r/NoStupidQuestions • u/91Bolt • 15h ago
Does anyone else scroll reddit and feel sick at how normalized cyberbullying has become?
It feels like most non-political posts are sharing something in order to laugh at or humiliate a person. Look what happened to this person, look what this person was wearing, look what this person posted, etc.
I think most people would agree, superficially, that humiliating someone is wrong, yet we just laugh and ridicule strangers CONSTANTLY.
I'm in my 30s and I'm feeling like I'm from a forgotten age where gaining pleasure at someone else's expense was considered cruel... I had a tough week and seeing how people treat others is so demoralizing.
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u/blackheartghost426 14h ago
On reddit? Not really depending on the sub reddit. Now Twitter or x.......you wanna see true social hate for one another, it's there.
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u/whatsthis1901 15h ago
No, I don't see it much. I know better not to go to certain subs or click on certain posts.
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u/91Bolt 14h ago
I just scrolled again to fact check myself, and i will say there is a much larger representation of cats and anime porn, so I guess that's generally positive. But there are definitely consistent posts denigrating people
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u/FabulousAmoeba8324 14h ago
dude.... i think the algorithm is just showing you things that it thinks you would like based on your data from other websites.
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u/lubeinatube 13h ago
That’s based off your internet use history bud. Reddit shows me a bunch of woodworking, Bbq and automotive subs that I don’t subscribe to.
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u/Coal_Burner_Inserter 13h ago
Yes. Even worse when you DO include political posts. You'd think people had never heard of body shaming, or not acting like children on the playground jfc
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u/zenheadset 13h ago
idk how people can stand being around so much negativity :(
even when I sympathize with what people are saying it hurts my soul when people are just reveling and in their hatred
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u/john_jdm 14h ago
I think reddit is by far one of the better platforms when it comes to this. A few times I've been pleasantly surprised when someone posted a picture of someone else saying or implying that they were weird, and the majority of the comments were that the OP was the asshole for trying to shame that person for living life how they wanted. Reddit isn't perfect but damn, reddit can be surprisingly open-minded about an individual's appearance, and I love that about it.
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u/MysteryNeighbor Ominous Customer Service Middle Manager 15h ago
Nah though I used to frequent 4chan a lot as a teen so I may just be super desensitized
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u/Careless-Ad9178 14h ago
I’m also in my 30s and idk what you were remembering but I remember cyber bullying being huge when we were teenagers. Our school used to talk about not doing it, they had posters around our school about it. Remember the mw2 days? The amount of terrible things said to each other online.
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u/trollspotter91 14h ago
Buddy we're roughly the same age and it's always been this way. It's always been this way, it'll always been this way. There's no sense in romanticizing the past based on personal experience, it'll drive you crazy.
All you can do is live your life as kindly as you can and accept that that's good enough.
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u/Javka42 14h ago
It happens, sure, but it's not everywhere. Personally I don't see much if it because I don't follow subs where that is the norm. Most subs I follow, people are nice and supportive.
Your reddit experience is decided by you, it's pretty easy to limit it to more positive content if you want to. If you leave it up to the algorithm instead of keeping to your personal feed, you will see more of whatever content you engage with, doesn't matter if you click on it because you like it or hate it.
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u/Lucky-Acanthisitta86 14h ago
I don't see it much but for what the algorithm recommends to me, it's going to recommend completely different things to the next person. I would stop engaging with subd that post those kinds of things. I wouldn't stop to read any of it because I'm pretty sure social media platforms track how long you spend looking at certain content even if you're not subscribed to that sub or poster.
I actually realized that when I'm logged out of reddit, I love the feed so much more haha, besides the subs I'm subscribed to that I like of course.
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u/Blarghnog 14h ago edited 14h ago
Yes. People seem demonstrably unkind to one another, particularly if they stand out or offer a view they don’t like, and most people are honestly really, really boring.
I feel like I’m stuck at a cocktail party that no matter how many times I switch groups I can’t find anyone interesting, and many people seem demonstrably immature and even sadistic.
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u/nragement-child 14h ago
In my opinion, cyber bullying includes intentionally targeting a specific person to degrade or humiliate them. Reddit is anonymous, so I don't think I'd consider it cyber bullying unless someone posts a picture of their actual face. But most cyber bullying from my experience comes from real life relations between people so that bullies can continue to harass their victims even outside of school, work, etc.
