Why are so many people here angry?

[MysticSlayer]

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.

Reddit also has the Upvote/Downvote system, which often pushes those kinds of comments so far down few people read that far. Yes, the system gets abused a lot into an "I Agree"/"I Disagree" button, which can create an echo chamber in some subreddits. But deliberately malicious comments (unless it fits nicely into an echo chamber) and obvious troll comments normally get pushed down before too long. But even then, coming into some threads even on very tame subreddits can occasionally lead to viewing nasty exchanges.

But as for The Escapist, things seem a little more tame now than they have been, especially compared to this time last year. Even when I was lurking (which was 3+ years ago), subjects like Mass Effect 3 and Anita Sarkeesian could easily send the whole community into an uproar. And don't even get me started on what the GamerGate debate did to this place...

 

[Hagi]

I'm not really an active Reddit user, but I decided to go to the FP of Reddit to check how purposely hurtful it is. The highest rated thing right now is a guy wearing the Occulus Rift who is moving his hands around dramatically, and a woman filming him with a sort of fed up look on her face.

The highest rated comment is "You can make anything look shitty with a resting ***** face next to it". So huh. I mean I expected to look around a bit to find something, not just complete the seach on the highest rated thing with the highest rated comment. You might be seeing what you want to see on Reddit, OP.

But anyway, the forum took a definite downturn when the mods bent over backwards to accommodate Gamergate. That was a very costly mistake which caused a lot of people to leave and be replaced by those that, well, support Gamergate. A lot of those people didn't last, so effectively the forums just ended up with people who weren't chased off by those events.

But part of it might also be rose-tinted glasses. For as long as I can remember the Escapist has had this reputation, just to different extents.

Maybe I'm just weird but in comparison to the passive-aggressive implications that get thrown around these forums constantly I personally find being called actual expletives to genuinely be much better. I'm not claiming directly insulting someone is somehow a good thing but honestly, I think there's a whole lot of threads here on the Escapist that would've been so much better ( and ended so much sooner ) if people had been calling each other shitfaces and much, much worse instead of the endless pages of bickering that are there now.

Maybe I'm just terribly naive of the internet, but I've never actually seen a swearing match that kept on going for very long. Very soon it's obviously clear to literally everyone that there's no substance whatsoever and the thing dies.

I personally feel the rules are in exactly such a spot where they're lenient enough that threads can get extremely unpleasant, unwelcoming and hostile but too strict to cause them to self destruct in their own vitriol.

 

[happyninja42]

I thought we agreed no yiffing? :<

I agreed to no such thing!

 

[Rad Party God]

Used to be a regular here and definitely 'been there when lots and lots of "hot button topics" happened, like the ones Zhukov described.

After a certain cataclysmic event and some staff changes made by Defy Media, a lot of good people left or simply learned to avoid certain topics, so the only ones left are the most obnoxious, loudest, angriest lot.

I've since then moved on to other site, but I still kinda lurk around here from time to time, but I definitely haven't posted as much as I used to back then and I don't feel like changing that anytime soon.

 

[Phasmal]

Eh, it can feel a bit stifling here sometimes.

As others have mentioned, people here often get to know one another's general viewpoints and often topics will just come up over and over and it seems like nothing is learned and everything just resets except people get madder.

To be honest, I kinda fell into this myself, that's why I recently took a break from coming here and focused on other stuff. Mostly actually playing video games. When you come here a lot it's easy to feel like the stuff that's discussed on here is hard to get away from, but really, it's not.

 

[pilouuuu]

Because the world is not an idyllic place. Nobody is perfect and we feel frustrated by the idea that some people may disagree with us.

Just relax, guys!

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

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??

You can take your kittens and... er... apply them to some orifice of your general person (eat them? put them in armpits?), you absolute entity, you. I'm miffed to shit, me. Grrrr.

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.

I'll stick my oar in you, you other person. Wait! Not in that way! Shit! Ummmmmm... Put that in your pipe and smoke it(?). Yeah, that. Grrrrr.

OT: I feel you, OP (like literally feeling your face). A lot of what people have said so far is true. The user base was never not-mad to some extent, but there was enough levity to balance it out. Unfortunately, there's been a bit of a feedback loop that has lead to most of the more chill people retreating from the more general discussion forums to the user groups or forum games, leaving a larger chunk of people with a more aggro or cynical bent. I find topics these days tend to be a little too serious by-and-large, which usually just ends up dampening the mood. It's not to say that those topics are bad and should be discouraged, but their prevalence compared to the more light-hearted topics can mean that forum browsing can turn into a real slog of negativity.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

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 god, this, so much this. It's not even funny the way people sometimes get dismissed on these forums, by people who lack even a basic understanding of the position of person whose experiences are being dismissed. It's especially annoying when people bring up long debunked myths and then reject all evidence against the myths.

