> It felt pretty good. At first. Then I felt worse. WAY worse because I knew I had hurt the person I had yelled at.

> So I think you're right that while it is a release, it's an anti-productive one.

That ... actually sounds like it had the result of making you not want to do it again in the future, and if that's the case, one could say it was productive. And if lashing out online has less of a bad impact on the person on the other end than lashing out in person, then that seems like an improvement to me.

The difference is, I had to physically be around that person afterwards. I had to see how my actions affected that person.

I don't have to see that online. I get to lob bombs over the wire at someone I've never met and will likely never meet. I can make them feel bad and feel very little consequence for it but easily justify my actions to myself in no small part because I don't have to see how it affected them.

I suppose you're right. Lashing out is not a slow release of the pressure within that will save you from popping your balloon, it's the pop itself.

Not all people have set up a structure in their lives that allow them to slowly release that pressure. We do not all have people in our lives that we can talk to about our feelings. Social media might help these folks.

If I were to lash out at you during lunch or while we're in meeting, people would probably ask me to calm down and say "hey dude, what's going on, you're acting irrational, where is this anger coming from?" and "can we help you in some way, so that you won't feel the need to be so aggressive?"

Social media, however, has not only made flame wars easier to achieve, it has also made it much easier to ignore any concern we might have for the lasher-outers, the people who are clearly in need of some love and affection. In social media, we burn these people by stripping them of their karma.

I find poorly designed karma systems, not social media, to be at fault.

The algorithms that all major social media sites are in large part to blame.

If the algorithms didn’t exist, the most recent would appear first.

If the algorithms were tuned differently, NLP could be used to pick out the most thoughtful and caring messages to show people, rather than the most liked or most emotionally charged.

I think any social media company using an algorithm should be responsible for what they show, since they have switched from publishing everything to picking winners and losers.

To take your analogy a little further: if we all started saying to someone who started lashing out online, "Hey dude, what's going on? You're acting irrational. Where's this anger coming from? What can I/we do to help?" would it subdue the flames and vitriol that exists on social media? Maybe. I don't know. It's worth a try.

What I suspect would be better would be to pick up the phone and call that person and say those things. The release of venting verbally with a person who is understanding and prepared to accept the venting is likely significantly more productive and healthier than over text.

Then again, 99% of the time, we don't even know that persons name, much less their phone number. Therein lies, I think in part, the crux of the problem: I'm a tribe member who is able to throw stones at a member of a different tribe without immediate or clear consequence.

I’ve seen it work before, but it’s rare.

The algorithms don’t encourage reading of responses like that typically... and, alas, human nature doesn’t really encourage people to “like” or “love” or otherwise strongly react to messages like that.

@Zelphyr I feel refreshed by the way you humored me and my weird, half-baked ideas in this little sub thread.