Why Online Spaces Almost Always Turn Into Cesspits

How the internet gives losers a comparative advantage

A while back a movie came out that pretty much everyone in my social circle, including me, loved. It got good reviews overall. Some people on the internet thought it was bad though, and box office sales were lower than expected.

The Facebook discussions within my social circle were almost all about how upset the poster was that other people didn’t like this movie. Only rarely did someone talk about how much they enjoyed the movie.

This isn’t my whole social circle, mind you– just many of the ones who are most active on Facebook. Facebook is like that, but I probably don’t need to explain that to you.

Also, this particular social group is actually better than many on the internet, for a reason I’ll get to at the very end.

I debated with myself for way too long about how many examples to use in this article, and which ones. The truth is I don’t really need any; you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that online discourse sucks. And it’s true even (sometimes especially) on Facebook, where the people doing the talking at least ostensibly know each other.

It’s common to blame the algorithm here, and that response has more than a bit of truth to it. It’s not a complete response however. Some social media networks are clearly worse about this than others– Instagram tends to be, if anything, too positive! Moreover, online spaces that don’t have a content-sorting algorithm, such as Discord servers and old-school forums, also tend to become cesspits of misinformation, negativity, and triviality.

There are a few factors here, and I’m sorry to say they’re pretty much inherent to the internet.

The Superusers Have A Louder Voice

The most basic form of inequality in online platforms is the disparity in how much people utilize those platforms. In short, the person who spends twenty hours a week on Twitter has forty times as loud of a voice as the person who’s on it for a half hour a week.

This isn’t unfair as such— you get out of it what you put into it— but, well, think about the kind of person who spends twenty hours a week posting on forums and social media sites.

The loud minority effect is in full force here, and it’s a minority of people with way too much time on their hands, and too little else going on in their lives. Online discourse gets dominated by heavy internet users, in much the same way that political discourse comes to be dominated by people with bumper stickers. Often both of those things happen, to our detriment.

Communities come under the control of their people who care about them the most– which is to say, the people who care way too much, because, they have too little else going on.

It’s Too Easy To Ignore People Online

Suppose someone casually stated, in an in-person conversation, that Italy is wealthier than the United States. Someone would probably correct them. Likely several people would.

But someone says that on Facebook? It’s easier to ignore them, so that’s what most people do.

This sounds at first like an advantage to the internet over real life; you can just ignore people you don’t like! But think about the second- and third-order consequences.

First off, people who say dumb shit will start gravitating towards expressing most of their opinions- indeed, doing most of their social interaction– online. On some level they’ll realize that they tend to get better responses from people on the internet, while in-person interactions somehow don’t tend to go well for them. They won’t understand why, or if they do they’ll repress that knowledge.

Second, people who really want to have intelligent, productive and respectful conversations will eventually learn that those conversations are better had in person. They generally understand the reasons for this a little bit better than the first group.

So it’s easier to ignore people on the internet– but that’s precisely why Facebook, Twitter, and other web cesspits attract the sort of person for whom being ignored is the least negative response they can typically expect.

Of course, there are many other people who make an effort to navigate both worlds by saving their— to put it diplomatically— less defensible opinions for the internet. In my experience, this gets them tolerated in physical spaces, if not exactly well-liked.

Speaking of which, you may have noticed that there are certain opinions that tend to get expressed, and factual statements that tend to get made, far more often on their internet than in real life. Generally crazy ones.

You Can Try To Fight Back, But They’ll Outlast You

So what happens if the rest of us collectively stand up to the minority of annoyingly-loud internet users—and they are a minority— and declare that enough is enough?

Well, arguments will ensue. And while these arguments tend to be described in “war” terminology—flame war, meme war, culture war and so on— it’s important to remember that you can’t knock anyone out in this fight, conquer them, or otherwise force them to stop.

That means it’s an endurance match that will be decided by who gets tired of arguing on the internet first. And who’s it going to be, the person with more or less time on. their hands? The person with more or fewer other options for having fun? The person who is or is not getting laid?

And that’s why socialization on the internet has come to be dominated by undesirables– in large part, it’s precisely because they’re undesirables.

I don’t really have any ideas here for making the internet as a whole more pleasant to engage with— like I said, I think much this is just inherent to how the internet works.

There are two things I have found that at least allow you to find good online communities to engage with.

First, online communities tend to be healthier when they’re intertwined with physical communities. The friend group I mentioned at the beginning is a very loose social group centered around a festival people go to. That helps- people who don’t get out and touch grass tend to be excluded, or at least the worst offenders.

Second, some communities, by dint of what they’re about, just appeal to better people than others. Reddit is a great place to observe this– the culture of fitness, science and self-improvement-related subreddits tends to be more positive and rational than pop culture-related subreddits, which in turn are light years better than the culture of subreddits that exist for the purpose of being against something.

Basically, look for communities centered around an activity or interest that says something very positive about the people who are into it. That tends to at least counterbalance the whole “superuser” issue.

The internet is what it is, but there are still good parts of it to engage with. As for the bad parts– maybe the best thing to do is be grateful that they keep the people in them occupied.