Honestly I don't think that people here are particularly angry, but we do tend to bicker a lot. Everyone has their own personal pet peeves and there is a tendency for that to come out here. If people here are angry, we're not nearly as angry as people are in other places. Just look at the bile you tend to see on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and the chan boards. We're pretty tame by comparison, no matter how much we argue.

 

[Hagi]

Maybe I'm just weird but in comparison to the passive-aggressive implications that get thrown around these forums constantly I personally find being called actual expletives to genuinely be much better. I'm not claiming directly insulting someone is somehow a good thing but honestly, I think there's a whole lot of threads here on the Escapist that would've been so much better ( and ended so much sooner ) if people had been calling each other shitfaces and much, much worse instead of the endless pages of bickering that are there now.

Maybe I'm just terribly naive of the internet, but I've never actually seen a swearing match that kept on going for very long. Very soon it's obviously clear to literally everyone that there's no substance whatsoever and the thing dies.

I personally feel the rules are in exactly such a spot where they're lenient enough that threads can get extremely unpleasant, unwelcoming and hostile but too strict to cause them to self destruct in their own vitriol.

I don't really see how you example would change anything. For example, under it there could be:

A: "I'm against Gamergate because I'm not obsessed with who a woman sleeps with"

B: "Oh here comes another white knight ******. Piss off back to your hole."

*Subject B is banned*.

So it would just be a situation where the person who uses insults is banned, which is.. exactly what we have.

The alternative would be insults are allowed, so people would get chased away for the crime of being black, or a female, or gay, or trans. Not exactly a nice atmosphere.

Except under current rules B wouldn't say that. Exactly because he'd get banned.

Instead B would post a long diatribe accusing A of overly generalising Gamergate, of which he's personally certainly not a part but nonetheless feels some sympathy with considering the extremely common behaviour of individuals such as A who seem to feel women are special frail little creatures that need protection and could thus potentially be said to be sexist themselves, without even starting about the potential consequences towards free speech and a slippery slope towards censorship.

To which A will reply again once more strongly insinuating B is just obsessed about women daring to have sex with bonus points for implying B's just doing that cause he's not getting any himself without actually outright stating so and continue on in a longer rant continually implying and insinuating B of being an altogether very unsympathetic being with no small number of issues when it comes to women and other minorities.

To which B of course launch into another long post with god knows what rhetorical devices contained within with the pure and only purpose of making A look bad.

And A will gladly join in with his own barrage of passive-aggressive rhetoric to make B look in turn even worse.

And then the thread's just as horribly unfriendly pile of this as it'd be with actual insults. Just as horribly unwelcoming to everyone. Except that shit's several pages long by now instead of a single post.

EDIT: To be clear. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any limits on language. I'm merely saying there's plenty of threads that would've been a whole lot better off with a single "Fuck you" rather than page upon page of verbal diarrhoea.

 

[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?

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.

Which is why I mentioned that it would probably be a bit of a crazy blanket adjustment... It probably wouldn't work. Though, I had hoped maybe there'd be some method of working it out

 

[Trunkage]

snip

Many people on this website has changed my arguments and I've seen people say the agree with me, usually through finding a common ground (at least on non controversial topics)

Then you are a rarity, and you should be happy about that.

It's part of the human condition to resist change. A lot of people also tie their ego, even their own personal identities to their view points. Even my ownself, I admit, I have a tendency to have a desire to not change unless I feel in the mood to do so. I just have that rebellious nature.

But I've always found it to be much the waste of my time at least, and exhausting. Fuck it.

You just admitted that it could be a possible to change peoples minds. You cant change them unless your willing to change. Most of the changes I had was trying to meet an accommodation in the middle. Your willing to discuss this issue with me (as in you're not trying to find the best mic drop to finalise a result), so you have that ability to change me as well.

Also, not having your sense of worth tied to your ideology works as well. For example, during the ME3 ending 'conversations' I kept going at people trying to make them see that the ME3 ending could have been predicted from the other to endings. You are walking on a planet trying to fight monsters in space. Fighting Saren and the human reaper as an ending were just as bad star child. You defeat Reapers via ships not running around on the ground. They had to plug that plot hole in the story in each game somehow. Did anyone listen? Not really but my worth is not tied to people agreeing with me, unlike some people who have to keep arguing like the ending destroy that fabric of space time.

