Doing my usual online reading, while I am unemployed, I came across the following editorial from the Guardian, posted at Raw Story: Psychology’s answer to trolling and online abuse.
As always fair use permits only a sampling of what the article has to offer and I am taking 3 paragraphs (found below the Orange Kerfluffle™) and adding my own 2 cents. I am not re-working all the links in the article because I want you to click the link and read it yourself. If you are interested, of course. I'm not trying to bully you or anything....
This article focuses on some very serious online activity, largely focused on women by very aggressive and rather thoroughly screwed-up male personas that appear to be encouraged by the relative anonymity one has online. The article focuses first on a young girl - 14 - named Hannah Smith who committed suicide after experiencing online bullying (I told you it was serious - Go read that too.) Advertisers on that particular website have been pulling out in response
The controversial social media website ask.fm was facing a haemorrhage of big corporate advertisers Thursday as David Cameron called for a boycott of "irresponsible websites" following the death of a 14-year-old who killed herself after being bullied online.
Some of the biggest household names, including the Sun, BT, Vodafone, and EDF Energy, removed themselves from future advertising as the founders of ask.fm battled to reassure users that it took cyberbullying seriously.
Others deserting the website, which is said to make £5m a year in advertising revenue, included McDonald's, Phones 4U, eBay, Specsavers, Laura Ashley, Zipcar, TUI Travel, British Airways and the mental health charity Mind.
So things online can become extremely serious.
From the Guardian: Psychology’s answer to trolling and online abuse.
Psychology may hold a big piece of the puzzle. Nearly 10 years ago, the American psychologist John Suler argued that online environments unleash aspects of our personality that we normally keep under guard – a phenomenon he referred to as the online disinhibition effect.
Suler’s basic idea was that by masking their identities, abusers not only avoid accountability for their behaviour but also dissociate their online selves from their real-world selves. In real life, aggressive behaviour triggers an immediate reaction from a victim – a change in facial expression, tone of voice, body language, perhaps even violence. But in the online world these deterrents are missing or delayed, which helps abusers see their victims as faceless, imaginary cutouts who have no feelings and are unworthy of empathy.
Many aspects of Suler’s theory remain untested, but a recent Israeli study found that people were less likely to issue online threats under their true identity, suggesting that anonymity is one contributing factor. However, the researchers also found that the strongest inhibitor of online aggression wasn’t anonymity per se but the act of maintaining eye contact. In other words, anonymity may lay the path for aggression but the lack of social feedback is what drives the abuser on. So what can be done to reshape the cognition of an abuser? Here are five psychological interventions that might help. While none are proven to curb online abuse, they can be effective at boosting self-control, empathy and mood.
Again, you'll have to click the Guardian link to review their 5 possible interventions to prevent or mitigate the impact of having to deal with some people's unleashed ugliness.
My response to this is as follows:
This paints in decent but broad strokes.While clearly true about some people it does not apply to everybody.
I go by an internet name I have had for 11 years or more, same name, same e-mail account, same name across the different places I post: Daily Kos, Discus, Raw Story, AlterNet - specifically because of a desire to mix some transparency with protecting my real self/identity from employers, and internet cranks.
I act decently (for the most part) because I don't want to get banned but also because I am just not that terrible of a dude.I am quite the opposite of some who unleash all sorts of inner bullshit because of online anonymity. I write a lot about marijuana legalization and I do not need employers reading this stuff. Marijuana reformers are not provided sufficient 1st amendment protection.
Do I get crabby and ill-tempered with people online? Certainly - we don't have to be "perfect" and I don't have to put up with the abusiveness of others.
The Internet prevents some of the real-world interventions that abusers
would experience should they attempt the same conduct in the real world.
Harass me online and there's little I can do: harass me in a store or
on the street and I'll tell you to fuck off. Push it and I'll punch you
out.
Online one is limited to ignoring abuse.
Like most everybody else (I think - I could be wrong) who has experience some sort of 'trolling" or "abusive interaction" or plain old harassment or become embroiled in a 'flamewar", I can find myself frustrated with the relative powerlessness to do anything about it: some person can say some stupid and insulting stuff, push my buttons and what can I really do? Little o'nothing.
Mostly I have to bite my tongue and go on.
Recently this has reached something of a fever pitch here at Daily Kos with the ongoing flamewar intellectual debate about 4th amendment violations.
I got 2 messages this morning in my Kosmail, one from a person who was actually thanking me for something I said (?!) and the other a continuation of a person's ongoing whining and carping at me with the tone that I had somehow started it all. I thanked one person for their regard of what I had to say, which was, incidentally, about them being harassed by others, and the other was a person harassing me and blaming me for their conduct: I blocked that person from kosmailing me: first person I have ever blocked.
I think the bit about lack of eye contact and what I am going to call "real-world feedback" encourages most of this nonsense.
In therapy we have a concept called "escalating assertiveness" and most likely most people naturally employ some of this in the real world.
Step One - you tell somebody you're not interested, No, leave me alone - something like that
Step Two - they continue and you clearly and firmly reiterate your demand that they leave you alone: short and to the point.
Step Three - if it continues, technically I'd say you are being bullied. This is when in the real world (ie: not online) you issue a version of "Quit or else", "or else" being something that you can do, such as call the police or promise of violence. I'm a fairly big guy and I can be intimidating so I don't get to step three very often at all.
Online, what can you do? As I told the person who thanked me this morning, one thing you CAN do is remember that you cannot possibly please everybody online, it is NOT your job to placate them, and you can fully ignore them as their nonsense continues. It leaves a foul taste in my mouth but, again, recourse is limited.
You can't issue threats online and hope they do anything other than sound silly. Here at Daily Kos they can get you "hide-rated', meaning the community doesn't need to see such nonsense. The HR is grossly misused here, with most apparently using it as a taser to punish somebody for saying things they don't agree with.
And at a place like Daily Kos, why should it even have to come to this? Myspace and Facebook and a myriad of juvenile-type site, yeah - it's understandable. But Daily Kos is supposedly engaged in and focused on serious real-world impact in politics, electing "more and better Democrats", and several 'big-name' political entities post here occasionally.
Again I am not perfect and none of us have to be. I think we can be responsible.
About all you can do here is ignore them, "Do not Feed" their egotistical nonsense, and - mostly - give up the idea that you can actually say something to "change them".
That's my 2 cents - I'm not trying to tell anybody what to do.