On so many different news items, threads, etc. People are the first to claim pretty much anyone who has made a mistake, or does something they disagree with deserves to die.
Like, do some people not have the capability to empathise and realise they might have been in a similar place if they were born in a different environment…
I genuinely understand, you think a politician who has lead to countless deaths, a war criminal, or a mass rapists deserves to die.
But here people say it for stuff that falls way below the bar.
A contracted logger of a rainforest (who knows if they have the money / opportunity to support their family another way). Deserves to die.
A civilian of Nazi germany of whom we know nothing about their collaboration/agreement with the regime. Deserves to die.
Some person who was a drug dealer and then served their time. Deserves to die.
Like I don’t get it? Are people not able to imagine the kind of situations that create these people, and that it’s not impossible to imagine the large majority of people in these positions if born in a different environment?
Because it’s a bit of an echo chamber and people get too involved in stuff with anonymity. You will find this sort of social behaviour all over the internet and from any “camp”. It’s just bad people.
The internet is just a bunch of grown-ups and children arguing “as equals”.
I’ve once read somewhere that the human brain is only REALLY able to include about 100 people at any time in the list of “people one truly cares about”, that we are neurologically unprepared for the level of exposure to other people and their problems that we get nowadays.
But I never bothered checking the veracity of that statement. It might be complete bullshit. A lot of stuff online is. Either way it’s irrelevant because if it IS indeed a problem, then “overexposure to someone else’s problems” is a concept at least as old as the printing press. What the internet adds to the mix is… Well…
… It’s far easier to act like a psychotic jerk to someone that exists as a few paragraphs of glowy text on a slab of silicon and glass. You aren’t forced to look another human being in the eye while you talk about all the horrid shit you wish upon them.
Remembering from my social psychology classes in undergrad, I believe number is 150. But yes, that’s a good point. It’s one of the reasons people in major urban areas like NYC are capable of moving on with their lives when terrible things happen to those around them. We biologically can’t care about people once we reach our 150 limit. Btw, I think the authors of that theory argued that that number is one of the major differences between us and other social species.
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It’s a lot easier to feel like you’re not involved when you’re behind a screen hundreds of miles away.
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A lot of perceived suffering in this world can make a person feel as though a lot of people do on fact deserve to die.
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We have an extreme aversion to people who use manipulation tactics and want to be rid of them in the world.
Screw this bullshit, stop trying to normalize the deadly atrocious behavior from these right wing zealots
Yeah. The right wing zealot behaviour of killing anyone you don’t like.
Oh no, won’t someone think of the people speed running the destruction of our planet and causing suffering to so many innocent people.
Yeah I’m all for killing the few politicians and billionaires doing that, if they don’t stop with warning. Because they are the root of the problem.
But killing the many working class people who may have little choice and not have the education necessary to know they are contributing to bad is counterproductive and difficult to justify.
The people who get them into power, who vote and support them, who harass those speaking out against them, are not innocent victims.
There is no little choice, they have all the choice they can get, they choose to be pieces of shit.
Imagine acting as if millions and millions of grown adults are completely hapless little things forced into a life of right wing bullshit because they never bothered to look outside their bubble.
This is human nature. It’s the same reason you had 20 year olds sucker punching 70 year old asian women during lockdown. Cowardice and a need to lash out.
No. It may be the nature of some subset of people. Those people should die.
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People say whatever on the internet and anonymous areas. Often for shock or the extremist idealism as if something was dead things would be different
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Your examples. Both of these are extreme differences in people’s views and principles. The logger is killing and ruining someone’s country for profit. Yes the individual guy needs money but he put the principal of doing something wrong aside to make money. The logger could do something else or he doesn’t care. He has no empathy towards future generations or the health of species of animals. Why should someone have empathy for them.
Nazi example is easy while I am sure some people were ignorant or born into being a child of a nazi one should be resisting the horridness if you reap the benefits of your nation’s success at the downfall of others of course they are going to wish you dead. To put you into a perspective of nazi haters why should they get to live a peaceful life or be forgiven or left alone even if they saw the error of their ways or to desperate to fight back when people lost their future and families because of their group.
As for the drug dealer people see the worst that comes out in people as a druggie and blame the person who keeps enabling. If the druggie could be cut off then someone’s life wouldn’t be ruined.
In every example you gave someone was ruining someone else’s life or future. Of course people personally affect by similar circumstances aren’t going to have as much empathy for these people it takes a lot of compassion, self reflection, love, and forgiveness to be able to be kind to someone who hurt you and your family. Not everyone is in that place.
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Every day or year we have unbalanced people entering huge amounts of hormones causing their feelings to be imbalanced and every a new person is getting hurt leading to a life where kindness is locked off for awhile maybe forever.
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Our culture is about retribution many people don’t see proper steps to make things right or see people continue to do bad things. The easy solution is having things not exist anymore so you don’t get hurt again. If you trust bad people they may hurt you. Every decision has a consequence and rarely is it fully made whole even in forgiveness. You can’t give someone back their family, you can’t give someone back an extinct species, you can’t give back the world a stable climate. Of course people will hold hatred
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I don’t know about others, but I don’t think anybody deserves to die necessarily. It is faaaaar too merciful a fate for horrible people. I believe the worst of humanity - rapists, murderers, child abusers, etc. - deserve to live long, painful, oh so horrible lives.
