“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
The internet has connected the world, but it has also unleashed a torrent of hostility. The primary source of this hostility is the online hater. Hidden behind a screen and protected by anonymity, these individuals mock and insult creators, podcasters, online personalities, and those who express their opinion on social media.
While the medium of the internet is new, the psychology of the hater is not. In this video, drawing on the ideas of the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, we show that the hostility emanating from the online hater is a symptom of powerlessness and weakness.
“…the evil of the weak wants to harm others and to see the signs of the suffering it has caused.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn
To understand the psychology of the hater, we must first explore how the desire for power is a primary motivator of man. In On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:
“Every animal, including the philosophical animal, instinctively strives for an optimum of favourable conditions under which it can expend all its power and achieve its maximal feeling of power.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
The desire for power, which Nietzsche regarded as universal, is often misunderstood. Many think of it as a desire to dominate and control other people, and while some pursue power in this form, fundamentally it is the desire to maximize our potency: that is, to overcome limitations and obstacles and move towards our goals. “What is happiness?” asked Nietzsche. “The feeling that power increases – that a resistance is overcome” (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist).
The healthy way to obtain feelings of power is to engage in creative activity, cultivate excellence in a skill or field, and continually try to overcome our bodily and psychological limitations. The individual who cultivates power in this manner is naturally kind and benevolent. For he who has an abundance of power instinctively finds joy in using it to help others. Take the example of Nietzsche’s character Zarathustra. Overflowing with the power that his deep wisdom granted him, Zarathustra leaves his solitude and descends from his mountain in order to share his surplus of strength with the world.
“Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands outstretched to take it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Or as Nietzsche writes of the powerful individual in Beyond Good and Evil:
‘…in the foreground, there is the feeling of fullness, of power that wants to overflow…the consciousness of a wealth that wants to make gifts and give away. The noble man helps the unfortunate, however not from pity, but more in response to an impulse which the excess of power produces.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Unfortunately, only a minority of individuals cultivate power in this manner, which can account for the scarcity of the truly kind and benevolent. More common is the individual who is so consumed by fear, laziness, and an aversion to sustained effort, that they avoid the arduous path of creativity, self-mastery, and self-overcoming through which genuine power is cultivated. Yet like all human beings, such lazy and fearful individuals still possess the desire to feel powerful. And so they seek out power via an easy yet morally corrupt route. Instead of trying to lift other people up, they try to bring them down. They diminish others through cruelty, mockery, insults, and the deliberate infliction of suffering, and therein obtain a fleeting sense of potency which functions as a cheap substitute for the genuine power their lives sorely lack. Or as Nietzsche observes in his book the Dawn:
“Cruelty is one of the oldest festive joys of mankind… for to practise cruelty is to enjoy the highest gratification of the feeling of power.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn
Throughout history, human beings have engaged in festivals of cruelty. For example, in the Roman gladiator games crowds mocked and insulted the slaves and prisoners condemned to fight and cheered their injuries and deaths. Today, we flatter ourselves with the belief that we have evolved beyond such barbarism. Public executions have vanished, blood sports have been outlawed, and cruelty, at least in its socially overt forms, is no longer practiced. Yet this sense of moral progress is largely illusory. For festivals of cruelty have not disappeared; they have merely migrated online.
The internet now serves as the primary arena in which weak individuals obtain feelings of power through the exercise of cruelty. For unlike in the real world, where practicing cruelty carries the risk of a retribution, the safety of the screen removes the physical danger of retaliation, while anonymity dissolves personal accountability and gets rid of the fear of being publicly shamed. Online, the hater can partake in their own private festivals of cruelty by mocking, insulting, and humiliating others – behaviors which they would never dare attempt in the physical world – with little fear of repercussions. Or as Nietzsche explains:
“To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle….Without cruelty there is no festival.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
But if the desire to feel powerful accounts for the hostility of online haters, how do we make sense of the confidence many of them project? If they are genuinely weak, why do they appear so certain of their superiority over those they attack? Simply put, such people reinterpret their personal deficiencies as virtues. Because the hater never sets big goals and takes risks, he never fails. Because he never creates anything, he never exposes himself to error, criticism, and the vulnerability that is part and parcel of the creative process. His apathetic mediocrity allows him to construct an illusory moral pedestal on which he stands in order to feel justified in criticizing those who have the courage to create and enter the public arena of ideas and debate. Or as Nietzsche put it, the hater is a victim of “that sublime self-deception whereby the weak construe weakness itself as freedom, and their particular mode of existence as an accomplishment” (Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality).
Yet one further psychological mystery remains: why is the animosity of the online hater so vehement and personal? Why do these individuals direct such intense hostility toward complete strangers? The answer lies in the pain of comparison.
When the hater encounters a creator or online persona who appears to be flourishing, that individual becomes a figure of comparison who reflects back the online hater’s own stagnation and misery, and this elicits self-hatred. But instead of using self-hatred as motivation to improve his circumstances, the hater projects it outward onto the very person who triggered it, and lashes out with insults, criticism, and attacks. Nietzsche identified this dynamic when he wrote of “the distortion with which the entrenched hatred and revenge of the powerless man attacks his opponent” (Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality) Yet here lies the great irony. The hater’s hostility is not born of indifference or contempt, but of a distorted form of admiration. The individuals he targets represent the vitality, achievement, and forward momentum he craves. They embody the life he desires, but has neither the courage nor the discipline to cultivate. Or as Nietzsche observed with devastating simplicity:
“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as a superior.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
While online haters are weak and powerless beings, they are not harmless. To communicate their danger, Nietzsche, in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, offers a potent metaphor for these individuals. He refers to them as “The Poisonous Flies”. Or as he writes:
“Where solitude ends, there begins the market-place; and where the market-place begins, there begins… the buzzing of the poisonous flies.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
One fly is an annoyance. But it can be swatted away. A swarm of flies, however, can drive even the strongest animal to madness. And so it is with online haters. The danger lies not with any single one of them, but with the fact that they are innumerable. A solitary hater can be ignored or dismissed as trivial; a multitude, however, has the potential to wear down even the most resilient individual and inflict a psychological damage that undermines the capacity to work towards goals. Or as Nietzsche warns us in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
“I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies…I see you bleeding and torn at a hundred spots…Innumerable are the small and pitiful ones…They would have blood from you; blood is what bloodless souls crave…They punish you for all your virtues…In your presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleams and glows against you in invisible vengeance…Therefore they hate you…what is great in you — that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like…Therefore be on your guard against the small ones!”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
What is the appropriate antidote to these poisonous flies? The immediate impulse is often to engage – that is, to reply, to defend one’s creations or reputation, and expose the errors, distortions, and faulty reasoning behind the attacks. But Nietzsche counsels against this. For the hater wants a reaction. They want to lower you to their level so they can feel the fleeting power that comes from bringing someone down. When you react, it only emboldens them and fuels their hostility. The only way to deal with the poisonous flies is to ignore them completely. For the flies of the digital marketplace are too numerous to swat away individually. If you try you will only exhaust yourself. Therefore, let them buzz unheard, and continue directing your energy towards what really matters; your work, goals, and the improvement of your bodily and psychological health. Or as Nietzsche wrote:
“Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies…Flee into your solitude! You have lived too near the small and the pitiable men. Flee from their hidden vengeance! Towards you they are nothing but vengeance. No longer lift your arm against them! They are innumerable and it is not your fate to be a fly-swat.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
