How do you people get so intense?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Reading this board, especially MPSIMS, Great Debates and the Pit, part of the fun is watching some of you folks get enthusiastic about the topic, be it political, professional, or personal. It’s fun because that level of intensity is alien to me, so I sit here fascinated – I mean, mildly interested. I’m not an intense person and it’s like watching fireworks from several miles away; they’re pretty but I miss the ground displays.

How do you people do it? How do you fall madly, deeply in love? How do you get that pissed at Donald Trump? Or if you are an authority on something, like I have been at one time or another, how do you work that into the conversation? And why would you want to?

2

I’ve mellowed over the years, actually.

I suspect a lot of us had heads full of ideas that we could never get anyone to listen to, at least not to the point of understanding. That tends to generate intensity. (Which in turn may get one looked at rather oddly, as intensity can be offputting to some people).

3

I suspect that the anonymity and remoteness of the environment nudges some posters to be more intense that they would be in a real-life discussion. I could be wrong though, I am pretty laid back and avoid the controversial stuff.

4

That’s certainly a big part of it. Plus the ability to look up cites to back up your argument without your friend calling you an asshole and saying “Why you always HAVE to be right” or something along those lines.

Also, those big blowouts tend to be the really fast/rapid fire threads with little more than a few minutes between posts. Which makes it blow up even more on a site like this that displays new posts practically in real time.
In the past, you could just ignore a thread…now you can see the responses popping up in the corner of your eye when you’re watching TV.
You’ll notice those ones also tend to really mellow out the posts starting slowing down.

5

I’d presume everyone has some topics they feel strongly about. I certainly do. But “internet intense” is very different than “real life intense”, in my opinion and experience. I’m much more cautious and low-key when discussing fraught issues in real life than I am on the Dope. Here I feel free to be unfiltered on most topics, since there are no real risks of significant social consequences – i.e. sabotaging a relationship that might be important for work, family, etc. But even when I might “sound” intense, I’m probably still relaxed and having a good time. Over my decade plus of Doping, I’ve probably been actually, truly worked up about something only a half-dozen times or so.

6

You have no idea (or perhaps you do) what a relief this Board is after a lifetime of being told to quiet down and people looking uncomfortable whenever I really warm to a subject.

7

I’ve wondered the same thing. People here have really extreme opinions about stuff, and love arguing about that stuff. I find debating to be exhausting, but Dopers seem to be energized by it. There are people here who will say practically anything to keep an argument going and avoid backing down an inch. I rarely see conciliatory statements like “You have a good point—I hadn’t considered that.”

I’ve seen the same kind of thing in Cafe Society threads, where people have very intense opinions—usually negative—about movies, books, music, food, etc. I hardly ever see Dopers saying things like “That movie wasn’t my cup of tea.” Instead, I see ludicrously hyperbolic stuff like, “That movie is objectively bad, it’s the worst movie ever made, every copy should be tracked down and destroyed, and anyone claiming to like it is pretending.” I don’t know where all this animus is coming from. When I joined this board in 2012, one of my first reactions was, “Jeez, these people hate everything.”

I don’t post much in Politics and Elections, because I can’t muster the level of passion that is the norm in there. I’ve been a Democrat for most of my life and consider myself a liberal, but compared to the crowd in P&E I’m practically a centrist, or a moderate at best.

8

I live in Trumplandia, and am bombarded by all sorts of conspiracy drivel every day. I hold my tongue, as it’s just not worth it.

I come here, where I can find a few people that I agree with, but mostly because there are people I can disagree with without having to worry about social or economic consequences of voicing my disagreement to the wrong person IRL.

That said, there are also those who I would like to have a friendly if disagreeing debate with, but they’d usually rather turn it into some sort of contest, and don’t bother to actually debate issues, but rather get personal, make things up to debate against rather than what was actually said, and play every other fallacy in search of “winning” an argument.

That gets tiresome quickly.

9

Okay, but how about in your personal life? My “love” is more like someone else’s moderate affection.

10

I’m pretty low-key in real life; I’ve actually had friends describe me as a “gentle soul” (which seems weird because I don’t feel particularly gentle, but that’s another story). I don’t like being around histrionic people who surround themselves with drama.

