Why Are People Rude Online

Elisha Tan is a Psychology enthusiast and a Social Media Consultant at Adonai Training. She indulges in exploring the works of the human mind online, as well as the applications of social media in the social, economy and business arenas. Read more about her on her blog!

There are many instances where a brand exhibits rude behaviours on social media platforms, ranging from rude replies by Nestle and gate-crashing on Offgamers’ Facebook page by their competitors.

While it is interesting to write about them along the lines of what-not-to-dos, my attention is directed as to why these people behaved the way they do online since it is in my belief that these offenders surely have the potential to behave otherwise as shown by their business achievements or their job statuses. I’ll offer two reasons why people are so rude online.

Lack of norms in Social Media

There’s a certain set of behaviors that are considered acceptable depending the social setting that you are in; you simply behave differently in a pub versus in a business meeting, in the presence of your parents versus in that of your friends. People and places are cues to your behavior. However, social media has blurred the distinction between groups of people and it’s a place that holds many different meanings. There are simply no fixed norms in social media.

This lack of norms, coupled with the ease of expressivity online and the association of social media as a place to unwind, may have made people want to express themselves more online. This also includes expressing themselves recklessly or even putting effort to have the last word, even though one really has nothing to say.

Lack of norms also affects how your online speech is interpreted. Your speechless is silence offline but online it can be reflected as ‘…………….’ or simply the lack of reply, depending on the level of the compulsion one have to tell people that they’re speechless. Moreover, the absence of speech offline lack can be seen as pondering, not wanting to argue further or ignoring depending on the accompanying body language, but ‘………….’ can be interpreted as a rebuttal, a roll of the eye or an act of eliciting laughter and you’ll not be able to confidently know which one it is.

Not only is there lack of norms on communication, there is also a lack of norms on ownership. Do you own your platforms or do you not? For Nestle’s case, they support the former case. They certainly believe that their Facebook Page is their territory so whatever they want to do with it, or however they want to interact with people on it, it’s solely under their discretion. To put it in an analogy, Nestle thinks of their platform as a concrete house with no windows. All visitors are subjected to their torture or kindness depending on their rules and third parties have no reason in meddling with its affairs.

MOL, however, is on the other side of the continuum. They probably think of their platform (and so do everyone’s platforms) as a public place with no governance that anyone can do anything he/she wants, like littering and vandalism.

I will suggest treating social media platform as a house with transparent walls. Yes, it’s your house and you are in charge of housekeeping, but the way you treat your guests is subjected to public scrutiny and subsequently, the public witch-hunt if necessary.

Fallacy of Cyberspace Anonymity