Why are so many people here angry?

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

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.

 

[Saltyk]

Maybe it's just my own confirmation bias here but I have found that if you stay out of the hot button topics, people are far nicer to each other. For whatever reason, when it comes to certain subjects (be that GamerGate, religion, politics, various "isms", etc.), people's brains short circuit and everyone lashes out at each other rather than talks.

It does happen once in a while outside of the hot topics but I have found that is usually an individual who is being stupidly aggressive (see "Zeel" from the Mass Effect 3 topic back in the day) rather than the topics themselves. Once you figure out who those people are, it's easy to sidestep.

Just do what I do and stay away from those threads (unless you just want something to read to give you a good laugh; just don't participate). Your internet life will be much happier that way.

I'd say this is accurate. I tend to avoid hot button topics. But when my judgement lapses in those moments, I find that I suffer for it. Not being an extremist, I find that the extremists all hate me. Because I don't agree with them on everything and won't dismiss their opponents out of hand. Also, I'm probably slightly right of center in my views so that doesn't always go well.

Still, I can say that you are one of the posters I enjoy seeing post on the forums. So, you gotta be doing something right.

I say you might as well just save some effort and do your own thing. Approach others with honest curiosity, try to see the good or the lesson in a situation and you'll find you tend to have a more happy and fulfilling life.

I feel this advice doesn't work here. While I find people in the real world are way more calm and understanding, people here aren't. The aforementioned extremists don't want you to listen to them. They want you to agree with them. No questions asked.

Sadly, I'm speaking from personal experience.

 

[Barbas]

I feel this advice doesn't work here. While I find people in the real world are way more calm and understanding, people here aren't. The aforementioned extremists don't want you to listen to them. They want you to agree with them. No questions asked.

Sadly, I'm speaking from personal experience.

So do I. It has always worked out best for me.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Along with what Zhukov stated above, I'm guessing a good chunk of people really don't want to deal with certain users and their baggage when entering into a thread.

I know I don't bother commenting when I see certain people being heavily present in the thread. I know I really don't have the patience nor the time for that, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. I gets really old really fast when you start seeing a pattern in discussions, and I think some users just don't want to deal with that. So you're left with the angry people, sadly.

It does happen once in a while outside of the hot topics but I have found that is usually an individual who is being stupidly aggressive (see "Zeel" from the Mass Effect 3 topic back in the day) rather than the topics themselves. Once you figure out who those people are, it's easy to sidestep.

Man, I miss the days of that crazy man. He was so much fun.

His blog about his hatred of ME3 and the forums here was delightful.

 

[CeeBod]

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!

 

[Scarim Coral]

People seen to gotten more senstive on other people opinion differ to theirs and in some way vent out from whatever pissed them on that day.

 

[Frission]

Well, people have always bickered here. At least as much as the moderation allows.

Many pixels have been spilled across a variety of battlegrounds. PC vs consoles, fake geek girls, the ME3 ending, Anita Sarkeesian. The list goes on.

If it has become nastier of late (and I'm not certain it has, memory can be a funny thing) then I'd put it down to two things.

a) Gamergate caused a very clear rift. The differences were always there but GG made them clear and gave them names.

b) The drastic reduction in members and activity mean that a lot of the people here recognize each other and are at least somewhat familiar with each other's views and perspectives. You see a thread by a regular and you can often take an immediate and accurate guess of what it's going to be about. That might sound like a good thing and in some ways it probably is, but it also means that people enter threads carrying baggage from previous discussions and arguments. Many discussions turn into running duels between old enemies.

I'll just be lazy and say that I think Zhukov got it right. Familiarity breeds contempt I guess and anger is one of the biggest motivators.

That and there's just some topics that are bound to create arguments. Take for example the coffee thread, which has already been a host to a duel. Serious stuff.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I think the nature of how the internet is fundamentally built to function (especially forums) is that you see the things that get talked about the most. An argument spans multiple posts, thereby inflating the topic, more people get involved, it snowballs, etc. Disagreement breeds far more discussion than agreement does.

Side note: In the last few years in particular we've seen a big surge of something pretty new to the internet, which is people getting offended. I don't know if anyone here experienced 4chan circa 2005, but it was pretty much a competition with who could bring the most shocking shit to the table. Take a statement like "this othering language is sexist" back 10 years ago and people would probably just laugh at you, call you a ******, and say something to the effect of "its the internet, who gives a fuck."

 

[Lightspeaker]

I wouldn't say this site is the anti-Tumblr, but its close. George Carlin once said the difference between LA and New York was that people in LA will say "Have a nice day" and be lying through their teeth, whereas New Yorkers will tell you to go fuck yourself and mean it.
To me that's what this site is like. A big fuck you, but its honest and sincere. And that's refreshing. I enjoy it!

To be honest I feel the exact opposite. This site is full of people who will smile happily and say things in precisely such a way as they get away with it, whilst simultaneously adding as much venom to the barbs they're throwing as possible. Being careful to keep it all above-board so far as the letter of the rules is concerned.

I've been in a very tight-knit community for a game which was honest and sincere to the extreme. The forums, game and other forms of communication were wall-to-wall insults, threats and every type of "-ism" going. Jokes were offensive and nasty. People would get angry with each other and make fun of each other in apparently very hurtful ways. On the surface it was horrible, everyone seemed to hate on everyone else (even their allies) all of the time. But once you got past that initial shock it was one of the singular best communities I've ever been part of because there was no underlying malevolence or genuine hate and any real problems had a tendency to end up right out in the open almost immediately and blow over in a few days. And if there was a real issue, people would tend to come together.

