What’s the psychology behind enjoying immersing yourself in negativity online?

I know a couple of people IRL who never seem to have a positive reaction to anything. The proverbial "every silver lining has a cloud" people: got a raise? just means more taxes. Sunny day? skin cancer. Cloudy day? cold and mud.

For the particular people I know, it seems like a self-esteem thing - like they don't feel themselves worthy of happiness, so they have to preemptively destroy anything positive. Or maybe just be contrarian to prove they're smarter than everyone else. It's exhausting.

Different reasons, I asume. Here are my 3 favourites:

• Attention seeking through rage bait. They want attention be it possitive or negative, the easiest is to be negative and to be a troll. Way too many people fall for it and give them their vanity when responding to them. Thus, remember never feed the troll.

• Negative emotions are way more intense than possitive emotions and in social media most of the time they are pushed harder as more people interact with negative content. That can lead for younger people to feel like they need to be more negative than they should.

• They are struggling themselves and don't have help and don't know they are struggling or know they are and just want others to struggle to.

Disclaimer, I'm not a psychologist, but these are my assumptions.

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.

Because they are angry about something else and use online to let of steam without repercussions.

A lot (most) social media is optimized for engagement which is really just another way if saying it rewards things that get attention with more attention. On mainstream platforms that is largely driven by content curation algorithms, but even simple up and down votes have the same effect.

It turns out humans are more sensitive to bad things than good things. We care more about risk or punishment than we do about reward, more about injustice than justice, etc. So we pay more attention to bad outcomes, which means social media amplifies bad things more than good things.

As far as personal posters go, I think there are people who desire engagement and have basically trained themselves to be as negative as possible because that negativity is rewarded by more engagement.

Some people are just fucking assholes. Or they're a 16-year-old edge lord. Never forget that high schoolers and children FAR outnumber adults on the internet, and of those adults, assholes, dickheads, and morons comprise the vast majority of them.

Internet trolls and edge lords: too angry to live and let live, too cowardly to lash out in person.

I'm actually a gremlin who gains sustenance when other people are mad on the internet.

Im not sure its willingness. These people are all around irl too. They just cannot be happy about anything, ever and mist spread negativity.

I think they don't know how to be anything else. Probably grew up with parents like that and had no other role models.

Perhaps it’s similar to the reasons why media outlets overwhelmingly report bad news over good news. People don’t care when things are going right. People react much more when things are going wrong.

In social media I imagine that most of the positive feedback people give takes the form of likes and upvotes, with only occasional comments, while the bulk of commentary is used for criticism and confrontation. At least in the context of doomscrolling through things like memes or political garbage. Forums where engagement itself is the norm, like philosophy or hobbies, probably get way more positive comments. But where impulsive reaction is the norm? Positivity comes in the form of thumbs up emojis, and comments are for arguing. XD

man from the title I was like. um if your in the us there is a lot to be negative about. but hobbies and such that makes no sense.

They’re still looking for the violets

snarky comments, imo, are the results of people assuming they are thinking out of the box. initially, it could have been done without malice, just pure i'll up you one better thinking.

as others have said, there's also that factor that the person is h-p-d/k-s-p/socially-challenged. (edit: i mistook add/adhd for what really is hpd)

in times like these, i'll advise that tending to your mental health is always a good practice.

Some people are just nasty little bastards, and they gain pleasure from ruining other people's days and lives.

Sometimes there's some background reasons of anger or unhappiness causing them to lash out. Sometimes they're just cunts.

Maybe they're jealous that no ones chugging their womenade.

Cereally tho, I know what and where to search so I'll look it up best I can. There are probably multiple answers though depending on their personal history.

Mental illness if it is just lashing out and undermining others for a temporary boost of one's own superiority.

Some people just enjoy arguments, it's a thrill of dopamine to be a jerk. Being evil or bad or hurting others emotionally is like a forbidden fruit, I used to do the same thing as a teenager.

When you see a person who has a post history like that, I'd strongly suggest using the block button. It will make your experience much nicer.

I knew someone IRL like that. Genuinely nice guy face-to-face, but never passed up the chance to take a swipe at someone online. As time went by his conduct and attitudes made it clearer and clearer that he's dealing with undiagnosed mental health issues.

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Our lizard brains don't care about positivity or negativity - any kind of engagement produces dopamine.

Maybe it's just a conditioned response. It takes more effort to say something constructive than it does to be snarky.

it feels good.

it creates a feedback loop of validation and encouragement.

you also have the option of not caring about any of this. further, your definition of 'negativity' may not be shared by them. a lot of folks think their relentless hostility over politics or similar, is them doing good in the world. i can certain every mod who bans me or person who tells me to kill myself over like gaza or any other controversial issue, does not regard themselves as being negative when they do so.

people have told me I'm negative for my interest in academic research my entire life. i don't regard it as negative, but they do.

misery loves company

There are people like that IRL, but in my experience it’s more like Eeyore than outright hostility. Eeyore personalities exist.

Good odds, when confronted face to face, the hostility we all see online would be dialed back. There’s no real confrontation to the online confrontation.

People tend to only know their own lived experience and think that they're "normal". Hurt people hurt people, privileged people have massive blind spots. Everybody judges, it's how we learn. And some people are grumpy.