Why people are meaner online has a cleaner answer than most people want to admit. Greg Fish ran the experiment himself: three months of deliberately aggressive posts on social media, taking bait, going for the gut punch. A million views on Threads. Follows, likes, subscriptions. The reward structure is not broken. It is working exactly as designed.

A Pew study asked people around the world whether they believe their fellow citizens are fundamentally good people. In Canada, 92% said yes. In the United States, 53% said the opposite, the highest in the survey. Those two numbers live on the same planet and they do not describe the same world.

The people who get away with anything online get watched. Then they get emulated.

Topics: why people are meaner online, social media rewards negativity, Canada USA trust gap, online behaviour, intrusive thoughts social media

GUEST: Greg Fish | cyberpunksurvivalguide.com

Originally aired on2026-04-22