The fact that I can’t look at the comments section on any website without feeling infuriated at the unproductive way people communicate online, privately and in a public forum, is a bit of a problem.

I often read articles or watch videos online and then read the comments in hopes of seeing some intriguing dialogue and productive discussions.

Silly me.

I might watch an interesting video of somebody explaining their opinion on a controversial topic on YouTube for example. Knowing that their opinion is one that many might be in discord with, I foolishly look toward the comments in hopes of seeing some mature discussion.

Expectation: “I really appreciate your point, but I disagree with x, y and z because of these reasons. I think it would make more sense for you to look at the issue this way and maybe reconsider your feelings about this topic.”

Reality: “You’re just a dumb, fat loser who has a lot of acne. Stop showing your face on the Internet. Nobody agrees with your idiotic opinions. Get a life.”

Even people who do try to make civil remarks or defend the original poster who is getting vilified also get torn down by the angry people of the web.

Sometimes people get defensive when their opinion is in danger of being proven wrong. When they don’t have enough knowledge about the topic, it could just be easier to insult the person they feel threatened by to distract attention away from their lack of a solid argument.

For example, a video of a Muslim man calmly trying to dispel common stereotypes in Islam is met with varied reactions, many of which are just plainly and angrily accusing him and all Muslims of being terrorists.

This is not a problem new to the past few years. This video was published seven years ago. I felt the same disgust today as I did while reading the comments in the past. 

If this issue has persisted without much improvement for the past seven years, it’s not going anywhere.

The problem isn’t just limited to the online society’s inability to facilitate productive dialogue in response to a piece of media.

The problem also shows a deeper issue of people taking something that should be positive — the ability to express themselves — and making it something negative — taking advantage of their anonymous voice to put other people down.

The fact that these comments are public messages rather than private ones in chat rooms shows that we have allowed vitriolic comments online to gain a new type of confidence. 

They belittle the person who put forward an idea, the people who embody those sentiments as a whole and even cause harm to the poster of the comment.

An art project called “Anonymous” featured on artist Lindsay Bottos’s Tumblr page shows the extent of the cruelty of people online. The artist paired up photos of herself with hateful anonymous messages she received commenting on her body, face and art.

All these comments are unwarranted and the artist describes it as people having a feeling of “authority” while describing what she looks like when really nobody has any right to tell anybody whether they are ugly.

Worse than the rude content of the messages to the artist are the intentions of the messenger: “Seriously, every time I see your ugly self on my dashboard I want to punch you in your f***ing acne covered face.”

This person, not unlike many of the others, doesn’t even have a legitimate message they want to get across. Their only purpose for communicating with the artist is to convey something hateful. They could easily get rid of her posts that pop up on their dashboard, but consciously choose to keep following her just so they can get a rise out of it.

This weird form of spiting is harmful because an individual is gaining satisfaction from consistently putting another down. The frustration of not being able to clearly get across one’s own point could be compensated for by putting down the person who’s original message you disagree with. 

It’s convenient and easy and as you spew out hateful comments, you start to believe them and then feel justified putting this person down in the first place. It’s almost masochistic in a way because these people who are getting so annoyed by certain things on the Internet choose to look at it and comment upon it even when they know it’s going to make them angry “every time.”

It’s absurd how people online have reached a level of confidence to be so rude and unfair when they would never dream of saying the things in person that they do on the Internet.

Comments sections and anonymous messaging options have transitioned from their original intention to serve as vehicles to spark productive dialogue in a civil manner to inflammatory environments that propagate anger and cruelty.

Sehar is a junior in LAS. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @Nimatod.