GROUPS OF WRATH

What turns communities toxic? What makes fans abuse community managers? It’s a matter of psychology.

- Luke Kemp

When I speak to Will Overgard, he’s enthusiastic, friendly, and immediately likable; attributes which serve him well on Twitch, where he streams as Viking_Blonde. Bursting with energy, he gleefully chats with me about his previous life in the games industry working for companies including Creative Assembly, Improbable, and RocketWerkz. I warm to him within seconds. So why did three total strangers once wish him death by cancer? Why does anybody on the internet suffer threats and hatred from people they don’t know? The answer (for community managers I’ve spoken to, at least) is complicated, and leads me to realise that you and I aren’t as many steps away from such behaviour as we may like to believe.

Take another, particularly horrifying example of harassment that Will gave me: “A group of individuals came up with a horrible story involving children,” he says. “They leapt into the YouTube comments and started telling the story at each other, like ‘Oh, did you hear the story of Will doing this horrible thing?’ ‘Oh, I did hear that, but did you hear this fact?’ ‘No, I did not hear that, did you hear this fact?’ And they tell this horrific story in the comments, and then upvote each other.”