I suspect that a lot of Dopers are like @iiandyiiii and are far less “intense” in real life as they are here. But I haven’t met any Dopers in person, so I really don’t know.

11

The OP raises an interesting question. I might be one of those posters who some might consider “intense” in some of my opinions. I think part of it is that I do have fairly strong opinions on some subjects, and so naturally those are the topics where I bother to participate, otherwise I don’t.

In real life I’m pretty laid back; I certainly don’t (and never have) involved myself in things like protests or writing opinionated letters to the editor or things of that nature. Politically I’d be considered a liberal by American standards, and a moderate liberal with a few conservative traits by Canadian standards, but certainly not an activist of any sort. Real life is a busy place and there are too many other things to worry about.

The funny thing is that although most of my friends are pretty much like me in terms of values, one of my best and closest friends would be considered a raving right-wing loon by the standards of this board. If he was a poster here I’d probably be Pitting him with unrestrained venom. But IRL we’re the best of friends because we’ve known each other since college days and he’s a genuinely nice person. I was best man at his wedding and he was best man at mine. When he comes over for one of our drunken evenings – all too rare these days because we’re now geographically somewhat distant – the atmosphere is always that of the warm cordiality that can only exist between genuinely good friends. When politics comes up I tell him he’s an idiot and why he’s wrong and he tells me the same, and we laugh and have another drink and move on. Real life’s like that.

12

Very good question. I am baffled when someone gets so worked up that they have to give themselves a time out away from the Dope (or other site) for a few days - or even when they have to step away from the keyboard for an hour or so to calm down.

mmm

13

WHAT ELSE DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO WHEN SOMEBODY IS SO WRONG IN THE INTERNET?!?!?!?
:rage:
leaves slooooowly backtracking…

14

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I did send an email to the Coca-Cola company complaining that their new version of Coke Zero tasted like horse piss compared to the old stuff that I liked. My activism so far has not generated any meaningful response. I expected that they would immediately go back to the old formula. Instead, I got an email response all about how the new taste of the new Coke Zero was representative of the constant improvement and innovations of the Coca-Cola company. It was almost as if nobody had actually read my email, and it was a response by a robot or something!

15

I’ve abandoned interest in quite a few threads that were initially of great interest to me, salivating to read more posts and the interesting input they provided, but eventually it would go off-topic, or tangentially OT as two posters bickered back & forth over some interpretation of a word or other minor ( or much less germane to the OPs topic ) point introduced as the thread got longer. So here’s me, returning to browse the SDMB after some interval of time, and I see a thread I’ve been following has 38 new posts. Clicking on it with eager anticipation leads to the letdown of seeing 35 of the 38 new posts of two posters arguing back and forth about the alloy content of ancient metallurgy and it’s origins when the thread was about something like how to replace door hinges or whatever. A lame example, but it believe it makes my point.

16

I’ve seen such statements quite frequently. (My bolding.)

Sure, there are threads in which two people (presumably)* go at it without giving any quarter—but I’d be willing to bet that a statistical analysis would show such conflicts to constitute a tiny minority of all interaction here.

I guess a potential bottom line might be that those who want some back-and-forth are more likely to hang out in some particular sub-forums, while those who are horrified by such will prefer other sub-forums. Hurrah for options!

*Before coming to the Dope I frequented another medium-sized board in which there was a lot of fairly-open “acting” and general deception–it wasn’t against the rules to use a sock, for example, and a lot of people apparently found amusement in seeing how long they could fool people they’d been interacting with for years.

So when I see a seemingly very-personal conflict going on in a thread here, I will fleetingly wonder if it’s one person with two accounts putting on a show. (Unlikely, I’ll concede, given that the moderators do police sock-puppetry via checking IP addresses, etc…)

17

I think I am not as intense as I may come across. The thing is, I’m a writer and the stuff I have written over the last 30 years or so has been training based. So, I speak directly to the audience directly in a voice that sounds commanding. Because when I write, I am telling people “do this, do that”. As a result, I’ve started speaking the way I write. I go directly to the meat of them matter and use language that motivates them to do what I want. It has rebounded against me spectacularly at times, but professional hazard, I guess. My goal now is to just get a job where I can practice being a nice person instead of a commander.

18

On one hand, I’ve been told by doctors that my “emotional shell” is not as strong as it is for other people—that I feel emotions more intensely than many people.

