One hypothesis is, they feel offended in the first place, and are reciprocating. There is good evolutionary justification for Tit-For-Tat.
Other than that, I’m uncomfortable discussing the topic purely in abstract. My inclination would be to analyze actual online exchanges where someone is presumed to be “mean”, and study the pragmatics, context, and outcomes.
Actually, an even better starting point would be to start with a single-blind test where we pick one such exchange and verify that more than one person, in a group of non-involveds, agrees on who is being mean.
(There is one person in particular who stands out in my memory as a smart meanie who I extensively engaged with, on my home turf as it were, who may provide good material for analysis; but since I was personally involved I’m loath to use that.)
The hard question is, what is the intended purpose of the presumed meanie ? It’s hard to think of a way to ascertain that—what independent source of information would we have ?
There are cases were the context provides this information: if you analyze the transcript of a teacher’s class, you can work from the assumption that the teacher intends to convey some knowledge. If you run into instances of “mean” (I’m sure this would turn up for some teachers) it is empirically testable whether these behaviours make appropriate contributions to the teacher’s intent.
A big issue with most Internet exchanges is that people don’t, most of the time, declare a well-defined intent. They’re just passing the time, or so it appears. Possibly “mean” behavior is adaptive with respect to that intent, possibly not, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps this lack of definite purpose is in fact a contributing cause of “mean” behavior.
My extended exchanges with the person I refer to above came to an end when, after a lot of back-and-forth, I asked them point-blank: “What is your purpose in having these discussions ? How well are they working out for you ?” That was the last I heard of them.
One hypothesis is, they feel offended in the first place, and are reciprocating. There is good evolutionary justification for Tit-For-Tat.
Other than that, I’m uncomfortable discussing the topic purely in abstract. My inclination would be to analyze actual online exchanges where someone is presumed to be “mean”, and study the pragmatics, context, and outcomes.
Actually, an even better starting point would be to start with a single-blind test where we pick one such exchange and verify that more than one person, in a group of non-involveds, agrees on who is being mean.
(There is one person in particular who stands out in my memory as a smart meanie who I extensively engaged with, on my home turf as it were, who may provide good material for analysis; but since I was personally involved I’m loath to use that.)
The hard question is, what is the intended purpose of the presumed meanie ? It’s hard to think of a way to ascertain that—what independent source of information would we have ?
There are cases were the context provides this information: if you analyze the transcript of a teacher’s class, you can work from the assumption that the teacher intends to convey some knowledge. If you run into instances of “mean” (I’m sure this would turn up for some teachers) it is empirically testable whether these behaviours make appropriate contributions to the teacher’s intent.
A big issue with most Internet exchanges is that people don’t, most of the time, declare a well-defined intent. They’re just passing the time, or so it appears. Possibly “mean” behavior is adaptive with respect to that intent, possibly not, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps this lack of definite purpose is in fact a contributing cause of “mean” behavior.
My extended exchanges with the person I refer to above came to an end when, after a lot of back-and-forth, I asked them point-blank: “What is your purpose in having these discussions ? How well are they working out for you ?” That was the last I heard of them.