Speech aggression on the Internet or How to send, so as not to return?

Each user in his virtual life faced with negative comments, insults or statements in his address, and many were the sources of such " messages ". In real life, such negative situations occur much less frequently. The question of the reasons for this behavior is important, but the more important question remains - how to stop the rushing stream of abuse that sometimes spills in response to a post or an opinion.

In this “many letters” -status we will try to understand a little about the reasons for the aggressive behavior of network users and give some examples from the life of our startup not a startup, a gang not a gang.

First of all, it is worth referring to the concept of “speech aggression”. “ Speech aggression is an explicit opposition to the interlocutor, the purpose of speech aggression is to offend or deliberately harm a person, group of people, organization or society as a whole. Such behavior is characterized by conscientiousness, intentionality and controllability .” Thus, residents of virtual worlds express their opposition, in which, by and large, there is nothing reprehensible - we have the right to disagree with the opinions of others - but at the same time consciously and deliberately insulting others.
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Features of speech aggression in the network

Speech aggression in the network and everyday life manifests itself in different ways. This is largely due to the absence of some factors and the presence of others. The network is not possible to establish eye contact, to express their opinions by gesticulating or by increasing the volume of the voice. However, gestures, for example, began to replace the "smiles" or pictures that complement many of the statements. Resourceful users from time immemorial use capital letters to create the effect of screaming or raising their voices.

With eye contact, things are worse, and this is one of the key factors in the perception of the meaning of the words of the interlocutor in real life. Eye contact is a psychological dosimeter, which allows you to determine the status of the interlocutor, often predict his reaction or determine what information he is able to perceive and what information is not. Moreover, it is often the visual / visual contact that is the stop factor that causes a person not to take an aggressive stance towards his opponent. This is due to the fact that a person, not seeing the interlocutor, acts according to a psychological pattern developed on the basis of previous experience. In other words, if a young man saw a comment from a stranger without a photo on the Internet, then with a probability of 95% he would project an image from previous battles.

So, if he most often has to deal with peers, he will respond using language, manner of speaking and images characteristic of disputes with them and imagine just such an image. This template is usually broadcast on age, gender, social group and even geographic location (anonymous debaters from large cities in 8 cases out of 10 tend to assume that their interlocutors are in their city - this happens unconsciously).

Example : our PR-manager (a girl named Sasha, who signs up) after the publication of the announcement of one of our projects, communicated in comments with users. With a few conversation did not go well. After some time, the expected male “moron”, “vasek”, “sir”, “my friend” flew to her address. It became clear that it is worth introducing. Only pairs of past verbs in the form of the feminine gender were enough for opponents to behave much more restrained. The addition of a profile photo made them friendly and calm commentators, who were suddenly capable of constructive answers on the merits, and not just bile and aggression.

There are also other features of speech-aggression in Internet communication:

1. You are a nomination (“you are an enikeyshchik”);
2. Negative nomination of addressees (“chmoshnik”);
3. Active use of negatively colored colloquial vocabulary (“I am your Drupal in a Drupal colander”);
4. The use of certain speech genres (evaluative statements, modal statements, rhetorical questions, masking the threat, direct calls for action);
5. Generalization and putting oneself out of the brackets (“you are all shit and noobie, I’m the most efficient here”).

Example of the 5th paragraph : Among other things, we are engaged in the translation of videos about technology related topics into Russian. Having finished one such translation, we politely inquired from a well-known site about a popular brand of mobile phones if they were interested in placing a video with us, because It was fresh and interesting for many users. In return, we did not ask for anything absolutely, for us it would be just a good promotion. In response, we suddenly received a refusal in the following form “ to translate - we don’t need a lot of mind ”; After we asked what was wrong, the answer was given: " Good luck in plagiarism and copying others ." After that, only an indication was enough that this site is 80% comprised of translations of materials from other sites and no intelligible argument has already followed.

Causes of speech aggression

With the features of the manifestation of aggression in a virtual environment, the situation is clear, with some reasons, everything is also quite predictable. There are several reasons for the spread of aggressive speech behavior on the Internet. One of them is anonymity, i.e. inability to be recognized by others. The types of anonymity in this case are as follows:

1. Social (lack of verbal communication, visual identification of appearance, ability to hear a voice when communicating);
2. Technical (hidden name, address, IP address, phone number, etc.).

On the one hand, anonymity cannot be considered a negative factor, since it is an integral part of ensuring the safety and privacy of users on the network. On the other hand, anonymity gives unlimited freedom of expression, which is often not good, and the ability to stop communication at any time, which cannot be done in a “live” conversation. After all, even with a fleeting skirmish with someone on the street there is no possibility to evaporate from the place of conflict, and it will take time to get away from him. Thus, it can be concluded that aggression in the real world has its “cost”, which is expressed in more time / effort needed for conflict, which can cause more stress and sometimes require physical involvement in confrontation. Speech aggression in the network has a lower “cost” with comparable efficiency. Thus, the anonymity of users on the network pushes them to display aggression.