 

[Lightspeaker]

We have very different definitions of "horribly unfriendly" then. For example if "Fuck off you Trans fuck" was allowed by the rules (the worst word there being "fuck") it'd be far more horribly unfriendly.

The only people that would benefit would be people who say things like that.

Except he's quite right insofar as I've experienced in online communities over the years, and I've been in quite a few. Open insults tend to resolve themselves far better than an underlying hatred. Things where the venom doesn't get left to build up tend to be more friendly. I pointed this out on page 1 in fact; I've been in a rather diverse community for a particular game where that kind of insult would, in fact, have been incredibly tame. On the surface you're quite right. It appeared to be "horribly unfriendly". Spend a little more time there, however, and it was pretty much one of the most welcoming and friendly communities I've seen on the internet. Minor spats just blew over. Actual major 'real' issues would cause the community to pull together to deal with it.

I'm not exactly advocating that the rules should be merely "done away with", but the passive-aggressiveness is far more unpleasant and unwelcoming and, frankly, disturbing than anything I've seen where direct insults were the norm. Put it this way: even with all of the unpleasantness associated with that game (as a senior player I'd been insulted, threatened and called everything under the sun) I'd probably happily go out for a pint with the majority of people in that community. Here? I'm bothered enough by the viciousness and hate to not even want to provide details of other online personas I go by; and there's certainly a number of people around here I'm honestly unsure I'd want to meet with in real life from sheer fear that they'd pull a knife on me.

Anyway I've...really not got anything else to say here now. The passive-aggressive nonsense is total poison for this community. It really is. But I don't really have any way to resolve it easily. I think its a result of the rules being neither draconian enough nor laissez-faire enough and with plenty of loopholes. So we have this weird in-between state where people make a game of insulting people and being totally unpleasant whilst trying to avoid getting in trouble for it.

 

[voidraz]

This may have already been said, but I've always felt the denizens of the Internet release their rage here so often because the consequences of your actions here are much less extreme online than in reality. You shout at your boss/ coworkers, you get fired. You yell at your family, that's sure as hell going to carry over to your future interactions with people you generally keep contact with.

...but then you log online, and you had a hell of a day, and you may not even realize you need an outlet, but damn that person posting on my forum board is stupid as hell, and what's going to happen when you make an irredeemable ass of yourself? The community may be big enough that you're hardly noticed. You may get banned, but why not just make a new account, or move to one of every other forum that talks about video games? What's anyone on Escapist Magazine going to do to you that carries over to your real life and you can't get rid of? Maybe hack your computer or something, but that's kind of an extreme and less likely case.

So you treat a perfectly nice human being like trash and what does he do? He logs off to go play Street Fighter and t-bags every single person he gets a victory over because now he's in a bad mood, dammit. And so the cycle continues.

 

[Hagi]

We have very different definitions of "horribly unfriendly" then. For example if "Fuck off you Trans fuck" was allowed by the rules (the worst word there being "fuck") it'd be far more horribly unfriendly.

The only people that would benefit would be people who say things like that.

Only if you moderate by dictionary. In which case why use actual moderators and not simply use a simple word-based filter to auto ban users who use bad words.

Context matters. Intent matters.

Which is exactly my point. A post without any expletives but written with horrible intent in context can be vastly more hostile and insulting. A post filled with literally nothing but expletives directed at another user but without any bad intent in a context where that can be reasonably interpreted as such shouldn't be a problem.

I mean just read through this entire thread here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.934875-Race-A-Giant-Middle-Finger-to-Nazi-Germany

Do you honestly believe that's more welcoming to gay people than if someone'd just outright stated "All fucking faggots should just fucking die"?

Does it really matter what exact words someone uses if the message is exactly the same, or worse?

The Escapist's moderation is just way to focussed on literal words instead of what people are actually saying. So we're in a forum where you can say any horrible thing you want as long as you say it the right way.

I'd say either start moderating what people are saying, as subjective as that may be. Or allow people to say what they're already saying in any way they want.

Because the words used don't fucking matter. Except to the moderation here of course.

 

[Barbas]

Oh god, this, so much this. It's not even funny the way people sometimes get dismissed on these forums, by people who lack even a basic understanding of the position of person whose experiences are being dismissed. It's especially annoying when people bring up long debunked myths and then reject all evidence against the myths.

Honestly I don't think that people here are particularly angry, but we do tend to bicker a lot. Everyone has their own personal pet peeves and there is a tendency for that to come out here. If people here are angry, we're not nearly as angry as people are in other places. Just look at the bile you tend to see on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and the chan boards. We're pretty tame by comparison, no matter how much we argue.

