Why are so many people angry on social media? (pt. 3)

First of all, on social media, it is actually hard for us to feel the presence of others. Sure, we can see IDs and avatars, but they are just pixels that don't make us feel like they are real, flesh-and-blood people. And that makes it a lot less psychologically stressful to make disrespectful, offensive comments. There are many unpleasant things that we simply cannot say in person that may be easy to type when we post them online. At this point, if we hide behind screen names that others do not recognize, then we are even bolder.

Second, the core mechanism of social media is retweeting. The more a piece of content is retweeted, the more widely it spreads. Even if you only have 100 fans, but if one of your content gets a lot of retweets, then it can become a breakout hit. In other words, on social media, making people have the desire to retweet is the most important thing. No matter how many followers you have and how high quality the content you write is, if it doesn't make people want to click the retweet button, it won't have much impact.

首先，在社交媒体上，我们其实很难感受到他人的存在。当然，我们能看到一个个ID和头像，但它们只是一个个像素，并不能让我们感觉到他们是真实的、有血有肉的人。而这就让我们发表不尊重的、攻击性的言论的时候，心理压力少了很多。有很多我们当面根本说不出来的难听的话，在网上发表的时候，可能很容易就打出来了，这时候，如果我们用的还是别人认不出来的网名，那我们就更大胆了。

第二，社交媒体的核心机制是转发，一条内容被转发越多，也就传播越广。就算你只有100个粉丝，但如果你的一条内容获得了很多人的转发，那它也可以成为所谓的爆款。也就是说，在社交媒体上，让人有转发的欲望就是王道。你的粉丝再多，写的内容质量再高，如果不能让人想点转发按钮，那就不会有很大的影响力。