Earlier this year, I was on Facebook quietly minding my own business/reviewing my profile pics when I came across a particularly long comment thread. The thread caught my attention both because of its size, and because of its seemingly innocuous content: a queer craft fair. The day before, one of the craft fair organizers had posted for musicians, then deleted the post after refusing to disclose whether she’d be paying the performers.

Within seconds, a craft fair became a craft war.

The next morning, I woke up to a comment thread (approaching 400 comments!) accusing the OP of deleting her "way out of accountability.” The cruel, corporate miscreant — who babysits and makes stuffed animals for a living — was accused of embezzlement, supporting the patriarchy and — sickest of all — capitalism. This wasn't the anarcho-syndicalist craft fair we had all been dreaming of. She, I learned, was pro-tarot cards but anti-DIY porn. Proposals to start an alternative craft fair to the alternative craft fair were issued. Links to the communist manifesto were shared. This wasn’t a comments section: This was battle.

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But the organizer wasn’t a lonely victim. For many of us, Facebook fights are a part of daily life. A 2012 Pew study found that 15% of adults and 22% of teens had engaged in an interaction on the site that resulted in a friendship ending. Three percent of adults and 8% of teens said that fighting on the website had led to fighting in real life. For many users, life on Facebook has become a banal battle fought with unopened hyperlinks and 1,000-word-paragraphs and violent empty threats to de-friend. Comments don’t lead to conclusions but rather character assassinations, every thought a fragment and every sentence a run-on.

By and large, Facebook fighting leads to very few victories. But sometimes, there are good, non-irritating reasons we step into the ring.

Tracy Alloway is an associate professor of psychology at the University of North Florida who studies how empathy is shared through social media. According to Alloway, some of us post controversial stories because we genuinely want to “get into discussion.” Users like this consider themselves “open to feedback,” here to “change our perspective, deepen our perspective.” While some of these conversations may still end in implosions, the user’s initial reason for starting the conversation sets the emotional temperature for the rest of the comment thread.

But not all Facebook users are like-loving pacifists. Some of us, Alloway told me, have a different agenda: We’re out to start a fight or “stir a hornet’s nest.” Posts that center on ourselves, our achievements, and our sometimes self-righteous political views can have a positive influence on the brain. Even posts that actively (and unconsciously) seek to hurt others can energize our brain.

“Dopamine is a feel good hormone, and it’s released when we’re talking about ourselves. We get the same pleasure rush when we enjoy a really good meal, or have sex,” Alloway said.

Whether we’re pacifist posters or out to flame the craft fires, chances are extremely likely that our Facebook war will end in mutual, brutal defeat. That’s because up to 65% of our communication is nonverbal, which means it can’t be shared over Facebook.

Larry Rosen is a psychology professor at California State University, Dominguez Hill who studies social media conversations. According to him, not only do we often feel disinhibited behind our screens, our bodies often simply don’t know what’s going on.

“You don’t understand their context, their feelings, their emotions, all you have to go on is reflected in your screen,” Rosen said.

So when we can’t see what the other person is thinking or feeling, our brains do what they do best: Make sh*t up.

“We imagine they’re enjoying the conversation as much we are,” Rosen said.

We imagine they're enjoying this. We pretend the fight is friendly. When our brains don't know the context, they fill it in in self-serving ways — even when opposing evidence is tap-dancing naked in our face.

It’s not just that Facebook fights end without a clear victor. It’s that they often finish brutally, with mortal consequences for the relationships involved. Even if we can often smooth over a painful political fight in the physical world, “friendships in the virtual world form very quickly, so they can unfold just as quickly,” Rosen said. The explosive intimacy seen at the beginning of a Facebook friendship or Tinder conversation can rupture with just a few misplaced comments on Twitter.

In the “real world,” long-term friendships often go into hospice care before they disappear. On Facebook, “your best friend can become your worst enemy in one day,” Rosen said.

And while some of us of these friendships might feel ephemeral, for many of us, our Facebook fallouts hurt.

UCI Professor of Psychology Peter Ditto studies the ways in which people develop and shape their political worldviews. For Ditto, most of our knowledge about the world isn’t grounded in direct evidence, but socially-based: “The way we know we’re right is when most people around us agree.” And because our “moral beliefs shape our factual beliefs,” when someone dissents, our entire self can feel threatened, causing crisis.

It’s not just someone’s Guardian hyperlink you’re insulting. With each and every dissenting keystroke, you’re demolishing their fragile worldview.

So must all Facebook fights end in mutual defeat? Must we resign ourselves to posting soupy, bipartisan breaking news about “kittens who enjoy lunch,” and “hot dogs from the 90s,” and “humans who look like dogs who look like CATS”? (Although dear god, if someone created that listicle, please send it to me.)

Ditto doesn’t seem to think so, and he’s not alone. “While there’s not obvious solutions to the problem,” he said, there are real strategies people can use to make their bouts actually productive.

“Positive feedback makes people feel good about themselves … affirmation allows people to express their values somehow, letting people pick their top values," Ditto said.

So next time you attack your Facebook friend, try something like this:

Sorry, I meant this:

Zzzzz, I know. But if you can’t muster the strength to talk to your friend who’s “not so sure about climate change,” take emergency measures. Stop commenting, turn off your Facebook, and silence your phone. Why bother starting a war you know you can’t win?

It might feel hard at first, but slowly, you’ll adapt, adjust to the daylight, and begin to feel better.

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Video: Armand Valdes, Loris Ravera, Nadja Oertelt