What Actually Happens?

A man confronting his moral character

Doing things that you wouldn’t do online is a very welcoming scenario. After all, the fact that no one can know who you are, nothing bad can happen. Well, that’s not the case. One of the things that can happen is that your human character can become degraded into someone with no thought for others.

The internet is often called the age of information, for how we can immediately get information on almost anything. However, the ability to receive immediate information can actually hurt you. According to Ryan from alltheragescience.com, he says that the ability to immediately respond while you are angry the most causes you to be “less rational and less likely to think through the consequences (1)” of what you’re saying. In short, your inner voice can get destroyed because you can do something the second you think about it. This corrupts your moral character, since no one can stop you from saying something nasty. With the moral side of you removed from the picture, you might say something which could offend someone you know in real life. It's dangerous to know that this barrier can be removed. Even more alarming, it can be removed from petty internet rage.

A man with anger addiction

For some, the fact that their moral character can be broken from a specific device sets off many alarm bells. However, there’s something even more unhealthy that could happen. To some the ability to escape from a long day’s work by yelling at people online could foster an addiction that can literally break them.

According to Ryan, also “people who frequently ranted online were likely to experience more maladaptive anger in their offline life than others. (1)” This can become even worse if a person uses this as a source of escapism: yelling at people online. From doing this, they can get a dopamine rush, making it feel good. If they hadn’t already had this habit, it can develop, since their brain is telling them getting angry at other people is good. However if the person already has anger issues, then this type of action can foster it even more. Either way, in both scenarios, the subject will come to depend on the action. It could become harder for them to break away, possibly requiring an intervention. And if an intervention is needed for getting mad at people online, that is when you know it has hurt you.