Why are people on the internet (and Lemmy) so quick to say someone "deserves to die"

anonymity allows people to be not very nice

Hiding behind keyboard is easy.

Why should people be nice online when there are no tangible consequences to them being evil?

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

-Gandalf the Grey / J R R Tolkein

Life is cheap on the internet, because people feel far removed (and/or "above it"). Social media "engagement" algorithms divide and isolate people from each other.

(I think as far as Lemmy is concerned, it's just spillover / remnant behaviors from that stuff. There's no engagement algorithm here other than what we bring in ourselves.)

Here are a some studies on it from people a lot smarter than me. (Note these are more about general toxicity and hate speech and not zeroed in on your exact question, but they may be helpful).

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.744614/full

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/11547/10076

https://scholars.org/contribution/countering-online-toxicity-and-hate-speech

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-021-00787-4

This one looks at the "why" question from a political POV:

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/11/pgad382/7405434?login=false

It's the result of the "bombastic" mix of false dichotomy, assumptions, and social media dynamics.

False dichotomy prevents you from noticing nuances, complexities, third sides, or gradations. Under a false dichotomy, there's no such thing as "Alice and Bob are bad, but Alice is worse than Bob"; no, either they're equally bad (thus both deserve to die), or one of them is good.

In the meantime, assumptions prevent you from handling uncertainties, as the person "fills the blanks" of the missing info with whatever crap supports their conclusion. For example you don't know if Bob kills puppies or not, but you do know that he jaywalks, right? So you assume that he kills puppies too, thus deserving death.

I'm from the firm belief that people who consistent and egregiously engage in discourse showing both things are muppets causing harm to society, and deserve to be treated as such. (Note: "consistent and egregiously" are key words here. A brainfart or two is fine, as long as there's at least the attempt of handling additional bits of info and/or complexity.)

Then there are the social media dynamics. I feel like a lot of users here already addressed them really well, but to keep it short: social media gives undue exposure to idiots doing the above due to anonymity, detachment from the situation, self-reinforcing loops ("circlejerks"), so goes on.

Relevant: https://www.xkcd.com/2071/

(please mentally adapt for Lemmy instead of Facebook)

That's because people are insane and unhinged, and love whipping themselves up into frenzies.

Tbh, they probably deserve to die.

Part of it is that purity tests are at an all time high. In large part because we are constantly inundated with Content to reinforce our world views (or the world view of the Influencer we glommed on to) constantly. So anything different is not just cognitive dissonance: it is an attack on our very core and a lie. So if someone does something we wouldn't do? They are the evilest of evil people and are knowingly hurting whoever we care about.

But the other aspect? The internet is a great place to meet people with different life experiences. And in a lot of cases (particularly with certain politicians), we and the people we love have been directly harmed by them. All that steven universe bullshit about needing to love everyone and always finding the good goes out the window when you are increasingly watching organizations try to murder you for embracing who you are and to enslave people and turn them into breeding stock.

And the last aspect is that lemmy has a really bad infestation of tankies. Tankies who, useful idiots or intentional, tend to actively argue for destabilizing The West and increasing conflicts. So advocating for terrorism and murder helps with that.

As someone older than the public internet, these people and positions always existed. The difference in my opinion is that the 24-hour news cycle and online echo chambers combined with less in-person meeting, particularly with others in the community different to oneself has just further isolated and polarized people. There's also an argument that heavily-biased cable "news" (which is oftentimes more "opinions" and sometimes "outright lies") going unchecked has further polarized and divided people.

Its a product of global connectivity but lack of in person connection. If I interact with someone regularly and personally I am unlikely to wish harm on them because they are "part of my tribe." Via the internet and social media I dont really have a connection with this person, so its easy to think of them as an outsider or them. Once they are outside of my tribe I can remove their humanity and then their death has no moral or emotional cost to me.

I've found that people on the internet generally have low empathy. If it's not animal or child abuse, the responses are all over the place.

