Recently, I’ve been uploading more of my work on Threads. The experience has been kinda weird, to be honest. Tho, it is totally understandable if you put yourself in their shoes.
The people who use social media just to hate
The more I paid attention, the more I saw a pattern. Some people only come alive when there’s something to attack. A creator makes a mistake, and they’re in the comments instantly. Someone shares a personal story, and they’re there to poke holes in it. It’s like their brain is always scanning for something to dislike. It makes me feel sad for them as the dopamineric system of their brain is now wired to negativity rather than joy or curiousity. They rush to critize others for the quick negativity dopamine hit.
The pattern I saw:
- They rarely share what they build, only what they hate.
- Their engagement spikes when there is drama, then drops when things are calm.
- They seem allergic to expression, like wtf everything is either “cringe”, “who cares”, “who ask”, “who needs it?“.
How negativitity dopamine feels from the inside
From my point of view, the structure looks like this:
- The ego hit: feeling smarter or more moral than others.
- The emotional release: using outrage as a way to discharge frustration.
- The social validation: likes and replies rewarding harsh comments.
When you post something harsh and it lands, it feels good for a second. People like the comment, they reply “so true”, they follow you for your bad attitude. That tiny rush is a form of dopamine. Your brain quietly learns: “When I tear someone down, I get rewarded.” Repeat that for months or years, and it starts to feel normal. You don’t notice it happening, but your default reaction becomes: “What’s wrong with this?” instead of “What can I learn from this?”
What this patterns do to them (and us)
The more your brain learns to chase negative dopamine, the more normal life starts to feel flat. A quiet walk, a book, a slow conversation with a friend – they don’t hit as hard as a good public shaming. You start needing bigger arguments, bigger scandals, bigger enemies just to feel something. Over time, your world shrinks into a timeline full of people you dislike and topics you are tired of, but you keep scrolling anyway.
From the inside, this doesn’t always look like “I love being mean”. It often looks like constant stress and irritability. People who spend a lot of time in hateful or hostile spaces online report more anxiety, fear, overthinking, and even physical tension. You get used to being on edge. Your body is basically waiting for the next thing to get mad about, and that state slowly becomes your new normal.
It’s not just about one “toxic person” either. When many people run on negative dopamine at the same time, the whole environment shifts. Hate and outrage spread through feeds and recommendation systems, making it more likely that others will copy the same tone. Toxicity is contagious: if your feed is full of harsh comments, you’re statistically more likely to post something harsh yourself.
That creates a feedback loop for everyone else. People who are on the receiving end of hate – or even just exposed to it regularly – show higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, and some research even links heavy exposure to online hate with PTSD‑like reactions. Over time, more users go quiet, share less, and censor themselves because it just doesn’t feel worth the risk. The loudest voices that remain are often the angriest ones.
So “negative dopamine people” don’t just damage their own reward system. They train the platforms and all of us to expect more anger, more hostility, more division as the default setting of the internet. That’s the real cost: the baseline of what feels “normal” gets darker for everyone.
Final thoughts
I don’t think people who are toxic online are just “bad people”. I think many of them are stuck in a reward system that keeps feeding them negative dopamine until they forget what healthy pleasure feels like. I also don’t think I’m completely separate from them. The same mechanisms exist in my own brain; the difference is whether I notice them and choose what to reinforce.
I want my future self to get more dopamine from building, learning, and connecting, not from attacking strangers on a screen. That’s why I’m trying to pay attention to the small moments: what I like, what I share, what I laugh at, and what I choose to walk away from.
In the end, I hope everyone gets out of that loop and can finally enjoy their lives, and support other growth.