I think you're actually doing here what you are accusing me of re: misinterpretting. My last comment was mild af.

The world has become more hateful. It's not just online or in people's heads. We have evidence that massive online warfare happens, literal psychological warfare and soldiers paid to post hate online all day every day. One independent journalist estimated at least a trillion dollars spent for various election/political meddling in 2024 and 2025, with protests in Romania, Georgia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Korea, Germany, Poland, etc etc etc.

So yeah, you got a downvote, grow up about it. You're wrong and didn't contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. This isn't even "hate," this is simple disagreement that you are too thin-skinned to handle.

Hate is stuff like: ableism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia. Eg a roomba yelling the N word at people. It is not disagreeing with you and downvoting you, lol. For fucks sake.

Edit for your E2: The massive online armies are using online hate to conduct genocides and kill people more efficiently. With massive networks of countries with camps and slavery including Assad's knowledge of death camps.

Jonathan Haidt recently wrote in The Atlantic:

Ok but fr tho fuck Jonathan Haidt.

Haidt was JAQing off about trans people in the exact way that the Onion called out and satirized hours after their article was published. He's a "centrist" who seems to exclusively punch left, and he's just whining about getting called out with legitimate criticism.

He also got deez nuts'd iirc lol.

Edit: Shit, I had him confused with another Atlantic writer, Jonathan Chait. My bad. Haidt is also a left-punching transphobic "centrist" tho.

Jesus christ, it's like you read the headline and desperately wanted to provide supporting evidence.

Next time? Just for like 1 second?

Imagine that other people don't give a shit about you blasting your toxicity at the world. Maybe the world would actually be a better place if assholes like you shut up some times.

BTW, this has absolutely nothing to do with trans rights, this is just you personally acting like every other .ml out there.

You’re wrong and didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the conversation.

So you think that out of all the hate on the internet... NONE of it is constructed shit in people's own head?(keep in the mind that the article itself talks about personality disorders and DSM-5, literally talking about things like schizophrenia and ADHD... mental disorders that affect how we think are in that book). That this number is so infallibly 0% that my thought doesn't contribute ANY meaningful value to discuss at all? You sure that it contributed nothing to the conversation and that's why you downvoted? Cause it would appear to me that you've just chosen to ignore the words, ascribe your own meaning to stuff that wasn't there and then downvoted because you didn't like it.

It's clear that this is happening on the internet in many cases. In saner parts of the internet (sometimes even here on lemmy) you'll see two people arguing, a misconception clear up, and magically all the "hate" dissolved away and both parties walk away amicably.

Hate is stuff like: ableism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia.

Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

Hate definition: . See examples of HATE used in a sentence.

Dictionary.com (www.dictionary.com)

It only means that as an adjective, or under pretense where it's clear that we're talking about a class of people, if that's the case it wasn't clear to me and I just took it as a general overall "the world seems more hateful". Which it wasn't used any other way in the comments up to this point this way nor the article itself. So now you've constructed some other thing that nobody has referenced just so you can argue some other point that nobody else was apparently making. Keep in mind that the whole thread started with "Hostile" from the article, and not "hate". The article doesn't reference anything about any specific classes of people, and even talks about personality disorders (so medical perspective) rather than " ableism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia" and other... uh... character flaws(? might not be the correct phrase to use but maybe the point comes across) that shitty people have.

Jesus christ, it’s like you read the headline and desperately wanted to provide supporting evidence.

Well, yes. First off because it's funny. Several other people in the thread thought so and made the same joke.

But also, yes, because I despise civility fetishism, and I also despise Haidt for being a transphobic shitlib. And obviously, the two are connected, the reason Haidt is whining about civility is that he got bullied on Twitter for his transphobia and he wants to be able to shit on trans people without suffering any kind of social reprecussions.

It's funny how you baselessly assert "this has absolutely nothing to do with trans rights" as if just saying it somehow makes it true, like some kind of magic spell. I wonder, would you say the same thing if it was a more prominent transphobe like JK Rowling calling out hostility in internet discourse? What if it was someone like, say, Charlie Kirk, or even Richard Spencer? Are you a true civility fetishist who takes issue with bullying bigots, or is it that you're only ok with bigotry when it's directed towards trans people? Idk, seems worth investigating.

But, you know, maybe civility fetishism isn't so bad. Maybe it's me who's wrong, I'm just a crazy radical, and I need to be more like MLK.

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."

Huh, kinda seems like he saw tension disrupting the peace as being necessary towards pushing towards justice in equality in an unjust status quo. But maybe MLK is too radical too. You know who I need to be more like? Jesus. That's right, I'm turning over a new leaf and I've decided to be more Christlike.