And if that last part of what you said was true, you simply wouldn't be here.

Its exactly how I feel. There's a reason I have only 800 posts in just over four years on this account, its always been a little like this but its gotten worse in the past year or two. I also have reasons for coming back here, largely related to how good this place is for finding out about things and because genuinely interesting discussions come up from time to time. I'm not lying when I say the atmosphere around here can get deeply unpleasant; that doesn't mean it doesn't have a number of redeeming features that make it worth still lurking.

Because don't get me wrong, this forum has a number of good sides. But it also, all too frequently, has that underlying air of people trying to get one over on each other as venomously as possible. The hate is very tiring.

I guess as a mod, he has an obligation of sorts to look for the sunny side of the site. Personally, the most redeeming factor of the site is the usergroups, and that's where I generally post. It's just not worth my time to be in the forums, unless the threads are simply made for fun, and not trying to be controversial.

Oh its totally understandable, but it concerns me in terms of sweeping the issues around here under the carpet so to speak.

In any case I don't use usergroups; don't really know anyone around here well enough to do so, I just lurk a lot and randomly post if I feel really compelled to. I think probably around two-thirds of the posts I write to this forum never actually get posted, I just decide its not worth the grief.

 

[Battenberg]

Honestly it just seems to be part of gaming culture at this point, arguably even just human nature. That said while there's been passionate debate (to put it politely) here since the beginning it does feel like maybe flamebait-y threads have risen to a new level of prominence lately. The kind of threads where there's no real discussion to be had, someone just wants to bag on something popular or just spew ridiculous statements out. That in turn rubs people up the wrong way and makes for very unpleasant threads at times.

I imagine part of that is how quiet the forums are and how easy it is for someone looking to stir the pot to get attention. Very few new threads seem to be getting more than a handful of comments so when a thread titled, for example, 'is x the most overated z of all time?' they get noticed. They get a few comments from people disagreeing which in turn makes the thread more visible to more people who also want to disagree and inevitably it will snow ball from there. It sucks but there's not much you can do but skip over/ ignore those threads.

 

[Something Amyss]

When you court people who will have fights over something as silly as SNES vs Genesis (Coleco all the way!) or console vs PC (Etch-a-Sketch FTW!), how do you expect the larger issues are going to go? Though I'm not sure "angry" is always the right word.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

People like to express their opinions, they don't like being told their opinions are wrong. Hence, anger. If you agree with them, you are friends for life, disagree, and they hate you with the passion of a thousand t-bagging rape threatening Swatting suns. I don't know if it's a Millennial thing, people did get angry prior to the Digital Age, but it was a lot less apparent.

I think as you get older, you stop taking things so personally.

 

[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)

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 don't think this site was super lefty. It may have been centre left, but I would have said centre. GG pushed most of the leftys out. You can tell the site is less populated than it used to be. Also, people on the right are generally not know for their compassion or pateralism. So I think it comes down to this.

 

[visiblenoise]

I'll bet that a bunch of people you had in mind when creating this topic are going to respond in this very topic, and they're going to pretend it wasn't them being angry.

I'll own up to it, I don't post much, but I often get ticked off by certain people who always seem to have an agenda and take their own opinions and everything else too seriously.

 

[balladbird]

There's this one set of rules regarding human subconscious thought... Ugh, I wish I could remember what it's called... Basically it says that there are a series of subconscious thoughts that all humans undergo regarding their opinions that goes something like:

1.) my opinion is based in rational fact and unbiased reason.
2.) if it were not, I would not have it as an opinion
3.) therefore, if someone holds an opposing viewpoint, they must be factually incorrect or unduly swayed by emotion.

Something like that. Been years since I was in a college psyche course. Anyway, people are quick to notice these tendencies and biases in others, but seldom to see it in themselves. Hence most of the angry threads on the escapist and the Internet in general are, as was stated above, mostly masturbatory rituals for people who enjoy argument than any sort of intellectual exercise. Not that I can throw stones. I don't argue in hot button threads, but I enjoy reading them in a masochistic sort of way.

Been lurking here for years and years. The escapist was the only place in all of the Internet I'd ever seen anyone get into an argument, the. Go "huh, I was wrong!"... Though it definitely feels like the schisms got deeper when the big double-g dropped, and the halcyon days of proposing lawsuits because we didn't like a game ending actually became a point of nostalgia for a calmer time in the gaming community

 

[Gennadios]

I'm inclined to think it's the 'conomy.

I'm in my early 30's and my generation was probably the last one that kind of managed to get through the gainful employment post Uni door before it slammed shut. I wouldn't say I'm gainfully employed - my job sucks and I'm way underpaid - but I get benefits and full time hours.

What are the younger whimper snappers going to do in between the two days a week of work? It's not like they earn enough to do anything in their free time except for ***** about random shit on the internet.

 

[Glexn]

Three billion people are all learning to debate together, for the first time in hundreds of years. Things like knowledge of logical fallacies and argument through dialogue have been dead for a long time, with information largely being consumed passively, broadcast or printed by authorities.

Our generation are trailblazers, we are teaching ourselves to argue very complicated ideas under historically unknown intellectual pressure. It's a cross-civilisational crash course in mental virtue, and in a few short years argument will be an art again.