Why Is There So Much Anger Online? A Macro Level View
You’re probably like anyone else on social media these days, seeing video clips of violence and anger, memes that create instant political or social divisions. Bigotry, misogyny, racism, cyberbullying, scams and so much vitriol. It can seem like social media is a dank place filled with foul digital creatures that if we could smell them, would be putrid and instantly repellant. Why is there so much anger and hatred online? What does this mean, why is it seemingly so hard to fight back against? And really, what’s driving it all?
The good news is that while it does seem like a lot, such online hatred and anger is smaller than it seems. The downside is that it is causing an immense amount of mental health issues and hurting people from all walks of life and all cultures. It may never go away entirely, but it will diminish. There is hope.
The majority of research I’ve reviewed has tended to focus on specific groups, at a more micro level, targeting cyberbullying, conspiracy theories and such. This is important and necessary. Here I look at the causes from a macro sociocultural level. Which, given the global reach of the internet and social media, is also important.
Why All The Hatred and Anger? A Global View.
It was always there. The trolls, bullies and angry groups that seem to leap on an issue like a murderous gang of salivating daemons have always been present in societies around the world. They aren’t new. It’s just that social media gave them a chance to attack like they’ve never had before. Just as social media have given the good people of the world the same opportunity. And there are more good people than bad. We pretty much know this already. So why is there so much of it?
Having spent over a decade conducting netnographic research, which is the study of online cultures and social behaviours, I’ve developed some theories at a macro level. From 80,000 feet up if you will.
Cultural Collisions: There’s always been tensions between different cultures throughout human history. For the most part, tolerance has won. Cultural clashes that have been ever present in the real world, have just transitioned to the digital world. Sometimes this is stoked by leaders in a cultural group who’s power comes from creating divisions in the real world. But in the real world, there are generally limits on how many people can be in a leadership role at any given time. Social media and the internet enables more leaders that lead varying sizes of groups. So there can be many more than what we might find in the real world. Digital leaders, to feel emboldened, don’t need as many followers to create havoc as they would in the real world.
This also comes to ideologies. There are many in the real world, but they lacked the ability to organise and coordinate their actions so they remained smaller factions that were easily shrugged off in the real world. The social damage they caused could be minimized and localized. And it is their ideologies that they want to promote. A gang of five trolls on a street corner in Toronto doesn’t get as much reaction as a gang of five can generate across social media.
Social Disenfranchisement: This is a key driver of much online anger and hatred. It’s where bigger ideologies get picked up. It’s why we see the spread of conspiracy theories and fringe ideologies like Qanon spill into the real world. These are people who feel disenfranchised. The feel left out, ignored and separated from mainstream society. When they already feel marginalized, the ability to easily access the internet from anywhere and the power of social media to connect them, this then enables them to form larger groups and feel as if they’re more of a true movement. It’s also where confirmation bias comes into play. They began with an inherent distrust of “The System”, they seek anything to confirm their feelings. That quickly scales up online and movements evolve that can translate into real-world actions as well.
Socioeconomics: Economic divides in countries around the world, whether democratic or autocratic continue to increase. As inflation grows and we try to emerge from a pandemic, divides have only increased. More people feel they have less opportunity. The majority look at the elites of society and their behaviours and the distrust grows. Resentment and anger grow, this feeds those already disenfranchised who seek answers. Many come to find cold comfort in conspiracy theories. It gives them validation for their anger, even if it isn’t true.
Fight or Flight: It is a basic function of our brains. It goes back far in time to when we really didn’t want to be on the menu of other animals. Whole cultures and societies have this reaction as well. In times past, societies, when they didn’t like how things were going, just picked up and moved away from the elites they no longer liked. Sometimes too, they chopped off the nasty elites heads. Fight or flight. This is happening in our world today. Except we no longer have the space to run away. Fighting is becoming more of a choice of necessity.
Mass Migrations: The movement of people around the world over the last decade has been unprecedented in terms of both size and speed and the number of countries involved. The two overarching causes of this are conflict and climate change. And as climate change persists, it is going to get worse. This will put immense strain on countries with more abundant water and cooler temperatures. But already, these mass migrations have put pressure on different countries as they try to absorb refugees while assuring existing residents their culture is safe. It is part of the reason we see the adoption of “replacement theory” believers in America and Christian Nationalism, both illogical and incorrect, but they feed into a cultural group (white people in the USA, Hinduism in India as examples), feeling, emotionally, that it is true.
These are the macro level conditions that have lead to so much pressure from various angles all at once on sociocultural systems around the world.
There have always been feedback loops causing pressures on sociocultural systems. It’s just that today, unlike before, society is connected through the internet and the products, such as social media, that it has enabled. Our world has become phygital, where our digital and physical worlds have become deeply intertwined.
For the most part, society, government and bureaucracies have turned to the technology companies to both blame them and demand that they fix it. They cannot and nor should they. The anger and hatred that thrives in the digital world is not a technology problem. Artificial Intelligence is not the answer. Draconian laws on freedom of speech are not the answer either. I don’t think anyone has the answer. Not at a macro, global level. But it is a problem that will be solved on a whole-of-society approach. Government, citizens, bureaucrats and the tech industry working together.
These macro level conditions lead to and foster the hatred and anger we see online today. We’ve figured these sorts of things out before. Inevitably, humanity always progresses. It’s just painful sometimes.