I tend to block those users very, very quickly. At best, they're "knee-jerk" types that react violently without thinking. At worst, they're sociopaths. There's a lot in between those, but either way, with them blocked, this place is way more chill.

In my local city subreddit yesterday, something like this happened.

Up until last year, high speed police chases were illegal in my state because of the increased chances of deadly accidents with uninvolved innocent citizens.

A few days ago, the first deadly accident from a police high speed chase happened.

After the cops laid down spike strips and ruined her tires, she kept driving, and eventually plowed into someone, killing them.

To me, seeing that it all started because she's a drug addict looking for fentanyl, I don't see it as her doing this on purpose, but it being split between her and the cops. She could have stopped, but the cops could have also chosen to not exacerbate the situation with hot pursuit and shredding her tires.

The people in the thread were comparing her to mass shooters and demanding she be in jail until she's dead. They even pulled the FOX News and dug up her entire criminal history to show how evil she was. I get it, she fucked up and killed someone, but I would personally still call it manslaughter, not murder, since she clearly wasn't trying to kill people, she was just trying to escape cops.

This is in a so-called progressive city deep in the US northwest.

Anonymity and group think are serious fucking drugs here - a lot of people struggle with empathy normally but even more fail to empathize across the internet. We're all fucking people at the end of the day but some folks struggle to see other usernames as anything but "the other".

Additionally this thread + comment system rewards extremism and controversy over reason and nuance - its much faster to absorb a comment of someone dunking on someone else than reading a well thought out of comment... the highest votes tend to go to shorter simpler statements.

Violence is inherently simple and easy to comprehend - it's extreme and edgy - and it's something a lot of us constantly see on these devices when playing video games. A lot of people who espouse it on the internet don't mentally equate advocacy for violence with actual physical violence or can't really comprehend what actual physical violence looks and feels like.

Oh, also, memes.

It's a psychological consequence of polarization, which occurs when you have too many people in a social group agreeing with each other.

Groupthink elevates extreme opinions.

All extremists should be killed.

/s

It's essentially virtue signalling, whether it's online or offline. Since nobody is "for" serial rapists, for example (the current Republican candidate for president notwithstanding), the differentiation is being against "by what degree." Calling for maiming, execution, torture, etc. positions the speaker as "better than" someone who doesn't, to some people.

I've once read somewhere that the human brain is only REALLY able to include about 100 people at any time in the list of "people one truly cares about", that we are neurologically unprepared for the level of exposure to other people and their problems that we get nowadays.

But I never bothered checking the veracity of that statement. It might be complete bullshit. A lot of stuff online is. Either way it's irrelevant because if it IS indeed a problem, then "overexposure to someone else's problems" is a concept at least as old as the printing press. What the internet adds to the mix is... Well...

.... It's far easier to act like a psychotic jerk to someone that exists as a few paragraphs of glowy text on a slab of silicon and glass. You aren't forced to look another human being in the eye while you talk about all the horrid shit you wish upon them.

The internet is just a bunch of grown-ups and children arguing "as equals".

Because they are behind a screen, and they see life as videogames and hyperbole.

Most people are led by emotions rather than cold and analytical reasoning. I believe everyone has the capability to think objectively but that capability gets clouded when ever they're taken capture by strong emotions. That's why they can reasonably consider an abstract but difficult trolley problem but then lose their minds when Elon says something stupid on Twitter.

I want to believe that the majority of people around me would infact not want to cast death sentences haphazardly like that but rather they're just expressing how they feel. It's a way to signal to the group. "Elon is a nazi and deserves to die" roughly tanslates to "boo Elon"

He who is without sin can cast the first stone.

Why do so many people post on this community and other “asks” about stuff that I have literally never encountered at all yet purport it to be a rampant trend?

Along with other things said here, people tend to "forget" that there's a real person on the other end.