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

Huh. Kinda seems like even Jesus agreed that social change necessarily involved creating conflict, or bringing conflicts to the forefront, in order to address injustice.

But ok, let's ignore them (maybe the world would just be a better place if assholes like them would shut up some times and stop blasting their toxicity all over the world) and look at the actual, present day reality. When exactly was internet discourse supposedly more civil? Let's compare to, say, 10 years ago, 2015. Before #MeToo so you don't have to worry about women calling people out for sexual assault and causing division, but it's also in the middle of Gamergate, so you know, really not a great time to be a woman on the internet, but I guess if you were a cishet white man, things were pretty peaceful and harmonious. You also didn't have a bunch of people calling out the bombs going to the Middle East, of course, we were still bombing civilians en masse, but I guess if you were a cishet white man, things were pretty peaceful and harmonious.

You know when discourse was really at it's peak? The 1950's. Before all these radicals started calling for civil rights or spreading division against things like bombing Vietnam or Korea, just an all around wonderful time, a Leave it to Beaver paradise, you know, just so long as you're a cishet white man.

At some point, obviously, you have to draw the line. And I've simply drawn it a little bit further than you have.

IMO online commenters are increasingly showing pathological binary thinking - the attitude that there are exactly two sides to every issue - the Right one and the Wrong one. Questioning ANY aspect of the Right one means you're obviously a hardcore supporter of EVERY aspect of the Wrong one. You're either morally and ethically pure or your character is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. To me it's a really paradoxical way of thinking about diversity and acceptance - more like we're supposed to either wholeheartedly embrace people or despise them.

Apart from anything else, spending all that energy resisting change that's coming anyway must be exhausting. It's no wonder they're so cranky.

I think is one of the main reasons for why there is such a lot of hostile discussion online, people read something which they infer as a hint of something they dont like and from there extrapolate into the worst person they imagine who could be saying that and proceed to righteously strike them down (with words).

Counterpoint: call out bigotry or fuck off

The problem is these are the people who won’t get there, plus they’re harming a lot of people in the meantime.

Codger mode ….

Back when I was a wee young’un, I lived in a small town in a rural area. Republicans ideals made sense (whose not to like fiscal prudence), we read about the crime ridden horrors of big cities, read about the inbred fear of education down south, read about drugs destroying peoples lives, read about welfare queens, read about illegal immigrants and crime. We “weren’t racist” but those dark skin people were violent criminals. Products of our environments I guess.

Like you, I grew up. As I was exposed to a larger variety of people, I discovered they were people. As I saw more people in situations outside their control, I developed more empathy. As I got to know people with different preferences than mine, I learned their preferences didn’t do me any harm. Now decades later, it’s hard to understand the fear, oppression, racism, hatred, and it’s impossible to understand the unethical inconsistent self serving authoritarians that Republicans have become. I’ve seen it too. I apologize to everyone I hurt because it took years for me to grow into a better human being.

The problem is these are the people who never grew out of it. They’re the people who saw their friends and family expand their horizons, but retreated ever deeper into their holes. Theyre the people who saw progress and desperately yearned for a mythical past that never was. They’re the people who saw everyone else growing out of their limitations, and turned to extremism. They are not joining everyone else but have turned their backs and headed the other directions. They are the diehards wallowing in their misery who don’t care about anyone else’s misery. They are the righteous who have lost their way, cloaking their hatred, spite and corruption is self-righteous desperation. They are the self-centered stealing from society and stealing from the future. They are the limited viewpoint building ever higher walls against fear of the outside. They won’t change.

You know, those oneliners may sound cool when you are a teenager, but they are signs of a mind who thinks in absolutes, because there is no wisdom yet.

It will come through life and getting older.

This fits with our understanding of personality disorders, which is that they are a small percentage of our society—around 10.5 percent, according to the recent DSM-5-TR.3

Idk, I consider 10% to be pretty high. If you add in selection bias, you could get an actual majority in a community having personality disorders just because the non-jerks largely self-select themselves out.

That said, I still think the conclusions here shouldn't be taken at face value. The data was from surveys, and while I haven't read their methodology, I would certainly hesitate to accept results of a survey for something like this (and for <10k responses). I personally find I'm more confrontational online, though I hope I'm generally still way more respectful than your common jerk.

The results are certainly interesting though.

Back in the day I just assumed everyone was lying. Or trying to get people worked up, and we called them trolls.

Learning how to ignore the trolls, and not having trust for strangers on the internet, coupled with the ability to basically not care what random people said is a lost art.

Somehow people forgot to give other the people this memo, including the "you don't fucking join social networks as your self". Anonymity makes this all work.

Eternal September newbies just didn't get it.