Most of the times that I've seen someone being met with dismissal on or off the internet, it wasn't down to ignorance or bigotry. It was actually because they conducted their social interactions in a manner that made them come across as either immature or outright insane. To an outsider stumbling upon an argument involving people like that, sometimes all the partaking sides appear the same because that's how they behave.

You're going to meet people whose opinions you find reprehensible - you likely already have, several times. That's life, and it's something everyone has to learn to deal with. What's screaming at it going to do? Nobody's lungs are big enough, and people you don't agree with won't disappear no matter how much you want them to. You'll also run the considerable risk involved is being repeatedly mistaken for the people that you find yourself totally at odds with.

 

[Lightknight]

The internet age is what happened. With so much information at our fingertips it is easy to find things that are wrong and out of place. We have evolved to take note of those things in case they are dangerous or potentially beneficial.

As such, humans are drawn to target these things and the internet has provided the tools to both observe them and comment on them.

That is all.

 

[Lightspeaker]

It sounds like a place where the only people that stay are the people that can put up with a barrage of insults, whereas if you happen to not like being insulted all the time (say for the crime of being a woman/trans/gay/black/etc) then you'd just leave.

Not sure why you brought up the bit up in brackets given I already alluded to that. Again: it was a diverse community. There were plenty of black people, a number of women, one or two trans that I can recall off the top of my head (it wasn't exactly a huge game or anything so its not like there were hundreds, hell I don't think there were hundreds of people playing in general for most of it). Nobody gave a shit about sexual orientation so I have literally no idea if anyone was gay or not, its not something that actually came up as a serious topic.

And yes, you'd have to be able to shrug off surface-level insults; if you were super-sensitive then yeah, you wouldn't like it. But the vast, vast majority of people who joined did just that and it was incredibly easy to do so. Why? Because the whole thing was a gigantic joke, nobody took themselves seriously. For the most part nobody actually MEANT any of it, and the times that they did was when they lost their temper over something and they'd get a figurative slap over the head by a senior player, that's the crucial difference here. There was no built-up venom. Nobody was a prick about it. If you were stressed out and someone was winding you up you'd tell them to fuck off and they WOULD; and if they didn't your superiors would make them, because people backed each other up. That's the point: people weren't out trying to 'get' other people.

In any case, out of respect to Barbas' post I'm not going to comment further about this forum and will now bow out of this thread for good.

 

[Hagi]

Actually you'll need to use another example, as his posts actually do break the Code of Conduct and he will get banned for that, especially as it's covered in the first paragraph of the CoC. I mean saying that other members of the forum are "mostly pedophiles, child molesters and rapists" is pretty much a sure-fire way to get banned.

He isn't directly calling other forum members that. He's just saying it in general about a group of people. Which whilst completely breaking the spirit of the CoC doesn't break the letter. For all we know he genuinely believes every single gay Escapist member is the exception, after all, he did only say most.

Besides, I do hope you don't mean to imply that that's the problem with the posts in question? I'd say it goes quite a bit farther than that and even in a hypothetical situation where every single Escapist member is heterosexual those posts should still be moderated.

 

[Hagi]

He isn't directly calling other forum members that. He's just saying it in general about a group of people. Which whilst completely breaking the spirit of the CoC doesn't break the letter. For all we know he genuinely believes every single gay Escapist member is the exception, after all, he did only say most.

Besides, I do hope you don't mean to imply that that's the problem with the posts in question? I'd say it goes quite a bit farther than that and even in a hypothetical situation where every single Escapist member is heterosexual those posts should still be moderated.

Actually he doesn't need to directly call other forum members that, it still breaks for CoC. Like here:

The Escapist forums are different than most forums on the internet. We want our forums to be a place where everyone, regardless of who they are, can gather to socialize and talk with like-minded people in a safe and welcoming environment.

And:

Calling people names (or groups who may visit The Escapist), this includes calling others a troll. Calling another user a troll is always an infraction.

Saying that many posters here are from a group that's "mostly pedophiles, child molesters and rapists" isn't exactly a safe and welcoming environment. That even targets people for existing (so, not even having an ideology like feminism or GG, just simply existing) and gay people are a group that may, and do, visit the Escapist. Plus calling those people mostly "pedophiles, child molesters and rapists" is quite the name, to say the least, so it quite clearly breaks the CoC.

You're right in that, I missed the part about groups.

