I’ve been wondering lately, what causes people to leave such hateful comments online? If you ever watch a video on YouTube or do a search for your favorite actor, you are almost always likely to see a comment from some person just flat out personally attacking the person in the video or the celebrity.
What causes a person to take the time to register an account, log in, and post such a hateful comment? Well it’s very hard to tell…
A common theory of why people are generally hateful of others is because it makes them feel better about theirselves.
As soon as a celebrity gains a little extra weight, the public jumps all over it. People post tons of comments about how fat the celeb is getting. Generally speaking, these people commenting are probably among the majority in the United States and are a little overweight themselves. So why is the pot calling the kettle black?
Is it too easy for us to sit safely behind our computers and say whatever we please with no recourse?
When I was in college, I had a few online classes, where a discussion board/forum was a major part of the class. We were often required to post at least 2-4 responses a week on the discussion board. In all of my online classes, at no point was there ever a personal attack or even a mean comment.
Obviously, not everyone agreed on every subject but responses were extremely respectfull and we all would take the time to put ourselves in the other persons shoes before responding.
Now why was everyone so nice? Was it because there was a professor reading all of posts? Since most professors are pretty easy going and don’t mind a heated debate, I don’t think people were scared at all. So is it because everyone was generally well educated?
Are the hateful commentors the uneducated percentile who speak before they think?
Either the case, I think the online world needs to turn over a new leaf and start to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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