Insulting strangers online

Bradamante

What gives people the idea that it's anything but silly to insult someone online who you know next to nothing about? Do they think they have better insight into the person they are insulting's character than that person themself, despite only having heard of that person secondhand, or chatting with them once, or seeing one post that they made? It's laughable; they really aren't armed with the knowledge they need to make an effective assessment or attack.

All Nines

Is this referring more to people making judgments about a large group of people (like, say, YouTube commenters) after seeing relatively little damning evidence? Or is this more in reference to forumites sniping at each other? Or something else entirely? Because I rarely see people make such great assumptions about others after one incident. Though that could just be because IJBM and TVTropes are actually quite civil in comparison to many other social websites/technological methods of communication, and they're the only such sites that I frequent.

My answers to your questions will depend on which is the case. Though I'll agree that insulting people in general is silly, though perhaps for other reasons. Not that it stops me.

Bradamante

It's in response to people on other forums (not IJBM or TVTropes) who don't know anything about each other sniping at each other.

All Nines

Ah. A fair enough complaint. I won't object. I was just wondering if perhaps something else inspired this. But carry on; I won't argue.

LouieW

Bradamante,

What gives people the idea that it's anything but silly to insult
someone online who you know next to nothing about? Do they think they
have better insight into the person they are insulting's character than
that person themself, despite only having heard of that person
secondhand, or chatting with them once, or seeing one post that they
made? It's laughable; they really aren't armed with the knowledge they
need to make an effective assessment or attack.

I agree that insulting strangers on the internet is silly, but I am not sure if I can get behind the idea that attacking someone like that would be appropriate even if you knew some information about them.

Regardless, I thought one was supposed to be especially polite to strangers (online or offline) because you do not know them and they do not know you. I think that makes the idea of being especially harsh online rather inappropriate, let alone reading in a bunch of silly stuff about how someone is unemployed and living his or her mother's basement (or the like) from a few posts on an online message board.

Everest,
I think the general distaste for YouTube commentators makes some sense. I mean, I have certainly seen some annoying stuff go on in YouTube comment sections, however I have seen far worse (on Yahoo News for example) and occasionally I have seen some pretty interesting comments before.

Even so, it seems a little strange to me to make judgments about YouTube commentators as a whole even if one seems to only find frustrating or seemingly pointless comments on YouTube.
 

All Nines

"I think the general distaste for YouTube commentators makes some sense."

Oh, definitely. I was just saying that YouTube commentators are prone to generalizations, deservedly or not.

Bradamante

I kinda had some Yahoo!Answers idiot in mind when I asked this question. I asked how I could reconcile my Judaism with my more modern views, and someone proceeded to tell me:

Don't you know that political correctness is not intended for Jews? Jews
never practice what they preach, and they can reconcile two truths
simultaneously (aka doublethink). Well actually one of those "truths" is
a lie, but not if you pretend it isn't.

...He never did get around to telling me what the truth I believed in which he thought was a lie was.