seems designed to pull in users and keep them not just engaged, but also hooked. In a way, it looks to me like Reddit is riding the current trends of social media in doing just that.
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I do the same. Reddit is a place I lurk and hardly ever comment. There are years in between the last comments I have made.

Reddit is what replaced your average forum website, so naturally people are going to gravitate there versus a dying website that hasn't been updated in years. You also have the karma aspect so if you reach x karma, you seem to have a sway over other users.
 
Misty Avich said:
It's even harder to delete a Facebook account. I've tried it before but addiction really got the better of me and I just couldn't do it. It said it takes 14 days for my Facebook account to become deleted, and 14 days is a long time in which you could change your mind, which I did. Anyway, there are things I like about Facebook and I haven't faced as much toxicity there as I have on another autism forum.
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I deleted a social media account, waited out the mandatory 'change your mind pleeeease' period. Then I went back and logged in and my username was still the same. So it was never deleted properly. Confused.
 
Also, Reddit is very lonely. You don't like have actual friends on there. You just talk into the void and hope someone doesn't say something mean or downvote you. It happens a few times a day on there. I am naturally very timid about arguing. I'd rather make up and be cuddly than fight with anyone.

One post I got, I had 59 downvotes. You know what it was for? A man found a copperhead snake in a bucket and he wanted to know what to do. The sjws were like "Oh release it, oh release it". I said the rational answer, that we do not know the ops coordination, experience or if there are pets or children nearby. I said to call animal control.

It's a copperhead. I promise you there are others near his property, just as cuddly as that one. 59 downvotes, trying to keep the guy and any pets or children safe. That hurts.
 
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