Comment by conspiracist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by conspiracist | Hacker News Reader

Today, it's less the "Boomers" or whatever pejorative you'd like to use, and more the younger generations that are online (including HN which comes out of the box with lovely vote and flag functionality - yours for 500 credits). Take a minute and ponder the implications of that one as you stack it next to other tidbits of information like the political alignments of certain demographics.

The greater issue we are facing is people unable to cope with "dissenting" (read: different) opinions because for whatever reason they think it's a personal affront on their identity for someone to disagree with something they've said online, under an anonymous (not for long!) moniker.

Facebook Isn't Other People. There is no 'democratization'. These platforms did not create anything. Facebook, Twitter, Gab, Parler, Win, Reddit, HN, Wikifarms, are fairly holistic in their representation of what people are actually like from the very beginning. You just don't want to admit you're as much of an asshole as the next poster, if you could get away with it.

> because for whatever reason they think it’s a personal affront on their identity

Because most people seem to believe in a single objective Reality™. It leads people to not just disagree, but to consider “the other” as having a totally broken thought process. Makes it a lot easier for people to dehumanize the other :/

I agree, I have come to realize most of what we call values and the right thing to do is completely subjective.

Disagreeing over opinion is one thing, but most curious is when there isn't even real opinion involved. I don't know how many times I've posted something matter of fact like "Today is the first day of winter." to get a response akin to "How can you love winter? I hate the cold and there must be something wrong with you if you don't see summer as the one true season."

A response of "Actually, it is the first day fall" I can understand, but how does observing that a given day is the first day of winter, to stick with the above, equate to having some kind of emotional bond with winter? I have never been able figure out the logical leap made. The only conclusion I have been able to come to is that the mere existence of certain keywords is enough to challenge their reality, and making it about the person helps them cope. But perhaps that is just me projecting the idea of a broken thought process on them.

> the mere existence of certain keywords

Don’t make the mistake of assuming every account on the Internet is an actual human. I obviously have no way to prove such a thing, but it would be strange if there weren’t a massive amount of bots-posing-as-human online trying to influence opinions and behavior.

I am sure that in some cases it is completely intentional (be it a bot or a human) with an intent to be disruptive in some way, but in other cases I think it can be reasonably been seen as being genuine. Sometimes the respondent will eventually admit that they took it the wrong way. Often it comes from usernames who have enough of a reputation that you can have good reason to believe it is a real person with no specific motive.

Most people argue or fight because they enjoy the process and emotions. This is why they "win" arguments. They aren't trying to discover the truth.

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