Mary Gaitskill Quotes

I play a lot of ultra-violent video games.

The Internet has played a major role in undermining public morality.

Everyone talks about how the anonymity of the Internet allows people to behave badly, but I think it's the other way around, that the anonymity removes the 'self' from the people we're talking to online. Other people lose their humanity in our eyes. The system is set up to dehumanize.

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, and it's a very interesting place. People are so driven to aggression. To me it's a funny thing. I grew up in an aggressive family, so I'm not at all intimidated by being verbally abused. I have no fear with words.

Art gives me an outlet where I can be aggressive in a world where I usually can't be.

I'm amazed at the amount of time people spend on the Internet.

I don't see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs.

Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

On stage and in person, I think I am nice, thoughtful, and empathetic. But for some reason when I'm online, I become super aggressive and unhinged. I should probably get off of Twitter and see a therapist.

A little tantrum in real life seems so much bigger online.

I almost feel like we do live in a world like 'Caprica.' The fact that it's so close to home is why it appeals to me so much. You're making statements about what's going on right now. You take Facebook and Wii and add it together, and that's what the virtual world in 'Caprica' is.

Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless, but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.

I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.

This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

Generally, all my life, I have had strong friction with life - I was a problematic soldier, I was kicked out of the army, I was in fights. There was something about writing that was a way of experimenting with this emotion.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone's inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

Comment threads are the new therapy for people. They just go and post the worst things they can think of because they feel bad, and then other people start attacking them, and then they attack back.

I have a lot of aggression in me that needs to come out in a not-very-precise or articulate way.

There's a lot of rage... you have to express it somehow. If I didn't express it in song, I'd become incredibly violent.

Social media has created a legion of social delinquents, billions of people speaking not their minds but their spleens, venting everything from the gum-cracking snark befitting a hair-twisting mallrat to the froth-flecked rage of a bell tower marksman.

Psychologists call this the online disinhibition effect, in which factors like anonymity, invisibility, a lack of authority, and not communicating in real time strip away the mores society spent millennia building. and its sweeping from our smartphones into every aspect of our lives.

If someone annoys you on Twitter, check their feed first: you need to know if they're crazy.

A troll's life is a no-physical-contact existence. You will die alone, as you die daily, online.

I've noticed a lot of people are very bold and blustery on Twitter because it's easy to do that with the poison keyboard and a hundred and forty characters.

Approximating authenticity online is not such a tall order. In fact, it may be the very least we can do.