The Group Therapy Theory of Flamewars

[Plaid Adder]

I haven't been aroudn in GD much, but I see a lot of posts asking why people can't all just get along, so I thought I would share this thing I wrote up a long time ago about why there's so much ugliness in e-communities, even when you'd think solidarity should prevail. Its permanent home is http://www.plaidder.com/crackpot.htm#group . Enjoy.
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Question: I just joined this great electronic discussion group, and already there's a flamewar. Why can't we all just get along?
Answer: Because an electronic discussion list is like group therapy without a therapist.

If you have spent much time on Yahoo!groups, you know that you cannot assemble an electronic discussion list of any size, around any topic, without eventually watching in dismay as it erupts into flames over some topic that appears to you to be at best trivial and at worst nonsensical. Why does this always happen? Well, the same principles that explain why group therapy works also explain why so many electronic communities don't.

I have never been in group therapy myself, but one of my friends swears by it, and it was from her that I finally learned that my conception of what group therapy is was mistaken. I thought, based I guess on the Bob Newhart Show and other pop culture representations, that group therapy was basically a bunch of people sitting around in a circle talking about their issues with a therapist moderating the discussion. Well, it is, only it isn't. At least according to my friend, the point of group therapy is to allow people to better understand, and if necessary modify, the ways in which they interact with their peers. The goal of a session is not so much to get people to talk about their issues, as to get them to be aware of the way they interact with the other group members while doing it. In other words, it's really about how the conversation works-- who talks, who doesn't, who gets upset, who gets angry, who plays alpha dog and who rolls over to show his soft underbelly, and why. So, for example, if A brings up something shitty that happened at work that day, and B says, "That's nothing, listen to this much worse thing that just happened to ME," and C says, "Shut up, B, can't you see A is upset?" and D says, "Why are you always picking on B?" and then A says, "Oh, never mind, it wasn't important," the thing to investigate is not so much what happened to A at work as why B felt the need to upstage her, why C took it upon herself to defend A, why D is so critical of C, and why A retires crushed instead of defending her right to speak. Eventually, in theory, A will learn to be more assertive and less whiny, B will learn not to be such an attention hog, C will learn to fight her own battles and leave others to fight theirs, and D will learn not to leap gleefully into the fray at the first sign of conflict.

Is this sounding like your list yet?

Group therapy works, to the extent that it does, because of one simple principle: When you assemble any group of people, from any variety of walks of life, and ask them to talk about any topic, they will all inevitably start working their issues out on each other.

Now, in group therapy, it is absolutely crucial that people take their shit out on each other so that the therapist can help them work through it. If B weren't constantly trying to be the center of attention, the therapist wouldn't have the opportunity to get him to ask himself why, and he would never figure out that it's because his father never gave him any support or validation when he was a boy and so he's consumed with a desire to get it from everyone else. Unfortunately, on an electronic discussion list, there is no therapist. Consequently, nobody has the authority to call people on their shit; and therefore, the same people pull the same passive-aggressive, openly-aggressive, subtly manipulative, self-aggrandizing, insenstively-steamrolling shit over and over again. And the fact that it's all electronic makes it even worse--because the other people are just words on a screen, it's much easier for the average listmember to project his or her mother, siblings, abusive high school peers, etc. onto the other members. Plus, people will let shit fly online that they would never have the balls to say in a face-to-face interaction. So no matter what the topic of the list is, be it reproductive rights or the proper management of a riding mower, people will eventually flame over it--or rather, not over the topic itself so much as over the way they feel the other list members are treating their contributions to the discussion.

A good listowner can exercise a certain amount of authority within clearly defined rules (banning particularly divisive topics, sanctioning people for trolling or posting obvious personal attacks); but nobody can do anything about these subtler group dynamics. You can't put together a FAQ that says "Don't constantly get into it with someone just because her whining about how people always misunderstand her posts reminds you of how your mother used to say mean things to you and then pretend she hadn't. Don't compare someone to Hitler just because his opinionated way of talking politics reminds you of your domineering older brother who got a car for his sixteenth birthday and what did you get nothing." And if there happens to be someone on your list who tries to be this group's therapist, that's even worse; there's nothing that pisses people off more than being psychoanalyzed when they didn't ask for it. So there is no way to prevent conflict from erupting; and often there's no real way to resolve it because half the time people don't even understand what they're really arguing about.

For here, we run up against one of the other foundational principles of therapy: Nobody is ever hip to his/her own shit. No, dear reader, not even you; and certainly not me either. Oh sure, you think you're always being reasonable; but remember, so does everyone else. If your listmember realized that her flame in response to your defense of welfare was really an expression of resentment toward the co-workers who never appreciate all the times that her hard work has saved their lazy asses, she wouldn't be ranting at you; she'd be ranting at her co-workers. So judge not, my friend, lest ye be judged; for you and I are both working our shit out on our fellow listmembers too; and yea, like unto them, we also shall never know when we're doing it. The best we can hope for is that some kind soul will point it out to us in a friendly sort of way, and we'll be able to pay attention.

Some lists do escape this kind of conflict, either because their members are all relatively well-adjusted (rare), traffic is so low or discussions are so narrowly focused that people don't get their buttons pushed (more common), or the list is run by a totalitarian dictator who enforces peace by punishing dissent (not as rare as it might be, but frankly not always a bad thing). For the rest, the only thing to do is try to survive the flames when they erupt and remember that on the internet, a day is a long time, and most flamewars blow over pretty quickly.

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C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[demnan]

1. Great writing and I agree with your assessment

thank you for giving us all something to think about.

[KittyWampus]

2. And Thanks For Reminding Me I've My Own Blindspot!

:)

[TrogL]

3. You're absolutely full of it

What business do you have aggrandizing your own glory and prostelytizing your particular brand of impertinence on the general public just because you can put a few keystrokes together without having the spell checker throw a tantrum?

I totally disagree with everything you say, just on principle alone.

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I'm kidding!! :evilgrin: