Why Trolls and Flames Happen

AnonymousHack writes "New Scientist examines why people are in general more rude and abusive online. 'Psychologically, we are "distant" from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behavior' says one psychologist, who also cites research showing messages received by email are always perceived more negatively than on the phone." Just more proof for the Greater Internet F***wad Theory.

Comments

Re:USENET Trolls, among others

[Heywood J. Blaume]

Use Firefox. Use the Greasemonkey script Google Groups Killfile to eliminate MI5 and whatever else from Google Groups.
http://www.getfirefox.com/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748
http://www.penney.org/ggkiller.html

Re:Duh.

[eln]

Amateur. Thanks to the magic of the Underrated mod, you can (and I have!) end up at +5, Troll. Actually, I don't remember if I ended up at +5, Troll or +5, Flamebait or +5, Offtopic, but it was one of those.

Less difficult to achieve, due to widespread Overrated abuse, is -1, Insightful.

Re:Duh.

[pilgrim23]

You missed the most important part; the statement (which preceeds a fat grant application): "Our researchers deterimed that this needs more study". The proposal is for the researchers to be as far removed as possible from most online subjects so the next study should be conducted while attending a Chearleader convention in a Caribbean
  destination. admitting this fact should help insure a good online rudness index...