40 Screenshots Of Toxic Conversations That Are Also Funny

There's something deeply fascinating about watching perfectly reasonable people transform into keyboard warriors the moment they log online. The same person who would apologize profusely for accidentally bumping into you at the grocery store will gleefully type out messages so caustic they could strip paint. It's like Clark Kent in reverse, except instead of gaining superpowers, they lose every filter that made them tolerable at dinner parties.

Scientists have a fancy name for this phenomenon called the online disinhibition effect, which basically means people feel way less restrained when communicating through screens compared to in person. Think of it as the psychological equivalent of wearing sunglasses indoors and thinking nobody can see you. You can see everyone else just fine, but somehow you've convinced yourself you're invisible and therefore completely immune to social consequences.

The most problematic version of this is what researchers call toxic disinhibition, where people get meaner online and create hostile environments that nobody asked for. This is different from benign disinhibition, where people just open up more and share personal things they might not say face to face. One makes the internet a supportive space, the other turns it into a digital thunderdome where everyone's auditioning for the role of Most Unpleasant Human.

So why does this happen? The root lies deep in human psychology, particularly in how most communication is nonverbal, composed of body language, eye contact, speech tone and language patterns. When you strip all that away and leave only text on a screen, our brains start freaking out a little. Without this information to help process and categorize what we're reading, our minds are left sorting through uncertainty, and thanks to prehistoric fight or flight instincts, being unsure about another person's intent often creates a negative reaction to a perceived threat. Basically, your caveman brain thinks every ambiguous email is a saber tooth tiger.

Online, you're often invisible so you don't have to worry about body language and tone, and you can easily misrepresent yourself. It's like wearing a Halloween costume that makes you feel like a different person, except the costume is just the absence of anyone actually looking at your face while you say terrible things.

There's also usually a lag time between when you post something and when you get a response, which makes it easy to just post something and bounce without thinking about the consequences. Fire off that spicy take, close the laptop, and pretend you didn't just ruin someone's day. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

When you're sharing with a crowd online, you tend to airbrush out disappointments to make your day as enviable as possible, but paradoxically, that same crowd also emboldens you to say things you'd never dream of saying to someone's actual face. Research found that college students who felt emboldened by anonymity, agreeing with statements like sending mean emails or text messages is easy because they're not face to face with the other person, were more likely to engage in cyberbullying. Turns out when you can't see the person wincing at your words, it's a lot easier to keep typing them.

Behavioral psychologist Jo Hemmings notes that research has shown trolls tend to have an inability to build healthy relationships offline, which honestly tracks. If your primary source of entertainment is making strangers feel bad on the internet, that's probably not a sign that your Tuesday night book club is thriving. These folks are motivated by status, and attracting attention or upsetting people gives them a sense of self worth and importance that's likely lacking in their day to day offline lives. It's like being the villain in a video game, except the game is real life and nobody's having fun.

The text message version of this is equally bonkers. Text messages encourage laziness and passive aggressive behavior, creating a higher quantity of interactions but decreasing their quality. It's just too easy to fire off a snippy text when you're mad instead of having an actual conversation where you might have to, heaven forbid, regulate your emotions like a functional adult. Texting and other forms of computer mediated communication can make people more anxious because of the many ways one can interpret a message. That simple text saying "we need to talk" could mean absolutely nothing or it could mean your life is about to implode, and studies show that ambiguous texts are interpreted negatively, triggering bouts of anxiety.

The really wild part is that people tend to attribute voices and imagined characteristics to written text based on their own expectations and not necessarily on the actual intended meaning or tone, which can lead people to act differently than they might in person. You're basically having a conversation with a version of someone you invented in your head, and then getting mad at the real person for what your imaginary version of them said. It's like being angry at someone because of a dream you had, except you're doing it constantly and calling it communication.

The internet also makes people view online interactions more as a game where real life rules don't necessarily apply. Authority figures aren't as big of a deal online, so people feel and act as equals, which can lead them to act differently than they normally would offline. Nobody's boss is watching them type mean comments on a recipe blog at two in the morning, so suddenly everyone's an expert food critic with a grudge against someone's grandmother's casserole. The tragic irony is that all this technological progress that was supposed to bring us closer together has just given us new and creative ways to be awful to each other from the comfort of our couches. We've got the ability to instantly connect with anyone on the planet, and we're using it to argue about things that don't matter with people we'll never meet while our actual relationships suffer from us being glued to screens. It's like being handed a miracle and using it to throw rocks at strangers.