I vaguely recall Nicholas Christakis talking about a study they made, where they created a bot which would simply remind people of the fact that there's a real person on the other end, and they found that it would help. (That study was done in some university platform and is centuries old in internet time, though. I think he spoke about it about 6 years ago on podcast with Sam Harris.)

have you been to the mid east? don't.. if you're gay or not a muslim. they don't give two shits about human life. almost anywhere you go you can see it.

Because people use hyperbole and aren’t always serious. How many times have you said “I’m gonna kill you”?

This is human nature. It's the same reason you had 20 year olds sucker punching 70 year old asian women during lockdown. Cowardice and a need to lash out.

1. It's a lot easier to feel like you're not involved when you're behind a screen hundreds of miles away.

2. A lot of perceived suffering in this world can make a person feel as though a lot of people do on fact deserve to die.

It's the one thing we all deserve, the great equalizer. That's not what you are asking, I know but still.

I think there’s a part of our brains that treats these stories as fiction—in particular, the kind of folk fiction used to reinforce community mores. The strength of our reaction to such stories signals how strongly we support the standards, not necessarily what we think should be done in real life to those who violate them.

Because they're a stranger. I don't know them and probably never will. Oh they did something shitty that cost someone else their life? Good, they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell.

Because I don't know them and they commited something I think is evil. There's no purpose in me humanizing them. I humanize the actual people in life I interact with.

Also its impotent rage

1. People say whatever on the internet and anonymous areas. Often for shock or the extremist idealism as if something was dead things would be different

2. Your examples. Both of these are extreme differences in people's views and principles. The logger is killing and ruining someone's country for profit. Yes the individual guy needs money but he put the principal of doing something wrong aside to make money. The logger could do something else or he doesn't care. He has no empathy towards future generations or the health of species of animals. Why should someone have empathy for them.

Nazi example is easy while I am sure some people were ignorant or born into being a child of a nazi one should be resisting the horridness if you reap the benefits of your nation's success at the downfall of others of course they are going to wish you dead. To put you into a perspective of nazi haters why should they get to live a peaceful life or be forgiven or left alone even if they saw the error of their ways or to desperate to fight back when people lost their future and families because of their group.

As for the drug dealer people see the worst that comes out in people as a druggie and blame the person who keeps enabling. If the druggie could be cut off then someone's life wouldn't be ruined.

In every example you gave someone was ruining someone else's life or future. Of course people personally affect by similar circumstances aren't going to have as much empathy for these people it takes a lot of compassion, self reflection, love, and forgiveness to be able to be kind to someone who hurt you and your family. Not everyone is in that place.

3. Every day or year we have unbalanced people entering huge amounts of hormones causing their feelings to be imbalanced and every a new person is getting hurt leading to a life where kindness is locked off for awhile maybe forever.

4. Our culture is about retribution many people don't see proper steps to make things right or see people continue to do bad things. The easy solution is having things not exist anymore so you don't get hurt again. If you trust bad people they may hurt you. Every decision has a consequence and rarely is it fully made whole even in forgiveness. You can't give someone back their family, you can't give someone back an extinct species, you can't give back the world a stable climate. Of course people will hold hatred

Because EVERYBODY deserves to die!

Seriously. Have you ever visited anyone who was 105 years old? They aren't enjoying life. They just exist. Now imagine how much agony you'd be in if you were 500 years old. Or a million years old.

EVERYBODY deserves to die.

I have to ask, is this about the TiL post regarding Soviet Labor camps? Because I saw that right after this.

We judge others more harshly than ourselves or our friends and family, it's often a tribal artifact of the environment our species grew up and evolved in through its infancy that has in part informed our acceptable behaviors as a social species who relies on groups for survival (justice, altruism, fairness, social contract, etc).

Sometimes it's hyperbole, sometimes it's incorrectly treating people different than ourselves as less than instead of different to, and sometimes someone violates common morality so abjectly that capital punishment is a popular acceptable outcome.