I’m So Tired of the Astonishing Number of Nasty People Online!

Why are people so nasty to each other?

Free for Use Image by ACWells from Pixabay

Last night I was scrolling through one of my conservation group feeds on social media. In general, I like stories about nature and read them frequently. But, I quickly became disgusted because there was an ensuing argument between posters on what a particular photo showed. What the poster wanted to know was what they saw while red raspberry picking blackberries or black caps? A picture of unripe (green) berries was shown.

I don’t know the difference, so I read on in the post. Wow, did people get nasty! I just don’t understand this. Obviously, there are a lot of opinionated, vocal people out there that have a need to share what they think they know and shut everyone else down. One woman became nasty when another poster wanted to transplant some of these plants and basically told her in a very nasty way, with a very nasty tone (at least the way I interpreted it) that transplantation would not work.

I’ve found this nastiness to be prevalent in conservation, nature, ecology, and gardening groups. Why? I don’t really know. It’s like the nasty people cannot tolerate someone who 1) knows nothing about the subject but is trying to learn, 2) has a different take on the subject — offering a different opinion, or opposing information, and 3) wants to come off as the grand authority.

Look, unless you can substantiate what you are disagreeing with in a nice way and with some solid facts, why post a comment and start an argument? I just don’t understand it. This behavior has actually caused me to leave some groups before now. I was an active Master Gardener Volunteer for 15 years and am formally educated with a graduate degree in Natural Resources. Still, I dare not even contribute to these posts for fear of being jumped on, even if I’m nice about what I write. So, I write nothing now.

The other thing that bothers me is that this is how misinformation spreads. I read the entire post, comments, and all on the berry issue. The responses that included a resource that described the difference between the two berries were most welcome to me. The poster was submitting an objective source of information — scientifically correct information. But, these were few among the nasty — why don’t you know…