On Reddit

I once had a Reddit account with tens of thousands of “fake Internet points”, a.k.a. “Karma”. I earned these by making the most incendiary responses I could produce to popular posts. I would never, ever look at the responses.

In retrospect, my conduct on that website was toxic. Not only for others, but myself. A part of me delighted in dropping hot, acidic, verbal diarrhea on someone’s day, knowing that at least one person (in some cases it must have been at least dozens) would ruin part of their day in a vain response to whatever inane logic I’d written.

I wouldn’t describe what I feel, all these years later, as regret. There’s an unspoken contract that comes with anonymous posting to social media: the human element doesn’t factor into interactions that take place in virtual spaces. Feelings, morals, how someone conducts themself in “meat space” ... all of these and more have no tangible representation online. This is the core nature of digital interaction that very few understand. This is why there’s such an overreactive response to being trolled on the web.

If we choose to engage with public Internet commentary, we must gird ourselves against the often vicious and unfeeling responses that we expose ourselves to. It’s how this culture works. There are very few—I would posit zero—safe public spaces online that aren’t moderated into oblivion.

None of this excuses my behavior, but it does help to explain and understand it. I suspect that I’ll be wrestling with realizations like this for the rest of my life.

2019.03.31 – 2025.02.17

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