All of us have read posts on Facebook, other social media and message boards where the initial poster expresses a coherent thought, then other posters write coherent replies that disagree with the coherent first poster. Then some of the posters respond to the first poster and then…slowly (or fastly) all hell breaks loose. This poster says something nasty about that poster; posters’ intelligences and understandings of the topic are challenged; those who disagree must be morons and then the attacks and counter attacks become really nasty. I am right; you are wrong; you are an idiot; no, you are an idiot; your mother is an ape; well, your mother is a *****.
This will then carry over to other posts by these posters—they go at each other in post after post on various topics. The hell continues. Posters are hurt; anger and sarcasm predominate and then the arguments essentially boil down to “My father can beat your father” or “Your mother is ugly.”
In war we see this with the demonization of the enemy. On Memorial Day my wife the Beautiful A.P. and I went to our village’s honoring of our soldiers who died defending America. The World War II guys still called the Japanese “Japs.” They had none of the love of Japan that many Americans exhibit, including my wife and me.
That’s what happens to our enemies in real war. We nail them with insults as well as ammo.
While posting on a web site is not equivalent to war, at times it seems it is.
Probably in war it is better to demonize than play Hamlet and think so deeply about things, that it causes brain freeze. Casinos don’t like it when you think. It is also possible that our thinking brain is uncomfortable with deep thought as well.
Are discussions between disagreeing people always fated to end in dislike, hatred or disdain of one other?
In my experience in surfing message boards, such hostility seems rampant. Those who agree with us are given a pass but those whose opinions differ—come on, their fathers are jerks and their mothers are…well, I’d rather not say.
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