On the other hand, the things I am intense about here tend to be things I think deserve intensity. I have tried to temper my language lately, but I still am passionate about injustice-related topics, particularly when I see people who seem to want to side with the injustice.

I do, however, have issues with not being able to simmer down. It’s why I make efforts to not respond too much after a passionate post. I know that, once I get angry, I need to cool off. I know that I’ll really want to respond to a lot of things, but that it may not be the best time to do so. Those are the times I come off more stupid.

When I’m angry, energy is definitely at a surplus. I find it can be stronger than caffeine, without the discomfort. The problem is that it comes with a one-track mind.

19

I’m an intense person. Always have been. Which isn’t to say I’m an argumentative person in real life. I’m known for being diplomatic, open-minded and willing to talk to people about virtually anything. When I’m confronted with an opinion that triggers my rage button, my response is to shut down and say nothing. It’s better than putting something unconstructive out there. So people often believe I’m unflappable when really I’m just very good at controlling my anger.

For example, I was recently at a family event in which one of my in-laws trotted out a video she’d taken at the rally of a prominent politician and started raving about how she’d brought her 12 year old grandson to said rally because said politician was such a terrific role model for children. She just went on and on showing this video to everyone and talking about it for at least a good twenty minutes. From my perspective, she was praising a man who makes me nauseated just to think about. What I wanted to do was flip the goddamn table. Instead, I sat there and ate my steak, and said absolutely nothing, though at a certain point I turned to my husband and remarked, “This is damned good filet!” The filet was worth having to listen to her blather, honestly. If she had tried to engage me on the subject, I’m not sure what I’d say, but it wouldn’t be careless.

This actually plays out on the internet, too. I can appear very calm and reasonable in my posts while freaking the fuck out internally. (On certain subjects close to my heart, keeping up this moderate tone qualifies as emotional labor, and I have stopped doing it by choosing not to engage.)

I feel everything intensely. Love? Jesus. Love is all I think about. It’s how we make it through. I am high as a kite right now because my kid counted to ten today.

Or we have to step away for three years, in my case. This is one of the things PTSD can do to you, it can make internet arguments feel like a matter of your personal, immediate safety rather than just someone’s opinion, man. That’s why I fucking hate when people joke about others being “triggered” - a word they are co-opting from the clinical language of people who suffer from PTSD. The last time I was “triggered” on the Straight Dope, I argued with a guy here for 19 hours straight, at the expense of sleep and food, and missed work the next day. I doubt he was paying much attention to the argument, while I spent hours in a sleep-deprived stupor crafting each individual post - because my physical safety felt dependent on changing his mind. That mishap was a major factor in my decision to leave here and get better help. PTSD is not a fucking joke, and neither is being triggered. (Now when I’m getting tangled up on the internet, my husband says, “quit arguing with your mother” because that’s usually what gets me hooked, some combination of willful ignorance and lack of empathy that recreates my mama drama.)

I think a lot of people who freak out easily or easily have their buttons pushed refuse to acknowledge that they are responsible for addressing their trauma or associated psychological issues, and instead demand that the world adapt around them. I think that is ultimately to their detriment. That guy I argued with for 19 hours was probably wrong about whatever thing he said, but he is not responsible for my PTSD. It was my own stupid ass who didn’t go to sleep. The problem is people are going around misidentifying traumatic triggers for traumatic causes. “I can’t deal with the trauma of Doper’s opinion about X” is a stupid thing to say, but I’ve essentially heard that argument, when a much more adaptive thing to say would be, “Doper’s opinion about X triggers experience Y so I better go address Y.” I believe that a lot of our current cultural problems stem from a refusal of people to take responsibility for their own mental health. I feel very, ah, intensely about this.

I’m much less bothered now than I used to be. I leaned into the hard-left identity politics thing for a while, but it didn’t serve me well, and it certainly didn’t help anyone suffering under an oppressive system. So I’m lightening up.

The truth is that, even if they don’t have full-blown PTSD, people are more prone to intensity about issues when they have an identity tie to that issue, and the opinion threatens their identity. This happens very easily, and journalists take advantage of it all the time.

20

  1. Please take good care of yourself.

  2. I’m glad you came back.