I’ve noticed a pattern. Every now and then, someone leaves a rude, mean, or snarky comment on one of my posts. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I’ll check their post history, and it’s almost always nothing but negativity. They never seem to have anything positive or kind to say about anything, whether it’s politics, hobbies, personal anecdotes, or whatever else. It’s just a constant stream of bitterness and hostility. After seeing so many accounts like this, it got me wondering: what do people actually get out of being like that? The idea of willingly immersing yourself in that much negativity is genuinely alien to me.
Angry, powerless people can use their interactions with others on the internet as an outlet, to correct views they see as threatening, or just to lash out at people they perceive as ‘the problem’, and/or a way to feel they have a voice/are making some difference when they don’t get enough opportunity to do this offline.
Separately, trolls just like to mess with people for a basic sense of power and entertainment, and to feel like they matter, again when they otherwise don’t have ways to feel that offline.
Paid trolls/bots can also express negative views either about specific topics, or on specific communities, if these are targeted as going against some political or commercial goal. These may also intersperse red herring interactions that are not to do with the explicit goal to make the account appear more like a regular person’s.
It can be hard to tell which is which, but these all exist, and all can manifest in a pattern of seemingly inconsistent but predominantly negative posts/comments.