{"id":433,"date":"2015-02-13T20:36:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T03:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=433"},"modified":"2015-06-07T12:52:26","modified_gmt":"2015-06-07T19:52:26","slug":"reasons-why-youre-an-idiot-gettin-mad-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/reasons-why-youre-an-idiot-gettin-mad-on-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons Why You’re an Idiot: Gettin’ Mad on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anger is an addiction. Righteous indignation is a disease. This is how I came to see my own online behavior as I got into comment slapfights and fell for endless streams of rage-inciting clickbait. Rage is a poison in the brain, an infectious one that poisons the air around you, like smoking. Isn\u2019t it about time we all quit?<\/p>\n

Imagine a dude\u00a0bashing himself in the head with a laptop. You ask him why he\u2019s doing that, and he says, \u201cBecause people on the other end are idiots!\u201d<\/p>\n

You point out, \u201cBut you\u2019re the one smacking yourself in the head. If you keep doing that, you\u2019re going to turn yourself into a jibbering idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He replies, \u201cBut I need to smack myself in the head. I keep trying to get information, and other people keep being wrong, so I need to smack myself to get their wrongness out of my head. There\u2019s no other way, so I\u2019m going to keep beating myself until other people stop being wrong.\u201d And\u00a0he turns his brain to jelly.<\/p>\n

Do you see how ridiculous this is? Maybe you do, but you still don\u2019t stop. Fine, we all get like that sometimes. Every one of us has to make a concerted effort to not keep poking at our sores. It\u2019s there. It\u2019s being sore. It\u2019s maddening. And you don\u2019t like it, so you keep poking it, but the only thing you\u2019re accomplishing is making yourself more sore. You rub yourself so raw that even the tiniest grain of sand feels like a hot knife in the wound.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The real idiot on the internet is the person who twists into such paroxysms of rage that he wastes whole days <\/b>being angry at other people for making him mad. The only way I\u2019ve found to combat this unhealthy tendency is to recognize that they<\/b> are not the ones making you mad. You are<\/b>.<\/p>\n

I know why people do it. Being mad at other people feels better than being mad at yourself, but it\u2019s not helping. The more you read about injustices that you\u2019re powerless to stop, the more impotent you feel. The more impotent you feel, the less you do anything, and you can write off your failure to do anything as something you can’t change.<\/p>\n

I’m here to tell you it\u2019s bullshit. Willpower really is like a muscle, and it can be trained. It takes willpower to stop damaging yourself, and that includes psychic damage. Sometimes you have to let yourself be mad at yourself, and then vow to change your behavior so you\u00a0have less to be mad at yourself for.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying anger never has a place. There\u2019s plenty injustice in this world to be mad about. But it\u2019s up to you to recognize whether that anger is calling you to action or paralyzing you in your seat. When it\u2019s the latter, you need to back off, especially if you find yourself flying off the handle about little shit \u2013 stupid shit<\/i>. Stand up, take a walk, and get some perspective. I\u2019ve had times where I\u2019ve backed off an argument to realize, \u201cOh crap, I\u2019m the one being the asshole here.\u201d It happens to the best of us. Self-awareness is the first step.<\/p>\n

The next step to quitting your anger like a bad drug habit is not just removing yourself from \u201cthe enemy,\u201d but also recognizing the people \u201con your side\u201d who love frothing at the mouth. These people are like fellow alcoholics. You don\u2019t have to stop being friends, but stop drinking from their fount of rage-ohol.<\/p>\n

Ask yourself, \u201cDo I really need to join this circle-jerk to make myself feel better?\u201d or \u201cDo I really need to tell this idiot how wrong he is?\u201d How much better would you feel if you actually got something done today instead? Maybe it\u2019s time to take a step back from the internet until you do. I know how hard that is, trust me. I still struggle against the pull of clickbait, especially when I should be writing instead.<\/p>\n

I tell you though, winning that struggle is a billion times more satisfying than winning yet another goddamned stupid argument on the internet. Because in the end, you can either say, \u201cI sure showed that moron.\u201d or \u201cHey, I wrote a book!\u201d Which one of those is the greater victory?<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anger is an addiction. Righteous indignation is a disease. This is how I came to see my own online behavior as I got into comment slapfights and fell for endless streams of rage-inciting clickbait. Rage is a poison in the brain, an infectious one that poisons the air around you, like smoking. Isn\u2019t it about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[20,23,24,18],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living","tag-advice","tag-health","tag-rants","tag-society-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}