Still the fact remains that there's posts in that thread which don't say those things, merely imply all kinds of hostility without directly calling names. I don't see those as any better or worse yet posts like those rarely, if ever, get moderated. On the other hand posts with vastly less offending messages and simple a single expletive get a warning in no time.

Which just teaches people here on the Escapist that it's completely fine to be insulting, offensive and hateful as long as you wrap it in rhetoric. Which is where, in my opinion, this prevailing opinion on these forums being passive-aggressive and filled with hate comes from. Because those things are allowed, but only beneath the surface. There's no release, just tolerated presence.

Hell, the thread linked even has a single warning in it. It just isn't the guy calling most gay people to be pedophiles, molesters or rapists and arguing in favour of their execution. It's some random other guy for an unrelated matter.

That's what makes the escapist such an angry, hostile place. Because it's allowed to be as long as you use the right words.

Either cracking down on the actual message instead of merely the words used, even if subjective, or simply saying, fuck it, use whatever words you want to say what you're already saying would leave this forum a better place.

 

[Hagi]

Right a lot to address here, will be a bit of a long explanation on my end. Word of warning I am incredibly tired so expect results to reflect that. Oh and to get one point out of the way though; you can swear in posts here, you just can't direct it at people as an insult.

Now anyway, what you're effectively arguing for isn't to stop posts that are insulting, offensive or hateful. You're arguing for tone policing.

For example, I don't think gay people should've been allowed to get married. The majority of people shouldn't have had to bend to the will of a minority of people just because they want special treatment. They could've already gotten married too so their wasn't even a double standard; no one could marry the same sex. It makes me afraid for the future that kids are being taught all this stuff like it's normal. Like I mean, since gay marriage we've had all these trans issues come up, you even hear about people identifying as attack helicopters or gender fluid or strange things like that, and then everyone just celebrates it and we're supposed to pretend it's normal.

So lets say the response to what I said there is heated. Like really think of the worst, most passive-aggressive response you can think of, but with no actual CoC rules broken and no insults used. I mean like really think about a post you'd see around here that you hate.

Now the thing is, that heated but not-breaking-any-rules post is probably the one you and half the people here have a problem with. Posts like those. I mean all that crap I said about gay people and trans people? That is staggeringly offensive. But chances are the people responding to it, the passive-aggressive heated responses, have heard posts like it a million times and have had to put up with it. But my incredibly offensive post would probably go unnoticed by most, or not be seen as being as offensive as it is, but the heated response would sure be noticed. Especially if I kicked up a fuss about them being aggressive towards me simply because of my beliefs and opinions.

So yeah to many people these posts are insulting, offensive and hateful. The thing is most other people are going to see the insulting, offensive and hateful posts being the ones that are responding to a post like mine where I belittled peoples rights, made it out to be terrible that children can find out about them, or just straight up made them out to be crazy whilst also massively belittling the struggles they go through. I can say all that stuff and almost no one will bat an eye, let alone report me for being insulting, hateful and offensive. But if someone responds to me in a passive aggresive manner, but doesn't insult me, you'll sure see them get quickly reported.

I'm not entirely sure what the point you're making is, I'll try to refrain from assumptions but please do correct me if I'm going off the rails somewhere.

But I do think you're accurately describing how many interactions on these forums go. People see a post they find staggeringly offensive, yet one that's politely worded so won't ever get moderated, and they start making passive-aggressive replies in which they pour their frustration. The OP in turn, well aware of the game being played or his OP wouldn't have been worded so carefully, responds in kinds and the whole thing goes back and forth for many pages in a thread seething with frustration and hate, creating an altogether very unwelcoming and unsafe environment.

I'd say one of two things, in this scenario, should happen.
- The original post should get moderated, because regardless of the exact language and words used it's staggeringly offensive and isn't in any way, shape or form making these forums a better place and is just going to lead to the situation described above. Just get rid of it. It's not adding or improving anything.
- The replies should be able to just outright say what they really want to say. "What the hell is wrong with you, you fucking homophobe? Jesus Christ! That's messed up. You know you're a fucking idiot right?". And get it out. Chances of a multi-page discussion filled with passive-aggressive frustration and hatred are substantially lower and whilst said post certainly won't make anyone feel welcome it's at least short with a substantially higher chance of just ending at that.

That's my problem with the rules as is. They do allow the posts that get people frustrated, angry, insulted and hateful. They don't allow the posts that allow people to really express those feelings and get them out.

At which point I think it's a lot easier to allow people to vent their frustration, anger, insult and hate than it is to prevent posts that get people those emotions.