If there has to be a loudest voice, make it one spreading kindness and compassion

Let’s face it, the days of the digital wild west should have been long gone by now. These days being connected is part of all our lives, with even politicians and grandmothers using social media daily. From this large user base, hundreds to thousands of different communities have formed. No matter your interests there is a group of people who share those interests online. In these groups, people pour out love and compassion for the things they love and others in their community. These groups might be the best thing that came forth from the internet and I love them.

But when internet communities are discussed, both on and offline, most of the time it’s about them attacking others, gatekeeping and the general levels of toxicity. The fact that comment sections are often called cancerous, says enough on its own. We can’t even discuss which superhero movies we like without getting attacked. Let’s just think about that for a second. Honestly, it just makes me sad. Comment sections should give us the opportunity to speak up and share ideas. Like a supersized Athenian forum of old. In reality, it often looks more like a bunch of shouting matches at the playground.

One explanation that is thrown around is that a loud minority of trolls and embittered people overpower the rest. You probably heard some version of this before. But after hearing it for what felt like the millionth time I got angry and started thinking. What if we could beat this group causing all the trouble at their own game? What would happen if we make positivity the loudest voice?

Why is this needed?

So before we attempt to make this happen let’s take a look at what the research behind this topic has to say. If you just want to read about the action plan, you can skip to the next big header.
I always enjoy learning about this online environment of ours and if you do too stick around. We might both learn something today.

How toxic are the comments?

So I am sure we have all been annoyed by comments at one point or another. My biggest gripe is when people start bashing a movie or project months before they have even seen it. But how big of a problem is it really? To know for sure we need to understand both the scale of this negativity online and the consequences it can have on a person.

First up, scale. Figuring out just how many angry comments are left online is nearly impossible. But using sample sizes we can get a good idea just what we are dealing with. In a study by the PEW research center, 22% of participants reported having experienced what was called low levels of harassment (Duggan, 2014). Think things like name-calling. What is more troubling is that 18% of participants had experienced far worse. With everything from physical threats to sexual harassment and stalking. The consequences of these things are horrible and are luckily receiving more coverage these days. But if you haven’t heard about this please do even just some light research on the topic. It’s always good to know how our words can hurt others.

But what about this other group, the 22%? Does being called stupid truly harm someone. Unless dozens or hundreds of people target us directly, we might not think much of it. Some of us might even be able to brush that off. Or at least that is what we like to believe. But that doesn’t mean that even these types of comments don’t affect us or the web as a whole in different ways. One way this might happen, and the concept I want to focus on today, is through emotional contagion.

Toxins breed Toxins

Keeping things simple, emotional contagion is the phenomenon where you start to feel the same emotions displayed by the people around you. Remember that one friend who makes you smile by simply smiling themselves? That is a form of emotional contagion at its most wholesome. Their emotions are rubbing off on you.

At first, scientists thought that nonverbal communication cues like body language were required for this to happen. A recent study conducted in partnership with Facebook showed that this isn’t the case (Kramer, 2013). In the study, people exposed to tragic articles started to upload more negative posts themselves. They were faced with the emotion of sadness and their own words soon joined in. Showing us that written text alone is enough for emotional contagion to take place. The internet constantly exposes us to other peoples’ emotions and unfortunately for us, it seems that anger is the most contagious emotion of all (Fan, et al, 2014).

While looking into this topic I came across the following quote and I love how it brings across the incredible and terrifying power of emotional contagion in this online world.

“I can text someone halfway around the world. They don’t have to see my face or hear my voice, and I can affect their breathing, their heart rate, and the amount that they sweat. I can affect the functioning of their entire nervous system and immune system, for better or for worse, with just a few words.” - Lisa Feldman Barrett, Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University.

But comments also can influence just how much we enjoy a certain video or article. Through the social influence bias effect, comments underneath a YouTube video can change how much you have enjoyed said video even after you are already done watching.

For example, you just got done watching a cute puppy video online and decide to dive into the comment section. But it turns out to be filled with people commenting that the video sucks because cats are better than dogs. (This example does not reflect the opinions of the Modern Bard team, a.k.a me.) If these comments are negative and aggressive enough, they might be able to change how you feel about whatever you just watched.

snake oil or antitoxin

So mean comments are bad for you, who knew? What we now need to figure out is if we can fight and beat negativity using positivity. According to the studies yes to a certain extent. Let’s be clear, no matter how many arguments you throw at it you won’t be able to change the mind of someone who is mad or attacking others. People don’t like to hear that their feelings aren’t justified or correct (Bergman, 2013), especially when they are feeling angry and attacked. So for now we will just focus on making the comment section as a whole more pleasant and supportive.

