Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Need to Denigrate

Something that's been bothering me for a while is the need that some people have to denigrate others completely out of the blue and with no apparent justification.

Last year a student at my high school was killed.  Walking down a country road at night and got hit by a driver who didn't see him.  Commenters to the local paper felt the need to claim he was on drugs.

Not to long ago a fellow dumped his motorcycle on an on-ramp locally. Commenters immediately started denigrating his riding ability even though they didn't know him from Adam.  The reality, four bikes went down on the same on ramp in the space of a month. Clearly a dangerous situation and not an issue with the rider.


Captain Capitalism gives me a shout out and best wishes (which I really appreciate) after reading about my accident and the first two commenters make reference to Darwin awards and my lack of experience, suggesting I should be riding a trike.  Now, I honestly don't care what they think, I am pretty thick skinned, and I know I am a good rider who made some mistakes, but I am just puzzled as to why some people's first inclination seems to be to make some disparaging comment.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you confusing denegrating remarks made in jest with those made in earnest? I would think that those directed at you personally would be the former sort.

heresolong said...

That's the thing, Professor, I don't know. Like I say, it just seems that they appear almost instantly, in every situation, appropriate or not. I would hope that many (ie comments about how I should get a trike) are in jest and in fun, but then I see similarly worded comments in a newspaper's comment section and it starts to bother me. Lack of facial cues, etc when on the internet are a part of the problem, of course, but it makes me wonder.