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Comment by ekster | Hacker News Reader

I have noticed on social media that the cynical, assholes, grumpy, and those that want to take others down a peg are quite loud but in the minority. Typically when you run into one they have a comment history where they are just being a jerk all day every day to all comers. Normal people have good or bad days and it might come out in different ways on different days, but there is a surprising number of people out there just being hateful on the internet all day like it’s their job.

And the vast majority of them have statues of philosophers as their avatars, which I still don't quite get.

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Here's the thing I try to remember: when life isn't going well for a person, it's easy to turn to the Internet to vent frustration. And the less one has going on in the rest of their life, the more time one has to spend arguing online. The volume of posting doesn't indicate how right someone is or how reflective their experiences are of reality, just how much time they have to dedicate to the task of commenting.

As a useful mental trick, I substitute "commenters" with "bored people on the internet" sometimes to remind myself of the source.

> Here's the thing I try to remember: when life isn't going well for a person, it's easy to turn to the Internet to vent frustration

Yes. It's right there (it takes three seconds to pull a phone out of a pocket), and it's instantly a way to talk to people. Sometimes there's no one else there.

Also, in American culture you're not supposed to be negative in social situations. Always positive, always chirpy. Maybe that is why it's so toxic online. Because similar to the Victorian age and sexual repression, the always-positive leads to a toxic sublimation into Internet anonymity? I'm just tossing this out there as a thought. A counter would be, the entire world is toxic online.

Specifically on reddit and twitter, the few times I’ve used them, they seem to be filled with assholes.

It seems that these people have no release for their views in the real world and for some reason these social sites are suitable places (from their perspective)

> statues of philosophers as their avatars

Are you suggesting philosophers aren’t a consistently unhappy lot ?

Ha, not necessarily, but just curious what the subculture or connection is.

Antiphilosophy works pretty well for the physicists.

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