Why are so many people here angry?

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Ya'll people just need some kittens all up in your shit...

Sorry, i would put them in spoilers, but that risks more people not seeing these adorable cuties. How could anyone stay angry beyond these??

 

[Something Amyss]

Ya'll people just need some kittens all up in your shit...

Spoiler

That cat looks super sad and that makes me angry. Fission Mailed.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Ya'll people just need some kittens all up in your shit...

Spoiler

That cat looks super sad and that makes me angry. Fission Mailed.

That is not sadness, it is more like "did i leave the cooker on before i went out...what was I even doing? Where am i again?" look. Therefore fission...err, mucceeded?

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I keep seeing the whole skirting the rules thing as a common theme in these posts, and it clearly is a bit of an issue. I've seen it myself. So, that's one thing that could be fixed. I'm sure the mods are aware of it... Is making changes to the rules to fix that issue just too blanket of a thing to be deemed reasonable?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Sometimes people mistake passion for anger. And vice-versa. And its not always 3rd person perception-based mistaken viewpoint, its sometimes first-person perception-based mistaken viewpoint.
In other words, sometimes people mistake another person's passion for anger, or anger for passion and sometimes people mistake their own passion for anger or anger for passion.
Its sometimes easy to forget where the line is drawn.
I've been down a long hard road of typing a reply, reading it all the way through as if I were the recipient and attempting to judge the perception and possible misperception of my words. If it comes across as angry, snarky or otherwise negative without anything redeemingly critical, I may not send it. I do my best to make posts that aren't a teardown of another's viewpoint without sufficient positivity.
Its stressful, but less so than firing off a forgotten string of sentences laced with raw emotion and knee-jerk thoughts.
Are people angry here? I'd bet that some are, some are frustrated, some are rabble-rousing and some just genuinely have passion for their views, and the tough part is sorting all those various folks out. We all may fall under that category somewhere, depending on our own introspective tendencies and whatnot.
I remain hopeful and optimistic about the culture of gaming, the current state is worrying to a degree but having been part of a long standing viewpoint, I have a tendency not to look at the immediate but the consequential, seeing the dawn long before it cracks the night.

 

[IceForce]

I keep seeing the whole skirting the rules thing as a common theme in these posts, and it clearly is a bit of an issue. I've seen it myself. So, that's one thing that could be fixed. I'm sure the mods are aware of it... Is making changes to the rules to fix that issue just too blanket of a thing to be deemed reasonable?

How would one outlaw 'passive-aggressiveness' via the rules, though?

Tone is difficult to interpret over plain text at the best of times, so how do you differentiate between people who are deliberately baiting from the people who are just naturally argumentative, passionate, or simply having a bad day? Unless you give the moderators mind-reading capabilities, I'm not seeing how it could be feasibly done.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

I don't know if I've seen that many angry people on here. Most of the posters recently I find to be more downers than anything, always being rather cynical and bringing down the mood with negativity and skepticism. It's one of the reasons why I haven't been coming to the site very often, because of there being a lack of fun and optimism. It got to a point where I actually started using the ignore option because some users' posts were constantly bringing my mood down when all I wanna do is wind down and relax.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well, there's a lot of serious issues which directly affect people's lives being discussed, which leads to passionate debates, often with people who've no idea what they are talking about, but really want to stick their oar in.

 

[Something Amyss]

That is not sadness, it is more like "did i leave the cooker on before i went out...what was I even doing? Where am i again?" look. Therefore fission...err, mucceeded?

But now I am saddened at its conundrum.

Can't you see your cat pics are tearing me apart?

 

[Something Amyss]

How would one outlaw 'passive-aggressiveness' via the rules, though?

I'd add that passive-aggressiveness is basically an outcropping of the rules as written. There will always be people toeing up to the line and there will always be people complaining, and there's no real way to handle that directly.

Well, there's a lot of serious issues which directly affect people's lives being discussed, which leads to passionate debates, often with people who've no idea what they are talking about, but really want to stick their oar in.

Oh, come on, who wouldn't want to be accused of mental illness or weakness because a bunch of armchair psychiatrists claim to know more than the entire medical community?

 

[happyninja42]

Ya'll people just need some kittens all up in your shit...

Spoiler

Sorry, i would put them in spoilers, but that risks more people not seeing these adorable cuties. How could anyone stay angry beyond these??

But I don't want kittens up in my shit. Why would I want shit covered kittens? Why would you want to do that to poor kittens?! You sick bastard!! Just cuddle the damn adorable things! Don't insert them rectally into people!! What's wrong with you?!?

OT: I dunno. I think part of it is the random nature of the forums. Yeah this is a gaming site in theory, but a large amount of the topics discussed are everything but gaming. So, you get a diverse topic base, with a diverse range of opinions on said topics. So yeah, you're going to have heated arguments. Perhaps User 27 doesn't get angry when discussing video games, or movies, but you bring up transgender issues and they lose their fucking mind into a frothing rant. So just by sheer law of averages, if we have topics ranging the entire gamut of topics, you're going to have somebody raging about it's discussion. And thus, all the threads seem to have a level of rage to them.

That and I suspect that the average age for the users here probably falls into the teens/20ish range. Which, if most posters here were like me at that age, were somewhat unhinged emotionally, and far more prone to lashing out. Now before people start replying to this with "I'm 30+ so your statement is wrong", please note I said "average". I'm well aware that others will not fit that age category, and my statement could be entirely wrong anyway. Like I said "I suspect" that is the average age of the community. I've never done the metrics on it, so take that statement with ahuge grain of salt.

