It’s easy to be a dick. When we’re born, we’re selfish for the sole reason of not being able to properly relate to the rest of the world outside of the sensations it causes within us.

Building a working model of the world – and a working model of oneself in relation to other people – is a task not always fulfilled. Some people are not built for it, but most are failed, in way or another, by their environment.

Without that model – without a clear understanding that we have an effect on the world beyond satisfying our own desires – being a dick is nothing but staving off the urge to feel like everything belongs to you and everyone ought to be beneath you.

This is multiplied by the pseudonimity of the online space. It’s easier still to be a dick to someone online ’cause you don’t get to understand with a degree of obviousness that you’re talking to another human being who has feelings same as you. To your tired everyday perceptions I might as well be an AI text generator, an automaton set up somewhere to create content for threads on Reddit. Intellectually, you know it’s probably not true, but emotionally, things get murky quickly.

Subsiding the urge to let the ego rule is a constant process that requires effort, time, and attention to fulfill. It only costs you nothing if you don’t have an ego. If you’re a human being like most of us, it’s going to take some work maintaining these higher emotional functions.

Recognizing this inevitable dark side in us offers a greater degree of understanding for such behaviors, beyond platitudes and “ought to be”.