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Hi Jordan & thank you for your post.
I am by profession, a psychotherapist, so I understand where you are coming from. I have seen many forums collapse, including a forum for clinical psychologists. John Suler points to something called, "the Disinhibition Effect", where anonymous users hide behind this anonymity & behave in ways they would never behave "in real life".
I don't want to turn this posts into an analysis of behaviours, but sometimes approaching someone can help. I am the Director of a support forum for people with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus & I had one very angry person write a very angry post to something I said. It's often hard to read something unpleasant, but I made contact privately and I offered validation for her feelings. The response was favourable. I did not validate the behaviour but could understand, in her context, why she felt what she did. She responded by saying this was the first time someone had taken the time to try to understand.
There are people, however, who are enraged & want to destroy anything good, including a community. Not everyone is a therapist or wants to engage with very unpleasant people. It's also a matter of time, money & competency. Contacting someone may even make the situation worse & the end result may be that the Moderator will be left with difficult and unwanted feelings.
@Davycreferred to vulnerability & often this is a hidden component which we don't see or understand. The ferocity and rage is a cover for that vulnerability, which often has nothing to do with the current situation, but from the past, which gets triggered in the present. While I have a great deal of time for Mindfulness, when this rage and vulnerability is engrained, it is not possible for that person to stop, think & not react. Compulsion control is difficult for this type of person who has been damaged, usually from a very young age & this leads to an inability to monitor one's feelings. The world is split in good and bad, an either or without a middle way.
Nevertheless, there is merit in thinking about what to do in these situations. Thank you for a thoughtful post.
 

Hi Jordan & thank you for your post.
I am by profession, a psychotherapist, so I understand where you are coming from. I have seen many forums collapse, including a forum for clinical psychologists. John Suler points to something called, "the Disinhibition Effect", where anonymous users hide behind this anonymity & behave in ways they would never behave "in real life".
I don't want to turn this posts into an analysis of behaviours, but sometimes approaching someone can help. I am the Director of a support forum for people with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus & I had one very angry person write a very angry post to something I said. It's often hard to read something unpleasant, but I made contact privately and I offered validation for her feelings. The response was favourable. I did not validate the behaviour but could understand, in her context, why she felt what she did. She responded by saying this was the first time someone had taken the time to try to understand.
There are people, however, who are enraged & want to destroy anything good, including a community. Not everyone is a therapist or wants to engage with very unpleasant people. It's also a matter of time, money & competency. Contacting someone may even make the situation worse & the end result may be that the Moderator will be left with difficult and unwanted feelings.
@Davycreferred to vulnerability & often this is a hidden component which we don't see or understand. The ferocity and rage is a cover for that vulnerability, which often has nothing to do with the current situation, but from the past, which gets triggered in the present. While I have a great deal of time for Mindfulness, when this rage and vulnerability is engrained, it is not possible for that person to stop, think & not react. Compulsion control is difficult for this type of person who has been damaged, usually from a very young age & this leads to an inability to monitor one's feelings. The world is split in good and bad, an either or without a middle way.
Nevertheless, there is merit in thinking about what to do in these situations. Thank you for a thoughtful post.
 

Hi Jordan & thank you for your post.
I am by profession, a psychotherapist, so I understand where you are coming from. I have seen many forums collapse, including a forum for clinical psychologists. John Suler points to something called, "the Disinhibition Effect", where anonymous users hide behind this anonymity & behave in ways they would never behave "in real life".
I don't want to turn this posts into an analysis of behaviours, but sometimes approaching someone can help. I am the Director of a support forum for people with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus & I had one very angry person write a very angry post to something I said. It's often hard to read something unpleasant, but I made contact privately and I offered validation for her feelings. The response was favourable. I did not validate the behaviour but could understand, in her context, why she felt what she did. She responded by saying this was the first time someone had taken the time to try to understand.
There are people, however, who are enraged & want to destroy anything good, including a community. Not everyone is a therapist or wants to engage with very unpleasant people. It's also a matter of time, money & competency. Contacting someone may even make the situation worse & the end result may be that the Moderator will be left with difficult and unwanted feelings.
@Davycreferred to vulnerability & often this is a hidden component which we don't see or understand. The ferocity and rage is a cover for that vulnerability, which often has nothing to do with the current situation, but from the past, which gets triggered in the present. While I have a great deal of time for Mindfulness, when this rage and vulnerability is engrained, it is not possible for that person to stop, think & not react. Compulsion control is difficult for this type of person who has been damaged, usually from a very young age & this leads to an inability to monitor one's feelings. The world is split in good and bad, an either or without a middle way.
Nevertheless, there is merit in thinking about what to do in these situations. Thank you for a thoughtful post.
 

One of the things that I have noticed a lot in people (this is a general observation and not limited to online experiences) is that they tend to react rather than pausing and think through an appropriate and considered response.  That is, instead of taking a step back and taking a longer look at a situation, comment, post, topic (you get the picture) there is the infallibility of people to instantly react.  It's obviously a people issue and one that has become more noticeable over a period of time.  Whether it's the pressures of modern living or something more sociologically ingrained is something that would require a far deeper exploration than a blog topic.  I've seen this 'reaction' from people who bite at the least little thing and literally go over the top without stopping to think.
This is why I'm a great advocate of understanding, compassion, empathy, and education. If we all just reacted rather than employing a little more of those traits, I mentioned, then chaos would rule.  This applies to everyone, everywhere, regardless of who you are, what you do or what you think.  All of those traits I mentioned should be the beating heart of every community, whether online or in the real world and if we all took the time to exercise a little restraint and 'think' rather than 'react' then communities would be the richer for it.
I'm not implying that we search for a utopia or nirvana community - that is a fantasy wish, but it is something we can work towards and something that is worthwhile considering. The alternative is to accept toxicity in people and believe it to be the new norm when it doesn't have to be that way, but it will be that way if we accept it and continue to react.
This article spells it out in a much more erudite way: https://zenhabits.net/respond/