It's the second half of your question. People have always been jerks online, but the older we get the more we seem to notice it.

When I was a kid and connecting to people online was slowly becoming more and more common i thought everyone was nice. Then i found out what "chatrooms" were and realized that's a whole different crowd of people... Then i found out about forums and how certain ones had very nice and helpful people, and some had very know-it-all-call-you-stupid kind of people.

Now as an adult i see assholes everywhere online but have learned that if someone says something that doesn't settle right with me it's probably bait, and not going to get better if i engage 🤷‍♂️

You see it more because it's on the internet. In real life people keep a lot of thoughts to themselves.

Endgame capitalism is squeezing harder since the 2008 crash and then Covid. They predicted polarising of politics and ideologies. We're seeing tribalism as a reaction to fewer resources and harsher conditions, all of which are down to greed and oligarchy. They've succeeded in getting us to fight amongst ourselves instead of them.

Hate is getting more and more acceptable.

This is a very intentional goal, and conservatives have been pushing for it basically since Reagan. For a while, saying that you where a white supremacist was generally not acceptable socially, being too racist was considered bad.

Now, conservatives are proudly bigoted, and that gives cover to everyone else. Every time somebody makes a racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic "joke" and gets no pushback, it makes it a little more acceptable to keep making those jokes.

Every time a conservative pundit or influencer goes on a racsist tirade, or homophobic one etc, it tells the people watching that its ok for them to be super bigoted.

And so they are.

If the majority of your interactions with the world are through the internet, yes. If the majority of your interactions and in person, nah, shit is the same it's always been.

I imagine its getting to people. Every week theres another threat, another escalation, another price hike. Every week we get less and less, while influencers are flaunting how easy it is to just be wealthy, while we're trying as hard as we can and failing to provide what our parents provided us, despite living in the future.

A lot of people are constantly at their limit and it only takes a minor unexpected obstacle to set them off.

Internet.

Is it wrong to say that I can blame Donald Trump for almost everything in the last ten years?

I try to be better here than the/my tone was on reddit.

I hate what rampant capitalism and conservatism has done to my world.

I hate key players that forge that reality.

But I try not to hate the people. We feel powerless, and that is why so many of us lash out. I can forgive some of that.

I only meet hateful people online. I deal with strangers for living and the vast majority of them are super nice and unreasonably reasonable.

Neither. It's more and more propaganda of hate, trying to prevent the working class from waking the fuck up.

It isn't working, so they're spamming more.

Surely there are a lot of bitter people on the Internet. My opinion is that it doesn't matter if you're right and they're wrong, hating them only hurts you while they dgaf, if anything it just makes them stronger. Don't engage the hater, love on.

nah, I just hate idiots. Always have, even before internet. People who dont think and succumb to the brainwashing around them (religion, billionaires, facist politicians)

When the internet was no longer limited to university, the idiots got really loud.

Yes

It's a treacherous intoxicant. People love recreational outrage but for many people it turns into active, seething hate that colors every interaction they have. It's the lens through which many view the world and it becomes self-perpetuating. People will have angry and hateful interactions with others, begetting more hate, begetting more hate, begetting more hate.

The fury feels good in a moment. Makes you feel strong. Find some like-minded people angry at the same things and you get to feed off each other's rage. You'll not only get more reasons to hate, but you'll feel justified in the hate. You are in the right. The others are wrong. How dare the others be wrong. You must hate them because they are evil. See how they respond to your hate with more hate, further proving how justified you are in your own hate. It warms your chest, it rushes through your veins like the best alcohol you can imagine and you're not feeling so helpless. It makes you feel like you're accomplishing something. It masks the feeling that you are just one, small person faced with an impossibly complicated world, that is often filled with incredible injustice. It keeps you from realizing that you're a tiny little cog in the same machine that causes both all the suffering and all the joy in the world. It tricks you into thinking that you are both apart from the world, yet powerful enough to impact it.

Every hateful comment you leave adds more hate into the machine. Every act of kindness adds more kindness. But hate is easier. Kindness feels weak. It's vulnerable. It's fragile. Even if you're kind, the hate that others keep adding may reach you and bite you. Most people can handle having their teeth kicked in only for so many times. It's easier to shut down and hate. But that doesn't mean that commitment to kindness is impossible. It's just harder.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

I dunno but one of the main reasons I've cut my reddit time by ~90% and intend to drop it completely in the near future is because everyone there seems to think that anything that isn't very obviously agreeing with them, is a invitation to some sort of debate.

Just the other day I give some additional information to someone, in a neutral tone and they got upset, called me dense and whatnot. I see it so much these days, users react negatively to a comment, and then the other person replies in a confused tone and apologizes.... or responds in a equally angry manner.

I don't have time or energy to all that anymore. But also, I hate everyone equally. I should move into a little cabin in the middle of the woods.

every now and again, I fantasize about living in the far north of Canada with fiber internet and a warm cabin miles away from the nearest living soul.

Then I remember reality, where I am poor, gay, disabled, American, and probably going to die here either to an Iranian-linked terror attack or my own increasingly christofascist government.

I don't necessarily hate everybody, but I don't go out of my way to interact with others that much already and over the past couple years I've felt far less inclined to, both online and in real life. Nowadays I mostly just interact with pets, family, and the people I have to interact with to earn money. Lemmy's a nice, impersonal social outlet. People in person aren't necessarily more trustworthy, the veneer of civility is just thicker.

My suspicion is that part of the problem is that social media sites are getting more and more refined. They're getting better at providing users with what they want, meaning users are seeing curated bubbles where everyone around them agrees with them and they're presented with rage-bait tailored to the specific things they get angry at. It's the best way to cultivate "engagement" - group people with mob-mates and then give them something to form an angry mob about.

I don't think there's some evil mastermind laughing to himself on a golden throne doing this, either. It's just a natural, organic consequence. Sites that don't do it don't get as many users sticking around long term.

I saw a video ywsterday that claims it's just the internet but I'm sure it really depends where you live.

The video [YouTube]

CGP Grey has a pretty good video related to this topic

https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc

Ideological-polarization's displacing consideration.

The next tipping-point, probably in late-March/April, should nuke our current pervasive-tolerance, permanently.

I expect Netanyahu's "Israel" to nuke Iran, when Trump ditches Netanyahu,

& the minute retaliation against "Israel" launches, I expect Netanyahu to nuke ALL Muslim countries ( mass-shooting ).

Trump'll then have no reason to NOT invoke the Insurrection Act & be dictator/king, then: world-law will be gone.

Regional Consolidation 1st-Yang stage of "armageddon" then begins, so Trump'll concentrate on crushing/possessing completely the Americas.

Annexing Canada & Greenland, Civil War, & imperial-expansion throughout the South.

Other regions are going to be doing the same consolidation shit.

Part of it's simply frustration by consequences/accountability.

Ego's love of non-accountable/non-responsible authority is its most-fundamental addiction.

The problem, though, is that while politics may cater to that, being as dishonest as required, climate cares nothing for "consensus".

& it's ramping-up its demolishing of our ecology-destroying-machine, unregulated-industry.

Pair that with segregation-of-wealth-archy, & you've got a polarizing-machine.

Which .. produces polarizing.

Consequences happen, right?

Megachickens do come home to roost, right?

_ /\ _

Everyone is depressed and ready to d*e. Everyone's fuse is very short