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.
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.
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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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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.
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.
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.
“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
Honestly pretty frickin relevant
I’ve seen this one before, but the alt text had me in a (silent) laughing fit anyways.
That’s because people are insane and unhinged, and love whipping themselves up into frenzies.
Tbh, they probably deserve to die.
Why are you so quick to say that?
Part of it is that purity tests are at an all time high. In large part because we are constantly inundated with Content to reinforce our world views (or the world view of the Influencer we glommed on to) constantly. So anything different is not just cognitive dissonance: it is an attack on our very core and a lie. So if someone does something we wouldn’t do? They are the evilest of evil people and are knowingly hurting whoever we care about.
But the other aspect? The internet is a great place to meet people with different life experiences. And in a lot of cases (particularly with certain politicians), we and the people we love have been directly harmed by them. All that steven universe bullshit about needing to love everyone and always finding the good goes out the window when you are increasingly watching organizations try to murder you for embracing who you are and to enslave people and turn them into breeding stock.
And the last aspect is that lemmy has a really bad infestation of tankies. Tankies who, useful idiots or intentional, tend to actively argue for destabilizing The West and increasing conflicts. So advocating for terrorism and murder helps with that.
Appreciated your answers both on this thread and the soviet war crimes thread. Thank you.
Its a product of global connectivity but lack of in person connection. If I interact with someone regularly and personally I am unlikely to wish harm on them because they are “part of my tribe.” Via the internet and social media I dont really have a connection with this person, so its easy to think of them as an outsider or them. Once they are outside of my tribe I can remove their humanity and then their death has no moral or emotional cost to me.
As someone older than the public internet, these people and positions always existed. The difference in my opinion is that the 24-hour news cycle and online echo chambers combined with less in-person meeting, particularly with others in the community different to oneself has just further isolated and polarized people. There’s also an argument that heavily-biased cable “news” (which is oftentimes more “opinions” and sometimes “outright lies”) going unchecked has further polarized and divided people.
I’ve found that people on the internet generally have low empathy. If it’s not animal or child abuse, the responses are all over the place.
Why do conservatives believe gay, trans, black, brown, Liberals, and the disabled deserve to die?
I tend to block those users very, very quickly. At best, they’re “knee-jerk” types that react violently without thinking. At worst, they’re sociopaths. There’s a lot in between those, but either way, with them blocked, this place is way more chill.
that’s a good way to construct an echo chamber and not notice that you’re no longer the majority and now society has lowered the bar for murder to include you.
“If we block the people calling for death, they’ll kill us!” 😵
They look around and only see support so they must be right .
Because ignoring problems has worked so well in the past …
While i agree with your sentiment it really depends on the user. While you may be open to calling out bullshit violent users, perhaps this user has no intention to do the same and would prefer a more chill virtual environment
Yep. Plus, people spewing violent bullshit aren’t going to be deterred by a counter keyboard warrior. So I just let them shout their shit into the void (as far as I’m aware of it, anyway).
I’ve got enough stress IRL I don’t need that shit here.
And allowing all of these people unchecked in your discourse allows them to keep going and gain steam. If more people blocked psychos maybe they’d shut up when they realise no one is listening
In my local city subreddit yesterday, something like this happened.
Up until last year, high speed police chases were illegal in my state because of the increased chances of deadly accidents with uninvolved innocent citizens.
A few days ago, the first deadly accident from a police high speed chase happened.
After the cops laid down spike strips and ruined her tires, she kept driving, and eventually plowed into someone, killing them.
To me, seeing that it all started because she’s a drug addict looking for fentanyl, I don’t see it as her doing this on purpose, but it being split between her and the cops. She could have stopped, but the cops could have also chosen to not exacerbate the situation with hot pursuit and shredding her tires.
The people in the thread were comparing her to mass shooters and demanding she be in jail until she’s dead. They even pulled the FOX News and dug up her entire criminal history to show how evil she was. I get it, she fucked up and killed someone, but I would personally still call it manslaughter, not murder, since she clearly wasn’t trying to kill people, she was just trying to escape cops.
This is in a so-called progressive city deep in the US northwest.