Also, some of it I think is simply the miscommunication of inflection that is a problem on the internet. Sometimes people will say something that is totally benign, and they said it from a place of calm reflection/speculation. But, since we can't see their faces, or hear their tonal inflections, we mis-read it as hostile or confrontational.

This skit is a good example of what I mean.

NSFW

 

[-LiQUiDPoWEr-]

Not everyone is meant to get along. And that's okay, cause we live with these tools that allow us not to have to.

This is literally the line of text that every single person on the internet and most of the people outside of it need to get tattooed to their foreheads.

 

[The White Hunter]

Because they all skip breakfast and are hungry. They should grab a snickers or something.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Not everyone is meant to get along. And that's okay, cause we live with these tools that allow us not to have to.

This is literally the line of text that every single person on the internet and most of the people outside of it need to get tattooed to their foreheads.

Nice sentiment, doesn't work so well in practice. A lot of the issues people are arguing about online overlap with issues lawyers and politicians and priests argue about in courts and seats of governments and churches, and directly affect people's lives. Hard to just get along with people wanting to pass laws to restrict your rights.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Not everyone is meant to get along. And that's okay, cause we live with these tools that allow us not to have to.

This is literally the line of text that every single person on the internet and most of the people outside of it need to get tattooed to their foreheads.

It's brilliant isn't? I heard it from that director, she directed Punisher: Warzone, when Max Landis found out she didn't like him and he asked why and she just went full on complete jerkass mode and was all "No one is entitled to have any sort of relationship with anyone else!" blah blah blah.

And I thought, ya know what? I don't agree with her how she said it, but that is a pretty smart thought.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Not everyone is meant to get along. And that's okay, cause we live with these tools that allow us not to have to.

This is literally the line of text that every single person on the internet and most of the people outside of it need to get tattooed to their foreheads.

Nice sentiment, doesn't work so well in practice. A lot of the issues people are arguing about online overlap with issues lawyers and politicians and priests argue about in courts and seats of governments and churches, and directly affect people's lives. Hard to just get along with people wanting to pass laws to restrict your rights.

Well... I did actually mean it more for online communication rather than real world. In real world's a little different, but the internet has block buttons. Glorious glorious block buttons.

 

[sageoftruth]

Earlier this month I saw this story on the BBC news website titled "Why are Americans so angry?":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35406324
On Tuesday there was http://www.citymetric.com/fabric/one-chart-explains-why-young-londoners-are-so-angry-about-housing-1840
and a quick google search brings up http://www.vice.com/read/why-san-franciscans-are-so-angry-at-the-super-bowl
http://tvruckus.com/2016/02/18/scandal-why-is-the-jake-olivia-pope-sex-so-angry/
and of course http://www.skynews.com.au/culture/showbiz/movies/2016/02/08/why-angry-birds-are-so-angry.html

It seems like everyone's gone aggro lately! I don't think this site is so bad, I just think the whole planet seems to have got its collective knickers in a twist lately and it really needs to

Spoiler: Chill the Fuck out!

I read something similar in the Economist. I'm not certain exactly how long ago this started, but this trend of anger has been here for awhile. It wasn't as strong before, but as BBC mentioned, politicians saw the trend and sought to capitalized on it, and wo and behold, people got even angrier. Like lots of public feelings, anger tends to beget more anger.

 

[Barbas]

(By way, if you're reading this, make more. I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.)

I thought we agreed no yiffing? :<

 

[maninahat]

The site used to be super lefty with plenty of feminists(remember Rebecca Mayes or the group of ladies who played DND vids?). Then Gamergate happened and we were one of the few sites that allowed them to actually have their discussions. So we got a whole bunch of Gamergaters and people who were on the opposite side to feminists and rightys love Gamergate. So we actually have a pretty broad spectrum here that leades to.... Vigorous debate!

I think its good to have a wide variety of opinions though, even if some hackles get raised now and then.

I'm not sure about the lefty part. Years before GG was a thing, "fake girl geeks" debates were doing the rounds. I specifically remember once being on the wrong side of that. What GG did was become so heated that it drowned out all the other debates. For months, the popular and new forums were invariably GG related, to the point that people just got sick of discussing it. It actually drove people away to the sites that simply matched their stance on GG, just so they could cease having to get into an argument about it.

 

[cleric of the order]

I know why I am angry.

Some say that it's anonymity that is causing this, the lack of identification of a person. However, there is Facebook, where majority of people have their faces as avatars and are using their actual names, yet there are many posts which are ridiculously impolite. And then there is Reddit, where people use nicknames and don't have any visual connection to their person via avatar, yet so far, after few months of being a member of Reddit, I am yet to read something purposfully hurtful even on biggest subreddits.

That assumption always sort of annoyed me, people will post on facebook details of crimes they committed, anonymity isn't a factor in people's stupidity and well, more violent urges.
People will get mad, people will get piss, people will be rude, it's natural.
A forum doesn't prevent or even alter that state, it just gets people to either get good at being subtly rude, powerful or banned if they are prone to getting mad or in some cases it just makes things worse depending on the forum
Take Plebbit for example (excuse the colloquialism) some places within it see the decent into moderated circle jerks, the people there become emotional retarded if they stay within a hug box long enough and become violently inspired by disagreement. Alternatively people being pushed out of a hugbox can get pretty pissed, they leave with a bit of a chip on their shoulder, next time they see that topic they might get madder because they have that unresolved tension.
Of course these people end banned after awhile, make a proxy account and just want to ruin another persons day now because of autism(go to Encyploedia dramtica if you want to see this first hand)/emotional instability/inability to let things go/ what have you. They burn out after awhile but it inspires other people to get mad and of course the cycle begins anew.

Or there are just dicks out there you know.
Massive fucking dicks that love to fuck with people