Why do people show a lack of basic empathy to some, specifically on the internet?
I believe this is for a large multitude of reasons. One being lack of understanding. When people talk to others on the internet, they display very little emotion. I’m of the personal belief that most emotion displayed on the internet is far from real, but I’m also aware that that may only apply to me, which makes the point for this purpose useless and irrelevant.
If someone’s speaking on the other end of a computer screen, especially a person that you may not understand or know much about, it’s basic human behaviour to not care very much about them, if at all. People, on a fundamental level, thus cannot relate to you. They don’t understand what you’re currently going through, and its not that they don’t care enough to understand you, but they simply may have higher priorities, but that doesn’t excuse a simple few gestures or being courteous. They have far bigger priorities, some of which is about people they actually care about. People get along with better people they can relate to, or people they can legitimately understand. Why does that exclude them from basic empathy? It’s likely due to, simply, not caring enough to about a person they don’t know. This, of course, is standard human behaviour.
There’s exceptions to this, of course. People act more favourably to people that act extremely favourably towards them. This is a logical and simple conclusion, but one people tend to skip.
People which talk without any notice favour or emotion behind their words are extremely hard to relate to, as well as people who’s only “noticable” emotion beside apathy is mild anger. Negative experiences tend to outweigh positive ones in our psyche, which extends to emotion. Why would they care about someone who’s routinely negative, or for someone they simply don’t understand the struggles behind. It’s not hard to be nice, but it’s hard to overcome basic human emotion and be base-level empathic to everyone, or simply care about those you don’t understand.
This has been a self-entitled, exhausted lunatic rant by yours truly. Have a good current existence, good luck for whatever you’re going through, whether it be boiling anger from something thats happened or apathy reading a dumb rant by me, and just be kind, no matter what people do. You can be understanding and courteous to people, and hopefully I’ll start doing it too. Even if someone says some things you dislike, look at the bigger picture, and don’t take everything at face value. People don’t understand you, and you don’t understand them, so the only logical take is to simply be courteous, no matter the person on the other end… just don’t use this as an excuse to be rude and unempathetic, because that makes all of this invalid and you’re just being a jerk.
Some of these points are written a bit wrongly, but the main point still stands
