Why do people seem okay with online shouting?

A viral video of a Singaporean man shouting at a staff member in a McDonald’s outlet recently prompts thoughts about online behaviour.

ON the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. So said one cute pooch with a paw on a computer keyboard in a well-known 1993 Peter Steiner cartoon.

In real life, when we bark like anxious, insecure dogs at, oh let’s say, counter staff at a McDonald’s, most people will say sharply to us, “Bad dog. Stop it. No ice cream with the correct dog-safe flavour for you.”

On the Internet, though, when we bark like anxious, insecure dogs at a person or a company, some people will encourage us with “fight, fight, fight...”.

Somehow, when online, SHOUTING IN COMMENTS IS NOT THE SAME AS SHOUTING AT A FAST-FOOD EMPLOYEE IN THE FACE, RIGHT? RIGHT?

Right.

Few people would shrug off the way a man ranted at a McDonald’s employee recently.

“Don’t tell me sorry. I very angry. What! I haven’t order finish, money, money, money, what is this?” shouted the customer in a clip that had gone viral (see it at tinyurl.com/star2shout).

People scolded him in comments on the report about his unreasonable behaviour. Others chided him in measured tones, saying that even if the employee did something wrong, he should have demanded redress without a raging meltdown.

It was wonderful when the community came together to say it would not stand for such beastly behaviour.

However, some people – maybe even the same nice people who would have scolded the ice cream-meltdown man – shrug off the same bad shouty behaviour when it happens online.

When a Netizen has a meltdown and yells at a person or a company on social media pages in bleep-filled comments, some people eagerly lap up the words. Some even join the chorus of online barking.

A 2013 article on the psychology of online comments published in the New Yorker magazine quotes social cognitive psychologist Albert Bandura: “As personal responsibility becomes more diffused in a group, people tend to dehumanise others and become more aggressive toward them”. (At tinyurl.com/ star2-comments.)

The article noted that “multiple studies have also illustrated that when people don’t think they are going to be held immediately accountable for their words, they are more likely to fall back on mental shortcuts in their thinking and writing, processing information less thoroughly”.

We can’t see the human faces behind social media pages, so we forget that, in the end, real people are still being shouted at.

On the Internet, it’s too easy to lose our humanity – cruel comment by comment, mindless meme by meme. On the Internet, it’s too easy to turn into a bad dog.

Go for a walk instead of stoking yet another demented online fight. Go help your neighbour. Go. Away.

Come back when you learn how to give a reasonable scolding without becoming unhinged.

Stay if you know how to disagree in a civil manner that can teach us all something. Stay longer if you can burn someone or some company who has done wrong with reason, style and humour.

The epic shouting and fury? There are moments and crimes that truly deserve it. Reserve the fury for them. Reserve the fury for the correct targets.

It is cruel to vent our frustration on lower-level staff who have nothing to do with our problems.

Another shouting incident that I witnessed myself happened in a small post office, where customers and staff were speaking in normal tones as parcels and letters exchanged hands.

Then an uncle yelled like he was a parade commander. Instead of shouting at a stadium full of soldiers, he was bellowing at one customer service auntie, with his distorted mouth, bulging eyes just a counter’s width away from her face.

The crime? His parcel wasn’t delivered. Sure, we certainly feel his pain. But no matter how powerfully he yelled, it wouldn’t land drops of saliva on the face of the actual person who may not have done his or her job. It wouldn’t land saliva on the faces of the big bosses with big salaries to cushion and comfort them. It would, however, land saliva on the face of the auntie who was actually trying to help him.

Why foam at the mouth at lower-level, front-line staff like you’ve got rabies?

Why look like you’re going to bite me when I ask you to lower your voice when speaking to the auntie?

We very much identify with the postal customer’s frustration over the parcel problem. So many of us have fumed at counters, on phones and on social media pages about companies, wanting our problems to be resolved.

But are we so very sure that we are not the problem? Is it possible to keep to just sounding grumpy as the problem is being investigated, instead of shouting immediately?

IT help-desk staff have an acronym, PBKAC, which they sometimes use to label issues that are called in by irate computer users. It stands for “Problem Between Keyboard And Chair”, referring to errors made by the irate users themselves.

I once heard a woman getting mad and raising her voice at a cafe food server like he was stupid or something. It turned out that he didn’t know what dish she wanted as she said “cuckoos, CUCKOOS”, instead of the couscous she thought she ordered.

He stayed polite throughout her hangry little rant.

I can only imagine what the customer might have posted online later about the supposed stupidity of the server.

Netizens hungry for the outrage of the day would probably take her word for it.

Another person’s and company’s name would be smeared.

Another day in social media land.

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a cuckoo. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network