alt Hacker NewsI have found that there are people who just want to watch the world burn. There are many reasons, but, at its most basic, hurt people hurt people.
That's something I like to keep in mind, when I'm reacting to someone being ... less than friendly ... By reacting badly, I then make it all right for them to justify doing it again, to someone else. I've found that I can defend myself, without becoming a foaming-at-the-mouth maniac. We can enforce our boundaries with water pistols, most of the time. We don't need nukes.
Everything is connected. This chap may be naive, but he's actually trying to set good connections in motion. I applaud that.
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I feel like a lot of people desperately want to make some kind of impact on the world. Something that causes some number of people to acknowledge their existence (or the effects of it).
It takes real effort to do that in a positive way with a society built around surfacing negativity.
> I have found that there are people who just want to watch the world burn. There are many reasons, but, at its most basic, hurt people hurt people.
I'm not sure that it's even malicious. I think many hackers look at a website or a service as a game to play. They aren't thinking so far as the person that this action affects, just as far as "I wonder if I could get all the data off that site?" or something similar. And on top of that, some view the rate-limiting as a challenge.
I think it's the same thing that drives the excessive snark or cruelty in comments. They don't think of the person on the other end as a person, they think of them as an endpoint.