Incredible toxicity in the chess community

What in the name of F are you talking about?! Some sinister characters here, definitely. 

This got a little out of hand lol

“A little”? 

Not exactly shocked someone here would take being toxic as a challenge.

I agree about the hostile environment. One person asked "Why?" in reply to a comment I made in which I said I hope to make some friends here. Well that took me aback. I thought the whole idea was to get to know people here and support eachother. plus learn, play and have fun.

Sure, lets look at that. I read:

Meta‐analyses have shown that playing violent video games is associated with increased aggression in the player (Anderson et al., 2010; Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014).

So lets go to Anderson and check it out. These are some of the criteria they're testing for:

But this doesn't seem to be anything worth worrying about. I'm sure I'd test high in "aggressive cognition" and "physiological arousal" after doing anything stimulating (like playing blitz chess, or training my dog).

And aggressive affect is a bit of a red herring. When people are exposed to a situation (it could be a television commercial) they're unconsciously effected by the emotions and themes. In one experiment, to the best of my recollection, two groups of college students completed a nearly identical logic test. The difference is one used adjectives related to youth and vitality and the other used adjectives related to old age and infirmity, and after the test this group walked more slowly to the elevator.

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Anyway, my point is these criteria are not what laymen think of when they read video games increase aggression. Aggression in this context doesn't mean increased social ills like violent crime (or even shouting or punching), it means something as trivial as increased heart rate... and like I mentioned earlier, measure my (or anyone's) heart rate and skin conductance after a tough blitz game. Measure their reaction time and empathy. I wouldn't be surprised if competitive chess were measured to induce more "aggression" when these are the criteria used.

You've made the mistake of taking anything that user says seriously. He's a grown man who spends most of his time posting emojis and bad grammar in topics full of children.

For the most part.  Online forums are not nurturing.  Obviously there are sites that are, but htis is not one of them.  This site has way to many e-thugs(aka online gangstas).  People that are more concerned about keeping up appearances, and trying to look "hard". 
If youre looking for online friends?   Feel free to send me a friend request.  I have no such ego to bruise acting civilly.

And here's another user who never has anything positive to say about anyone or anything.

You like to criticize other people's behavior but you seem to turn a blind eye to yourself... I mean, obviously it's probably more the opposite, i.e. you're so upset internally that you vent by diminishing others, but even so, the surface level hypocrisy is hard to ignore.

I'm so glad you asked, because that's the big difference. I'm self aware. lol

I've talked about my personal defects a number of times.

The biggest issue is, especially after the virus, I start to use this place as a means of human interaction... and I get frustrated both at the amount of time I waste here, and the lack of stimulating conversation (to put it mildly). So then I act out, often culminating in deleting my account.

Awareness, by itself, doesn't make much of a difference in terms of being a healthier person, that's true, but it allows me to see situations in finer detail. Understanding (at least some of) the underpinnings of my cognition and behavior allows me to be more effective at listening, communicating, and problem solving (for example).

Yeah, I know.

I'm painfully aware.

I've branched out a bit, and even though I did come back here, I joined groups like Al's discussion group where, at the very least, there aren't many kids. Maybe the youngest is 17 or 18 (just a guess).

Haha, I like that 

I guess I'm a bit childish when it comes to discussion. I almost don't care what people think, I care very much why they think or, or how they reached their conclusions.

For example, I bristle whenever cat-n-socks says (as he did a few posts back) that I make new accounts to hide myself. Ok, I get it, he doesn't like me so it's natural for him to give me distasteful labels like dishonest or coward... being called names doesn't both me, what bothers me is this is illogical. If I were trying to hide I'd have changed my IP (the mods know this is me) and I'd have changed my name (I'm using a llama name and avatar FFS). I'd also change the way I post, and since I often stop after 1 or 2 hundred games, it would also be easy to change my ratings and the openings I play.

So that was a bit of a long walk, but my point is sure, adults have their own mental blind spots, but at least (for most of them) when they make claims, the claims have some logical basis. They're not a slave to their feelings i.e. "I don't like you, so I'm going to assign a random label I find distasteful"

(although maybe it's not so random, cat-n-socks has said that I use my words to fool people and weasel out of things. Maybe the "you're hiding in a new account" hurts his ego less than "you're smart enough to fool people even though you haven't changed your name")

Oh great, I'm approaching @Elubas levels of post length and rambling

I was thinking the same thing about his multiple account hah!

I didn't know he was kaynight though... maybe you told me that in the past? If so I'd forgotten.

And sure, I'm a slave to my own issues... I like how you point out that part of being your true self means some people will dislike you. That's an important life lesson that someone with my type of personality has to learn... another reality of life, IMO, is that a person's personal defects are never fully resolved. It's always going to take effort, and I mean on a day-to-day basis, to overcome certain personal failings.

So yes, we're all a slave to our emotions (so to speak). We all have unfavorable traits and habits, and I think part of overcoming them (or maybe better to say compensating for them) is acknowledging that it takes effort every day.

I laugh when you say this because check out this link: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/why-would-you-play-dutch-in-the-first-place?page=1

One of my first posts back, I made a long post (with pictures!) and argument in the cheating forum.

One of them responded with a simple post (basically asking "what"?)

And then when I explained a little his next post was only two characters: "?!" 

I was so disgusted I blocked him for a few days haha.

So yeah, I feel like we're similar, or at least you understand where I'm coming from

I didn't say it to upset you. I feel contempt, on a visceral level, for people who post like children. So I was just expressing my real feelings. If you're unashamed then good for you. My way of seeing things isn't the only way, and it's not even the right way. It's just how I feel.

And as I've said before, I don't like these petty fights you resurrect between us. When it comes to you I'd rather live and let live.

Yeah, the hypocrisy.

He says I'm a nasty person for something I said years ago, I say: "I'm honestly sorry, and lets move on."

So yeah, he extends his petty grudge while I extend olive branches. So who's actually a nasty person