Phobos Anomaly posted:

Recently I made a (particular) forum post (not on this forum). Someone responded to this post disagreeing with me. My initial reaction was of self-righteous indignation. I'm always right how dare someone disagree with me. The fact I even managed to make my post makes me superior to all other humans.

But after cooling down and actually engaging with the offensive post I realized that this person was just pointing out the negative ramifications of my post. Ramifications that I understand and agree with. So why did I get so irrationally indignant over someone disagreeing with me?

I'm starting to believe that the format of social media forum posting is invoking and amplifying irrational rage. It's easy for oneself to believe they're right about something when you have so many people sharing your belief. This in turn makes it incredibly easy to invoke irrational rage when someone even disagrees with you. I'm always right, so you must be evil if you disagree with me, and the cycle amplifies itself and goes on.

Now I have great respect for C-SPAM posters who are much more smarter and well-informed than I am, so this is probably all very obvious to you all. But if you could expand on this a bit that would be great.