jarfil, 1 year ago

I’ve posted some mean answers in the past, so I may share some insights:

• Someone had a bad day. Maybe a client berated them, maybe they had a falling out with a family member, maybe they stepped into a dog poop on a rainy day and their umbrella got blown out before a passerby burned their hand with a lit cigarette (too specific? yeah, well…)
• Someone decided to self-medicate (booze and weed seem to be popular choices)
• Someone forgot to take their meds (high blood pressure can do it, the flu will do it, insomnia or psych meds will do it more)
• Someone got a series of the aforementioned.

Generally: people post mean answers when their sense of empathy is either inexistent, or beaten into oblivion.

Once there are enough people in a place, the chance of encountering at least one person in one of those situations, quickly grows to 100%. If the place doesn’t actively discourage that kind of behavior because “engagement”… then you get the likes of Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and similar.