Adams- 11.13

Username: katchampion1834 Commented on your post

I can relate with Lee on the level that he became obsessed with reading the Comments about him, sometimes I get carried away with seeing if anyone has commented on my status updates or pictures- as though that adds any value to my words and moments, which they don’t. 🙄 I think people are just as obsessed with reading or writing Comments as they are at receiving them- good or bad. Kinda like the thought “no publicity is bad publicity,” Comments are Comments and it’s a form of attention. Because people can have extreme anonymity, they are somehow given more confidence and it’s an interesting idea that it’s not quite heckling and it’s a little upsetting that psychologists had to give this phenomenon a term of its own. But I have not ever understood why this anonymity gives them the strength to be so cruel and violent.

But how does this (or does this) apply to other social media platforms that don’t have anonymity? Like Facebook?

Sometimes I become curious and click the Comments section sometimes on a given post and read through things, and I’m surprised at how awful people are about a given subject and then how quickly people on Facebook- something without anonymity- can get sidetracked from the main idea and then just attack each other and choose which parts of their ‘opponent’s’ argument to overlook and which to attack on. I found myself disagreeing that Bee’s transition to moderating Facebook was be “a relief” because the lack of anonymity made people more polite:  "it removes anonymity so people are a lot more polite". I still read extremely violent comments about how Trump should be shot or beaten, or that the cops should be shot or beaten, or that ‘this video of a black guy being lectured (or whatever) was right and that he deserved to be taught a lesson’. Or when there are recorded videos of parents punishing their kids by breaking the xbox, the people comment that the father was in the right and that the punishment should have been more on the physical abuse side than a broken xbox….And people’s language, with using racist and sexist names/words. ….I don’t think a changed username makes a difference. 🤭

🤔