David Cooper

broadcasting intimate details and useless information from an undisclosed location in New York City.

The Last Show with David Cooper.

On the internet, newspaper websites, when they introduced user comments, that promised a productive global conversation, right?

Well, sometimes those comments feel like someone is throwing a chair in the first five seconds.

They can get ugly, they can get angry.

And it turns out the earliest people to comment on a thread might actually be the angriest.

I'm here with someone who has researched just this.

He is a communication studies professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

His name is Ben Clark.

Ben, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So you looked at a large number of online comments, some many, many millions.

What instincts did you have going in about what the angry, rude, hateful comments might be?

Did that surprise you that the first few comments that showed up were in fact the most angry, the most hateful?

Now, can the first comment being hateful, can that be sort of a tone setter for the entire conversation that goes on after that?

Is that like me showing up to a dinner party, saying something hateful, angry, and then the whole night the conversation becomes that?

I'm kind of fascinated, but also kind of horrified by this idea that hate can travel faster than calm, reflective commenting.

Is that a technology problem?

Is that a psychology problem?

Is that wrong with us?