Scientists measure awesome power of internet comments

Nerds

Nerds

I’m going to present two claims, and you can decide for yourself which is more compelling:

  1. Differentiation of species occurred over millions of years through natural selection of hereditary traits.
  2. Differentiation of species occurred over millions of years through natural selection of hereditary traits, you prick.

The second one just sounds truer, doesn’t it? That is the odd finding of this study, helpfully summarized by one of the authors in last weekend’s New York Times. First of all, I think we’re all glad that there is a Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and it is printed. Second, the study focused specifically on online comments sections, finding that comments which contained epithets, profanity and ad hominem attacks affected readers’ viewpoints more powerfully than equivalent comments without those attacks. Civilization is doomed.

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