Name: Malcolm Gladwell on Why People Leave Negative Comments Online
Uploaded: 2023-05-30T20:48:45.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Malcolm Gladwell on Why People Leave Negative Comments Online' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Malcolm Gladwell on Why People Leave Negative Comments Online' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-30. Transcript available.

why is it so easy for people humans and animals even we don't even know animals
don't know how
to use social media yet but why is it so easy for you i love yet it's coming oh
yeah i wouldn't be
shocked yeah that's gonna be crazy dude when we find out the truth about what
some of the animals
think because we've been really we've had kind of like a lot of set views on
animals for a long time
octopus twitter yeah yeah i can't wait for that yeah can i get a piano down
here what the
do you think i'm doing with all these arms um why is it so easy for us to say
something so mean
in a place like social media you know or to want it or it's really crazy
because you wouldn't really
do that in person you wouldn't do that in person because you're scared of the
risk not scared but
you're mindful of the response one time i posted a picture on twitter and i was
like it's the you
know all the we're all gathered to drive our muscle cars and they're not muscle
cars i know what a muscle
car is they're not really muscle cars i just said it you know and then all
these there were all these
nasty comments about they're not muscle cars i remember my brother read it and
he was genuinely
he was so hurt he was like why are they being so mean to us we're just driving
our cars we're fine
it's like there's a period where that's that's where you you don't understand
it's an it's an impersonal
medium masquerading as a personal medium right that's the thing and it takes a
little while for
you to wrap your head around the fact that like no this doesn't matter it's a
random it matters as
little as that you know in the old world that that person said that same thing
but you didn't hear it
now you hear it and it but it's this it's just as trivial it didn't matter it's
like right right
but we can't correlate it's with you're right we can't correlate that yeah it's
real interesting
because some people probably never recognize that it doesn't matter right to
some people that's their
that's their life that's all that matters yeah they get so that's yeah i think
that i some part
of me that's worn off for me now i'd care less yeah totally same but i think it's
interesting because
yeah that that used to be chatter in the background like people saying ah that's
retarded that's
ridiculous that's crazy right or that's awesome that's great what a great idea
but those were
things you heard in the those were things in the periphery you never heard you
never heard it was
just the chatter in the distance but now those are things if you want to access
the chatter in the
distance instead of just having like a somebody that means something to you
communicate or getting it
an interpretation of something that has from someone that has value you know or
getting even uh like um
even negative feedback but from someone that you respect you know um you can
get those things still
but uh and those have value but otherwise you can also tap into all that other
yeah that doesn't but
it still hurts the same yeah you know that's what's interesting is how much it
still it does yeah it
though it's a reminder you know i think one of the things that we've
and i think i don't think it's new with social media but it has always been the
case
that there is a small there are a small number of people who i don't even know
whether it's always
deliberate but who express their personal unhappiness or their confusion or
their befuddlement in hostile
language um that and like i said a lot of times i don't think they mean to be
hostile it's just how
it comes out um a lot of times you know people who don't communicate for a
living aren't necessarily
expert at adequately explaining why they don't like something or their
reactions to something
they've always been there we just never heard their voices that's sort of what
we're getting at like
um most people if you i i once conducted an experiment where i responded nicely
to people who commented
said nasty things about me on twitter and i wanted to see what happened and
what
happens when if they respond again is they almost invariably back down and you
realize that they
didn't actually mean they didn't mean harm to you or they weren't actually
angry at you or hostile
they just didn't know how to express they had a comment they wanted to make
that was with an issue
they have with what you were saying they just didn't know how to say it in a
way that was kind of
socially kind of positive or and if you if you if you're nice about it and kind
of i used i used to
call this um love bombing and i'm still a believer in love bombing so i would
love bomb them and i would
just sort of be nice in a response and they would always like calm down and
they would say yeah you're
right you're kind of right i just i just wondered about this and you're like
all of a sudden you're
having a conversation with them right yeah it's like it's very easy to disarm
90 of critics yeah
just by kind of taking them giving them the opportunity to be nicer about what
they're saying
i read somewhere someone was talking about how how do kids learn how to uh how
do they learn about uh
social interactions and if you see this she does especially with boys i have a
almost two-year-old though
she's a girl not a boy but i actually see a little bit with her so when they
when they touch you
they they don't know anything about how to calibrate their touch so they don't
the difference
between a tap and a punch isn't there yet so you know my two-year-old will
reach out to me and she'll
you know you'll ow right sure and because she's trying to do a playful touch my
hair playfully but she
pulls my hair she's gonna she wants to touch my nose but she ends up whacking
me in the nose
and what she's getting when i say ow is feedback and do that enough times and
she learns she learns
how to calibrate her touch she learns that if she is legit angry with me she'll
go boom but if she wants
to be playful she'll go tap and you see it with kids interacting with animals
right they start to learn
oh there's a difference between pulling a tail and stroking a tail right but
you only learn that if
you have repeated interactions in person where you get to practice and learn
what's acceptable and what's
not when a kid doesn't have access to that kind of practice then they don't
know how to calibrate
right and there's a whole theory about bullies that bullies are simply kids who
never who never learn
that same process so they they keep hitting too hard and the other kids start
to ostracize them
and that that means they never they're they're robbed of that additional
learning it's like a vicious
circle and they don't have any chance to practice again so they're still in
prison so they're in
prison they're like and they're seven and they're still hitting too hard and
the other kids are like
you know what i'm not dealing with you at all like you don't know how to behave
right yeah and uh i
think social media is is a version of the bullying you're not getting the
feedback when you're hitting
too hard ah right you're not right there's no you say the nasty comment and
that's it you're done no one
says ow right which is one of the reasons why i like to respond to my critics
you do get a feedback
like oh i didn't really mean that or this is what i meant we had a great time i'd
had a tough day
people say stuff like that i've done that too sometimes you want to reply to
somebody who says
something that's kind of like they didn't think something was fair because you
want to see what's
going on i genuinely sometimes want to make them okay yeah and so you'll reply
back and you're right
a lot of times it just extremely de-escalates yeah hope you enjoyed that video
and you can watch another
and you can watch this one you can watch this one different options different
choices some guy just brings you one option not this guy two options watch one
this one or this one