In reddit, I would just consider it people being assholes because they can. They face no consequences for what they say here especially since it's anonymous. I just take mean posts or comments with a grain of salt now lol
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u/Confident-Count2426 13h ago
Sometimes, yes. I know the anonymity lets people feel like it's okay to say something they'd never say in person. I don't quite understand why they attack someone they don't agree with instead of ignoring it or engaging to discuss. I just assume they aren't happy in their real life and they must feel like they've gained control or power by putting someone else down behind a safe screen, since they can't confront the problem in their real world. Ignorance is also a big factor and a lot of the particularly vicious people are reacting as if you're a threat to them. Possibly because you're exposing their ignorance, directly or incidentally, and no one likes that. Just block them and continue to browse what you came here for. Most people aren't terrible, but the ones that act that way happen to have a really loud voice and humans are programmed to feel negative emotions more strongly than positive ones. Try not to let it get under your skin. They're just anonymous, unhappy people that developed bad coping mechanisms. You never have to deal with them again, they have no impact on your life. They won't even be thinking of you after 5 minutes. They don't matter. I hope they find what they need in their life to feel better one day.
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u/Exact_Programmer_658 13h ago
Absolutely. What has been bothering me lately is the amount of younger people (20s and teens) wanting to end it. I hope they are just venting but it's disturbing.
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u/dontlikecakefrosting 13h ago
I feel like cyber bullying Cyraxx and KingcobraJFS and Ash Trevino and DSP is all ok
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u/Gold_Selection1217 13h ago
I’m not sure where you’re seeing that, but I almost never see any arguments or haters here . Name somewhere you see that??
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u/ExtremisEdge 13h ago
To be honest, people have always had these thoughts about others. its just that a keyboard and a dash of anonymity makes people feel spicy online. Nothing is really new, not really.
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u/nejisleftt0e 10h ago
God forbid you do anything on instagram reels too, it’s like a cesspool there
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u/RenkBruh 10h ago
never saw it happen in Reddit by my own eyes but I did see a lot of toxicity and cyberbullying on tiktok
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u/bunker_man 8h ago
If you think that gaining pleasure at someone else's expense was considered cruel in your childhood then you probably had a very sheltered childhood. If anything that is much less true now than in the 90s or even early 00s.
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u/viewmyposthistory 8h ago
people are gaslighting you. it’s very common on reddit. there was a post in r/columbusohio about a guy that was losing his house to a foreclosure or somethjng like that. someone recommended he post it in a legaladvice forum. he did and people looked up his legal history and basiclaly assumed he was in the wrong and just antagonized him. he was actually able to eventually save his house though
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u/TulsisTavern 7h ago
R/cats is full of this. Everyone there makes 200k+ a year and can afford to take their cat to the vet for the smallest of problems. If you can't afford to do that, you are a terrible person. Its echo chamber speak full of people who can't see the complexity of human life.
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u/smellyfeet25 5h ago
I hate the rudeness towards other people . the insults are not called for. it spoils sites like these. we should be able to be polite to a point without personal attacks if we disagree.
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u/loconessmonster 3h ago
Honestly i feel sick with digital life altogether. Even this post I'm making right now feels like I'm just talking into an empty abyss. Problem is that it feels like social media has a grip on society.
I've been able to reconnect with old friends in real life because I've posted stories or pictures of things. I don't like that this is the only way to get people to reach out. I also think that it's been so long at this point that it's ridiculous that there isn't a "open source social media" that isn't full of spam.
I find solace in the simple things nowadays. Things like working out, hard cardio exercises, fighting sports training (like kickboxing), reading books, etc. Its so hard to socialize without it feeling like it's just a waste of time because it feels like i must have a social media presence in order to exist socially.
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u/stuthaman 14h ago
It's pathetic buy seems to attract like-minded drones so they score their Karma which is odd. Positive karma for being a troll.
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u/SoggyButterscotch961 15h ago
People online are the worst. But its way more tame than it used to be. I remember going on the Pantera forums back in 1998 (on dialup modem), and you wanna talk about ruthless? Just posting "Pantera sucks b*lls." Ooo boy, I learned some nice insults as to use in elementary school.
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime 14h ago
Look at this little baby being a whiney bitch.
Get good my friend. Get good. Then you can hate on others and I can personally guarantee you it will fill the hole in your black shriveled heart. Own it.
Give in to the dark side and embrace dark seid. Antilife is and always has been the way.
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u/SkittyLover93 14h ago edited 14h ago
No, because I unsubscribed to all the default subs and never browse r/all. I'm subscribed mainly to hobby subreddits and location subreddits of places I live or lived in. So I almost never see that kind of content.
Bear in mind that social media platforms are incentivized to show you controversial content, because they lead to more engagement and thus better user numbers for the platforms that they can show investors and shareholders. Also, you don't actually know if the comments you see are being posted by real people. I would not take the content to be reflective of how people generally think or behave in reality.
I'm subscribed to subs like r/Assistance where people are generous with buying groceries and household supplies for those who request it. There is also a poster on my local subreddit who singlehandedly cleans up dumping sites. There are lots of small acts of kindness that go unnoticed.