Why do so many need to be nasty?

Cynicism is often the easiest way to approach many things in life. Maybe people have been let down too many times to have faith in anything anymore. It’s quite a depressing outlook to have but when you spend a large part of your day reading online comments from the likes of ‘Le Grande Saq’, who thinks all the cannons at Dover should be reactivated to bring down immigration, it’s an understandable one.

I spend unknown amounts of time trying to fathom why people would take pleasure in being so spiteful while hidden behind a questionable moniker.

The responses to one particularly story ground my gears this week to the point where I questioned what was simply bravado and what was genuine nastiness.

The article highlighted the catch 22 situation of a man who needed tan operation to treat his bowlegs but couldn’t have one until he’d been moved into a fully accessible home. He couldn’t be moved, however, until he had a date for the operation. The situation was horrendous and surely could not be blamed on him in any way...

Cue endless comments about his weight, laziness and thirst for publicity. All of which were assumed and all of which were false.

A little while ago I would have dismissed all of these comments as the product of a kind of mob mentality driven by a desire to out do each other with the most ludicrous or offensive statement without any actual belief in what was being written.

I’d like to think that is the case but increasingly every day attitudes seem to reflect those pasted all over the internet.

In the run-up to this election people seem more out of touch with the adversity others face than ever before.