The prison yard effect
Logging onto certain corners of the internet really does feel like stepping into a maximum-security yard. You don’t show up hoping to make friends - you show up ready to prove you’re not an easy target. The mindset becomes: establish dominance, hit first, hit hard, or risk getting eaten alive.
And this isn’t just gaming lobbies or Twitter threads; It’s baked into how a lot of these spaces are designed. Platforms like Twitter (sorry, “X”) thrive on engagement above all else. And what drives engagement better than anything else? Not kindness. Not reasonable, thoughtful takes. Outrage.
The algorithm doesn’t actually “hate” nice people - it’s just indifferent to them. Polite, balanced, everyday opinions don’t generate clicks, shares, or angry Retweets. So they sink to the bottom. Meanwhile, the loudest, most divisive voices rise to the top, not because they’re the most common, but because they’re the most reactive.
And if you log in every single day and your feed is nothing but those extremes, it warps your perspective. You start to think this is what everyone thinks, that the internet is full of maniacs screaming hot takes 24/7. But it’s not. It’s just what the system decided to show you - the digital equivalent of turning up the volume on the most unhinged people in the room.
We never got “internet manners” lessons
Another piece of it: our parents spent endless time teaching us how to behave in public. Say please and thank you. Don’t interrupt. Don’t punch your sister in the cereal aisle.
But nobody gave us an etiquette lesson for the internet. There was no “don’t be a jerk in a chatroom” day at school. We all just logged on and winged it. And we did a pretty bad job.
Now we try to teach our kids “internet safety,” but that’s mostly about not clicking shady links and not handing your Roblox password to strangers. We still haven’t nailed the “be kind online” part. Thirty years in, the web is still basically the Wild West: everything is allowed until the sheriff (or the mods) show up.
Maybe it’s defense, not cruelty
Here’s the part where I might be naive: I don’t think people are inherently mean. I think people are inherently defensive.
Nobody wants to be the one kind person in a room full of jerks. So they armor up. They go mean first, thinking it’ll earn respect or at least stop them from looking weak. Meanness becomes a shield. A weird, toxic kind of self-preservation.
Of course, there’s the darker possibility: maybe the internet stripped away the politeness mask and showed us who we really are. Maybe this is the real face of humanity, and we’re all just barely holding it together when we’re forced to interact in real life.
I don’t want to believe that. I’d rather believe people are generally good, just scared and untrained for this bizarre digital arena we built.
Are we kind? or just kind of awful?
So why is everyone so mean on the internet? Maybe because we treat it like a battlefield instead of a community. Maybe because the systems reward outrage. Maybe because we never learned how to be decent online the way we did in person.
Whatever the reason, I don’t think we’re doomed. I think most of us want to be kind - we’re just afraid to be the first one.
So maybe the trick isn’t waiting for the algorithm or the mods or the digital sheriff. Maybe the trick is taking the risk of being kind anyway. Because like Superman said - maybe that's the real punk-rock.
