This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Trolling and disagreeing are not the same thing.
I am someone who “loves to disagree”, as in most of my engagement on lemmy is disagreeing. But that’s because I speak up when I feel like speaking up is needed, and when I feel like it’s needed is when what I believe is not being said.
theres also Bots/ai arguing against other bots to sow dissent.
I’ve been online since 1995. And back in those days, about the worst argument people had was Star Wars vs Star Trek. That’s because the general online population at that time valued fact-based discussion and proper sources. Not like today, where someone’s feelings seem to trump actual fact.
If I post 1+1=2 with proper sources, some idiot is bound to come along to argue that 1+1=tomato soup, that the moon is made of aged brie and that 5G on phones is turning frogs gay. It’s exhausting.
There’s simply too many blithering idiots online who reject facts. And unfortunately instead of blocking them, people engage. Thus giving them incentive to keep doing it.
Disclaimer, nostalgia glasses may color experiences in a slightly more positive light than it really was.
This is one of those stupid articles that are like "water is wet says a new study" and far more people than it should be say "holy fuck it's wet when I wash things. It must mean I wash things with water. Omgomgomgomg!!"
No shit users are trolls on reddit.
I just call it out immediately and shut people down. I spend countless hours researching and reading and I don't have time for devil's advocates anymore. Here on Lemmy I will just block them and in real life I just tell them homie I don't play that.
They're here too
No they're not.
~/s~
Playing Devil's Advocate. has been around way before the internet.
It's called a dialectic.
Omg no it isn't!
This is literally the point, there is a clear difference between a hegelian dialectic and brute-force manichaeanism.
Social media has allowed us to perceive the one as the other.
Now everybody thinks they're the only righteous ones and anyone who deviates from their strict ~~opinion~~ dogma is evil.
I dropped this /s
My bad, post-sarcastic world.
~~Reddit~~ Lemmy
FIFY
insert 2 spidermen pointing at each other
Yes some people love to argue. I get it, I think arguing with others is fun. It's not so great online tho. It's empty and soul-less.
I didn’t need ai to tell you that
I could have told you that 20 years ago
It’s why people find multiplayer games fun
It doesn't even sound like a reasonable study to undertake honestly, how many times do you comment on something just to say you agree? Mostly people just read it and move on, maybe upvote.
those are the people who no one irl talks to anymore because they impulsively take the opposing stance, regardless of how stupid that stance may be, any time anyone says anything
Disagreeing isnt trolling. On reddit you see so much stuff that is so plain and agreeable its not worth adding agreeable comment #2000. So it only becomes worth commenting if you see a post where you actually have a disagreement with the majority.
Read the article. It's not about normal run of the mill disagreement. It's about:
...an entire class of Reddit users whose primary purpose seems to be to disagree with others. These users specifically seek out opportunities to post contradictory comments, especially in response to disagreement, and then move on without waiting for replies.
It's called being contrarian, and it's not just Reddit users. I have several family members like this.
I'd also argue it's not necessarily a bad thing. If you're talking shit be sure you're able to back it up. I am naturally contrarian but in many cases it's less about what I feel and more about taking the side of the voice that is missing.
Survivor bias aside, I'm not sure the UI doesn't make this drive-by trolling worse. The reddit UI (hi Lemmy) is threaded but disjoint, and the excellent response to one tree of responses isn't useful to or seen in another tree -- and those trees will develop in parallel in almost every discussion.
I worry that quips and cheap takes stand out because they're fast and block actual discussion more, so have that mock 'finalising' effect. Ending a discussion thread is not concluding it .
.. and we all have that cousin whom no one invites anywhere because he'll argue the shit out of something like a jackal worrying a carcass, until people just give up and let him wander smugly off to his little corner in contrarian triumph.
There's something quite funny about making a few replies to people on a topic, doing something else with your life for several hours, then logging back in to a shitstorm. I've done it unintentionally a few times.
We've all done that. One time I posted something and forgot about it. Came back next day and found the first person to comment completely derailed what I was saying by mischaracterizing it. And then all the replies were about the mischaracterization and there were no replies to the substance of what I actually said.
I can definitely sympathise with that.