To do so we can count on the age-old truth. There is strength in numbers. The outraged minority isn’t literally louder (ALL THEY CAN DO IS USE CAPS LOCK) but they are often most numerous in likes and upvotes. Again emotional contagion plays a role. Making people more likely, by instinct, to like negative and angry comments and thus spread them further. But this subconscious event can be beaten.

One example of this can be found away from the internet and in the offices of the world. Researchers have observed that inside office teams the balance between positive and negative people actually affects both the overall mood of the team and the individual. They noted that when a more pessimistic person joins a very positive and optimistic team, their overall mood and productivity increase (Livi, et al, 2015). On the other hand, if that same person was dropped in a team filled with negative energy, their mood and productivity would only further decrease.

While this is an example of face-to-face contact bringing results it still shows that emotional contagion can be used to positive effect. It can make us angrier but also happier. And as the Facebook study shows, it doesn’t have to be limited to just real-world interactions and can be brought over to the digital world. Toxins might breed toxins, but joy also breeds joy.

So with the research done, it’s time to see how it all works in practice, and what better way to do so than through a little experiment. For one week I would leave three positive comments somewhere on the internet every day. To make sure the comment were actually seen by people, I tried to comment on posts that were fresh and had some traction. Beyond that, the only thing that mattered was that the comments had to be positive and genuine.

Before we get into it too much, a quick confession. I have no idea how to go about measuring if these comments made any impact at all. So no matter what I write down this theory of making the comment sections more pleasant will just remain that, a theory. That this would happen was obvious from the start. But I decided to do it anyway because I do believe in the plan. Instead, I hoped that my experiences over this week could show that contributing to this larger plan isn’t just easy, but can also be rewarding.

No matter how many comments I left, they never received any blowback through dislikes or negative responses. In fact, the opposite often happened, with them receiving plenty of likes and some positive responses. Multiple times creators on YouTube noticed my comments and gave them a heart or even responded. My comments were definitely noted and also appreciated.

As a side note, I would like to share how I experience comments as a creator. For my day job,
I manage nearly a dozen YouTube channels for small and medium-sized TV and film studios. I handle the packaging (Thumbnails, tags, etc) and uploading of TV episodes, highlight clips and trailers. But next to this I also look to the comments that are left on the videos. Every time I read a message like “Loved the video” or a simple “LOL”, I smile. Even if I am just a small part of the process, reading how the content is enjoyed by others always makes my day. So I can only imagine how much such comments can mean to someone who pours their all into the videos or articles they post online. It always makes me happy to think that with just a comment I can brighten someone’s day.

Worth a Try

In the end, this week wasn’t about fixing the comment section but about reminding myself how enjoyable participating in them can be. I went from evading them at all cost, to actively participating in them. While I don’t comment three times a day anymore, I still leave comments whenever I really enjoy something. This is why this experiment turned out to be helpful. Not because it made a dent in the negativity online but showed how easily you can be one of the good actors online. If you spend a lot of time online but avoid commenting, give this a shot. Try commenting even just once a day for a week. It might not fix the web, but it just might make a better place for you.

References

Artime, M. (2016). Angry and Alone: Demographic Characteristics of Those Who Post to Online Comment Sections. MDPI.com Retrieved from: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/5/4/68

Bergman, P. (2012). How to Respond to Negativity. Psychology Today. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/how-we-work/201210/how-respond-negativity

Duggan, M. (2014). Online Harassment, PEW research center. Retrieved from: https://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/

Fan, R. et al. (2014). Anger is More Influential Than Joy: Sentiment Correlation in Weibo. Cornell Univercity, arXiv:1309.2402 Retrieved from: https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.2402

Muchnik, L, et al. (2013). Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment. Science 341, 647: Retrieved from: https://www.scribd.com/document/159269556/Science-2013-Muchnik-647-51#

Livi, S. et al. (2015). Positivity within teamwork: Cross-level effects of positivity on performance. Elsevier.com Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefano_Livi2/publication/277338576_Positivity_within_teamwork_Cross-level_effects_of_positivity_on_performance/links/5ab4c56da6fdcc1bc0c48bf5/Positivity-within-teamwork-Cross-level-effects-of-positivity-on-performance.pdf

The Guardian. (2016). The dark side of Guardian comments. Theguardian.com. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-comments