You Got Dragged on the Internet. Stop Building a Shrine to It.

“Once the bear’s hug has got you, it is apt to be for keeps.”
 — Harold MacMillan

A pattern, common to the internet in 2024. 

Someone has a conflict with a member of Group X. 

Let’s say they get called out, publicly shamed or — yes — cyberbullied, by right wing trolls, left wing trolls, pro-trans activists, anti-trans activists, pro-Israel posters, pro-Palestine posters, Democrats, Republicans, Star Wars “fans” etc.

The specifics vary. What happens next follows a predictable trajectory. 

Within months, their social media presence morphs into an endless catalogue of Group X’s misdeeds. Their browser history fills with searches for “Group X bad behavior examples.” They start following other people who’ve had similar experiences. They join communities dedicated to documenting Group X’s failures. Their identity crystallizes around being an “anti-Group X activist.” 

The psychological mechanisms here are deeply human. When we experience conflict, our brains engage several survival-oriented processes:

• First, pattern recognition goes into overdrive. We become hypervigilant for anything resembling the original threat. This made perfect sense when threats were primarily physical – if you survived a lion attack, being extra sensitive to rustling grass could save your life. But for Very Online folks, it manifests as an obsessive cataloguing of similar incidents. Every new example feels like validation of the original fuckery.
• Second, we desperately seek narrative coherence. Humans are meaning-making machines. Random trauma is almost unbearable – we need to believe there’s a reason, a pattern, a lesson. So we start building elaborate theoretical frameworks around our experience. It wasn’t just one bad actor, it was evidence of systemic problems. It wasn’t just bad luck, it was a conspiracy. The more examples we collect, the more our theory feels confirmed.
• Third, we attempt to restore control through obsessive engagement. If we can just understand enough, document enough, fight back enough, maybe we can ensure this never happens again. Maybe we can make the world safe. Maybe we can finally prove we were right all along.

Tragic: This response pattern, while completely understandable, becomes self-perpetuating and self-destructive.

Why?

The more you focus on collecting examples of bad behavior, the more your brain’s reticular activating system tunes to notice them. It’s like buying a new car and suddenly seeing that model everywhere – except instead of cars, you’re primed to notice evidence of threat and conflict. Your worldview becomes increasingly filtered through this lens, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of negativity.

The communities you join to process conflict end up keeping you trapped in it. Yes, support groups can be valuable. If you can find them. Far too many online spaces function more like mutually masturbatory hobby centres. Everyone shares their worst experiences, amplifying each other’s fears and grievances. The group identity becomes defined by opposition to Group X, making it harder to imagine any other way of being.

The quest for grievance documentation becomes endless. There’s always one more example to collect, one more argument to win, one more person to convince. The goalposts for “enough” keep moving because what you’re really seeking isn’t intellectual victory – it’s emotional resolution. Unfortunately, emotions being largely irrational, emotional resolution is unlikely to come from winning arguments or accumulating evidence.

This pattern frequently masquerades as righteousness. You’re not stuck in a conflict loop, you’re fighting the good fight! You’re not obsessing, you’re documenting important problems! You’re not harming yourself, you’re raising awareness!

Sometimes these justifications are valid. Sometimes sustained opposition to genuine problems is necessary and important. 

Here’s how to tell the difference:

Healthy activism energizes you. It builds solutions, rather than just documenting problems. It leaves room for nuance and complexity. It has clear, achievable goals. Most importantly, it exists alongside other aspects of your identity – it doesn’t consume them.

Conflict re-enactment depletes you. It reduces complex realities to simple narratives of good versus evil. It never feels finished because it can’t be – the real resolution you’re seeking isn’t external validation, it’s ever elusive internal healing. Your original conflict becomes your entire identity, coloring how you see everything else.

The costs of staying trapped in these cycles are enormous:

Professionally, you miss opportunities because you’re too focused on fighting old battles. Relationships suffer because you can’t stop talking about The Conflict. Creative energy that could go toward building something new gets channeled into endless arguments and documentation. Worst of all, you remain stuck in a victim narrative, even if you’ve reframed it as righteous resistance.

There’s a broader social cost. The internet has made it easier than ever to find others who share your specific trauma. This can be healing, but it creates concentrated pockets of unprocessed pain that perpetuate cycles of conflict. What starts as legitimate grievance calcifies into rigid ideology. Nuance gets lost. Healing becomes impossible because the wound is constantly being reopened.

I do think there’s a way out, but it starts with recognition:

• Notice when you’re spending more time documenting problems than solving them
• - Pay attention to whether engagement with the issue leaves you energized or depleted
• - Question whether your “activism” is really just an instinctive conflict response in disguise
• - Consider what you might create if you weren’t spending so much energy fighting
• - Think about whether your response is proportional to the original incident
• - Ask yourself what resolution would actually look like – and whether your current path is likely to get you there (it’s not)

The healthiest response to conflict isn’t (necessarily) to fight harder – it’s to step back and heal. This doesn’t mean the original wrong wasn’t real. It doesn’t mean giving up. It means recognizing that you can’t heal a wound by constantly picking at a festering, pus-weeping scab. 

The question is this: How do you honor the reality of what happened to you without letting it define your future? How do you acknowledge legitimate grievances while avoiding the trap of eternal victimhood? How do you fight necessary battles without getting stuck in unnecessary wars?

There’s no universal answer, but here’s a start: Build something new. Create spaces defined by what they’re for, not just what they’re against. Process your trauma with a therapist instead of an online army of syphilitic die hards. Let yourself imagine a future where the conflict that hurt you is a chapter in your story, not the whole book.

The world needs fewer people stuck in conflict loops and more people building solutions to conflict. It needs people who can transform pain into something constructive rather than just using it as a weapon.

You don’t have to forget. You don’t have to forgive if you’re not ready. But you do have to stop letting old wounds determine your future.

Let it go. Build something new. Your future self will thank you.

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s brutal injuries in World War One – being shot multiple times, left for dead in a trench, and spending hours in agony before rescue – could have easily embittered him or hardened his view of conflict. 

But instead of becoming consumed by grievance or a hawkish outlook, the experience seemed to deepen his understanding of war’s futility and the necessity of peace. 

Decades later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as the world teetered on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, Macmillan’s counsel to John F. Kennedy was exemplified by calm pragmatism and a determination to avoid escalation.

HM saw firsthand the devastating consequences of unchecked conflict and personal grievance – the defining features of The Great War – and he urged a path of diplomacy, never once forgetting the importance of restraint in the face of existential stakes.

Go ye / do likewise etc.