Why Everyone Hates You: A Grand Unifying Theory of Blog Comment Incivility

You'd think that if you wrote something really great, you'd get praised. And if you wrote something really dumb, you'd get trashed.

But that's not the way it works.

Instead, if you write something really great then everyone tells you how dumb you are. And if you write something really bad, you just get ignored. Ask any blogger and they'll tell you its true. But why is this?

People naturally respond to what they read. If someone loves what you write, the natural response is to forward it to friends or post it on Digg. But what if someone hates your blog? They can't unforward it, nor can they delete it from the collective memory.

So they trash you. Because really, it's all they can do.

There are times when the blogosphere seems terribly uncivilized. Recent events like the Kathy Sierra death threats make this all the more salient. But not everyone hates Kathy. In fact, most of her readers love her. They express their love by reading her posts in the first place. But this support is largely invisible, so sometimes all that's left to see is the hate.

Comments

[Echo]

Hi,

I just got sent this post from a friend. I hated it! I trash you!

[GorgonzolaExpress]

what abunch of crap. you suck and youre picture is stupid and blurry.

if i like things i say so and you should to. if it sucks it gets voted down like on FARK and people dnot ignore it like im ignroing you! so shut UP!

[Frank]

Your post is insightful and spot on. Do you think that there might also be a correlation between the spite content of a comment and the number of spelling and grammatical errors it contains?

By the way: love the picture.

[d]

Yes, there is correlation and it's called age/maturity/ignorance (pick as much as you want).

[d]

Ouch, I think it should be "as many", but I'm not a native English speaker, so it does not count :P

[Seth Wagoner]

Many of your posts seem insightful. This one seems wrong.

Kathy Sierra got a lot of link love and a bazillion positive comments every time she posted. She wrote great things and people, in general, acknowledged that.

Saying that "support is largely invisible, so sometimes all that's left to see is the hate" is wrong in this particular case. I never really noticed anyone trashing Kathy. Everyone I saw linking to her from their own blogs, or leaving comments on hers tended to be very positive. There was a lot more visible support than there were attacks. I didn't know about any of the nasty stuff until she brought it up, and I imagine neither did most of her fans. I guess I mostly read the "digerati", perhaps there were some small time bloggers who were less positive.

It was misogyny, jealousy or both. She had an enormously high profile. When you're getting that much attention, you will get the attention of some real low-lives, and some people will get jealous, and some people will just poke holes in your arguments, and lament the fact that you're getting more attention that you supposedly deserve.

Kathy's loss from the blogosphere was a tragedy, she really deserved most of the *positive* attention she was getting.