Another reason for the manifestation of aggression is less obvious, but scientifically proven, and is explained by the existence of the so-called social modeling. Social modeling is a kind of repetition of the model that already exists in any environment. For example, a user who sees a few negative comments on an article is more likely to repeat this pattern of behavior in his comment than in the case when comments are neutral or positive. Simply put, if under the video on Youtube or an article on the site, the first ~ 10 comments are negative, then the 11th user is also likely to leave a negative review.

This is due to the fact that not a single person already at a subconscious level wants to be the white crow and to attract the criticism of dissidents. Therefore, people who have a different point of view from the opinion of most commentators will rarely express it publicly so as not to become an object of aggression for the rest. Here I recall a quote from the most forbidden novel 60-80 years. "The Catcher in the Rye": " This is all the misfortune. You can not find a quiet, quiet place - it is not in the world. Sometimes you think - maybe, but until you get there, someone will sneak in front of you and write on the ground right in front of your nose . ”

Example : having published one of our projects on the popular entertainment and educational website of RuNet, we were faced with the fact that the first 10 comments were sharply negative. After that, it was clear that the situation would not change (see above) and we measured 2 parameters - the number of positives / likes and the number of negative comments. Statistics only confirms the theory - more than a hundred pluses, a lot of positive reviews in personal messages with more than 40 negative comments made publicly.

Total, anonymity, multiplied by an aggressive social model, gives us an abundance of talented commentators, who are distinguished by sophistication in cracking anything (“didn’t look, but condemn”), and also by irrepressible zeal by all means to prove their case to absolutely unfamiliar people whose opinion often does not play any role in the life of the commentator.

Trolling and its varieties

However, in virtual communities, billions of anonymous users communicate, who observe both neutral and aggressive speech patterns, but not all show verbal aggression in their statements. This fact is explained by the fact that there are internal prerequisites, peculiarities of the “troll” personality, which are manifested in similar behavior.

One of the prerequisites is the need for a negative reaction to the provocation, which brings the “troll” a kind of sadistic pleasure and a sense of involvement in the development of emotions from the opponent. Such a feeling is often experienced by a musician, watching how his songs evoke positive emotions in the audience, a sense of pride in the fact that actions become significant for others. Also an important role in meeting the needs of the "troll" is played by the incompleteness of self-realization in real interpersonal interaction, i.e. a troll is simply not enough communication in real life, either he does not feel its importance in it. In addition, “trolls” can choose aggressive provocative statements as a form for expressing their own misunderstanding or lack of interest in the topic of discussion.

Sometimes "trolls" feel the need to pursue a victim beyond the framework of a single discussion, transferring the dispute to other communities or to the user's personal page on social networks. As a rule, this happens when the victim of aggression is drawn into a kind of dragging of the rope and demonstrates its emotional reaction to the actions of the “trolls”. A long-term trolling directed at users can cause various reactions on their part up to cyber-suicide - voluntary deletion of your account, withdrawal from the discussion in order to stop the flow of aggression to your address; and sometimes before real suicide, as has happened more than once.

There are several types of "trolls": the troll commentator feels an urgent need to participate in all sorts of discussions, regardless of their own involvement in the topic of discussion. Proving and promoting his point of view, the troll commentator uses pseudoscientific facts, insults of other points of view, his own erudition and other dubious means. One of the most proven means of evidence is considered evidence by contradiction, often labeled “Well, and what?”.

The troll provocateur sees as its goal the creation of a negative atmosphere in the community, for which he resorts to openly expressing aggression towards anything.

The troll-lover hero, usually a man, considers himself the most ingenious and irresistible cavalier, with his sexist comments reduces the conversation to the topics “puff”, “pokazhisuli”, “some devushka” and other offensive statements against the opposite sex. In reality, it does not correspond to the created image, often being its complete opposite.

The troll advisor seeks to "benefit" each and everyone with his useless and obvious comments. The victim of trolling at a particular stage begins to understand this and shows aggression in response, thereby helping the troll to achieve its goal.

When interacting with any kind of "trolls", it is important to remember that any manifestation of aggression towards them will be perceived by the "troll" as the desired result of the interaction, since this is its ultimate goal. The only correct reaction to such behavior is to completely ignore it and abandon any interaction with the provocateur. Aggression breeds aggression, and vice versa, compliance with the rules of verbal communication and respect for its participants can ensure successful communication.

As for the statement in the comments of your own negative opinion (albeit justifiably), one thing should be remembered - if you are ready to say the person’s work is the same in his face, write and criticize, if not, think about the value his criticism, expressed in anonymous comments, but usually anonymous commentators tend to overestimate their courage.

Anastasia Smolskaya, Max Mironchik; 2014