Andrew+N’s+2015+OpEd+Article



Following the viewing of an interesting article, video or webpage, the natural tendency is to continue scrolling a few more inches to reach the comments section. In the majority of cases, the user is met with political flaming, personal insults, and general unpleasantness. Regardless of the topic of the article or video, someone, somehow, will bring up a controversy, summoning thousands of replies, complete with unwarranted personal attacks.

The point of a comments section is, typically, to allow further discussion regarding the article, thus heightening mankind's understanding. Instead, fighting about even the most pointless of topics ensues. No one even wins in these arguments. Save the number of upvotes received (not applicable to every site), there is no determined winner, and do you really think that the person who you just yelled at via caps lock is going to stop and say,"I guess you're right, I'm going to stop using the smartphone operating system that you don't like and switch political parties"? (Yes, aside from politics, one of the most reliable ways to start a comment war is to bring up iOS or Andriod). A video of a cat is not the place for "debates" such as these. No one even gets anything out of the argument. As mentioned, the initial arguers and anyone who joins the discussion will rarely, if ever, stray from their opinion, and the smarter people who come across the conversation will not participate, will realize how silly the whole thing is, and move on to something more useful. It is pointless - why even bother?

Psychologically, there are explanations of why people treat others online far worse than they would treat them in person. Communication online is primarily anonymous, or at least free from use of the user's real name, thereby somewhat removing or lessening the consequences of the poster's actions. The recipient is far away, in some unknown location, so without the face-to-face connection, it may feel less like talking to another human and more like talking to a computer. The text format makes detecting sarcasm difficult. And the asynchronous nature of online comments allows for sufficient time to write up a lengthy reply that only lets the person feed their anger.

But this doesn't mean the behavior is justified. Perhaps there will always be disrespectful people. But there is no need to perpetuate the fighting.

Don't feed the trolls.

No one wins internet arguments. It's just wasted energy. Close the tab and go do something more fulfilling.

Here are some reminders about not reading the comments from @AvoidComments.

media type="custom" key="27256800" media type="custom" key="27256804" media type="custom" key="27256830" media type="custom" key="27256834" media type="custom" key="27256840" media type="custom" key="27256844"