My choice would be to put them inside of a 3 meter cube of steel, welded shut, with only a hamster bottle for water, a hole in the bottom for waste, and a nutrient paste dispensing chute. When the prisoner eventually dies, it is bury the whole thing out in the desert to be their unmarked tomb.
Very edgy.
anonymity allows people to be not very nice
There’s a blast from the past.
2004
There is a pretty decent chance I saw that on the day it was posted. I feel old. 😔
You’re not nice! I wish you were dead!
same
Wait, you wish thouartfrugal were dead? Or you wish yourself were dead?
Phrasing left your statement vague.
I wouldnt wish death on someone else
That’s horribly unempathetic of you.
im sorry?
I just said how after a certain amount of time, people begin suffering if they live that long. We’ve never seen what happens if a person live to be 150 years old, but I assume it would be a level of suffering that people who are 105 haven’t even begun to experience, and never will.
You saying that people should live forever, just means they get about 90ish years of decent living, and then an eternity of suffering. I’m saying that everybody deserves to die.
I’m so glad we’re all on the same page, does this mean we should be friends now?
Hiding behind keyboard is easy.
Why should people be nice online when there are no tangible consequences to them being evil?
Because it isn’t just “nice” not to kill people for these things. It’s what you’d expect that large majority of people to think.
I’m with you on the confusion because it’s like… I don’t feel the need to act this way, why do other people? What drives them that, in a void, they resort to these thoughts and behaviors? Is this who they really are, or is it an act, like doing an evil playthrough in a game. “I want to because I can here, and I can’t anywhere else?”
Really relate with your comment.
The majority of people probably do think that… but they don’t consider other internet denizens people.
Hard for me not to. I’m disabled to the point I’m unable to communicate in real life (lost ability to speak or hear), and am bedridden with limited mobility. So communicating via texting/phone is my only way.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
-Gandalf the Grey / J R R Tolkein
Tolkien ftfy
This is a great quote and one I often remember, but I would also add this:
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death or to let live in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Live and let live works, but only if the other also does so. When one does not allow you to live as you want, because what they do harms you, then that ends there.
Life is cheap on the internet, because people feel far removed (and/or “above it”). Social media “engagement” algorithms divide and isolate people from each other.
(I think as far as Lemmy is concerned, it’s just spillover / remnant behaviors from that stuff. There’s no engagement algorithm here other than what we bring in ourselves.)
Here are a some studies on it from people a lot smarter than me. (Note these are more about general toxicity and hate speech and not zeroed in on your exact question, but they may be helpful).
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.744614/full
https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/11547/10076
https://scholars.org/contribution/countering-online-toxicity-and-hate-speech
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-021-00787-4
This one looks at the “why” question from a political POV:
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/11/pgad382/7405434?login=false
thanks, appreciate this answer
It’s the result of the “bombastic” mix of false dichotomy, assumptions, and social media dynamics.
False dichotomy prevents you from noticing nuances, complexities, third sides, or gradations. Under a false dichotomy, there’s no such thing as “Alice and Bob are bad, but Alice is worse than Bob”; no, either they’re equally bad (thus both deserve to die), or one of them is good.
In the meantime, assumptions prevent you from handling uncertainties, as the person “fills the blanks” of the missing info with whatever crap supports their conclusion. For example you don’t know if Bob kills puppies or not, but you do know that he jaywalks, right? So you assume that he kills puppies too, thus deserving death.
I’m from the firm belief that people who consistent and egregiously engage in discourse showing both things are muppets causing harm to society, and deserve to be treated as such. (Note: “consistent and egregiously” are key words here. A brainfart or two is fine, as long as there’s at least the attempt of handling additional bits of info and/or complexity.)
Then there are the social media dynamics. I feel like a lot of users here already addressed them really well, but to keep it short: social media gives undue exposure to idiots doing the above due to anonymity, detachment from the situation, self-reinforcing loops (“circlejerks”), so goes on.
“AOC slams Trump.”
They may as well be writing articles that say:
“Trump fucking body slams Biden.”
The rhetorical devices are out of control.
True that. And you reminded me a tidbit of human nature, that interferes in this situation:
If you mince words to make something look stronger, weaker, better, worse than it is, plenty people fall for it. Because they care too much about how something is said (the words) and too little about what is being said (the discourse).
What’s really crazy to me is that it’s not impossible to use a rhetorical device but still have it be rooted in reality. Like you can say “AOC doles out biting critique to GOP leadership” or something and it still allows the use of “biting” but is still living in the reality of that referring to a critique she made with words and ideas.
Possible? Yes. Desirable? No; at least, not for most news sources - the extreme sells better than the simply informative, and often this lack of precision is how they manipulate your views towards a certain subject.
I prefer “Trump fellates any and all authoritarian Heads of State. Emphasis on “head.””
That’s because you’re a textbook example of the infantile minds infecting areas where actual discourse has a chance to happen.
Honestly pretty frickin relevant
I’ve seen this one before, but the alt text had me in a (silent) laughing fit anyways.
