Online or offline. News keeps reporting about loneliness and disconnection, but in my experience it’s just that it’s harder to interact with people in a civil way because they are so hostile, angry, and arrogantly convinced their viewpoints and experiences are the only legitimate ones.
Not to mention the lack of civility towards servers and other service workers. I can’t recall if I was just indifferent 10 years ago, but on a almost daily basis it blows my mind how openly rude many people are to servers and such, which seemed like a much more rare thing when I was younger.


oh, dude people just assume I’m transphobic because I’m a white guy with visible muscles and short hair. I’ve literally been accosted on the street for voting for Trump too. Of course, neither of these things is true, but it doesn’t stop ‘woke’ people from assuming it solely based on how I look. Because you know, they take once glance at you and they KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE.
I live in Boston, plenty of horrible people here who think their leftist values gives them free reign to be bigoted assholes to everyone they don’t like the look of or who isn’t as ‘educated’ as they think they are. My neighbors call the cops on black people using the park across the street, despite having black lives matter signs on their laws. They never call the cops when it’s white or asian people having an event in the park… funny.
It’s peak leftist hypocrisy in this town. It’s all recent too, none of this crazy shit happened before Covid and Trump. I’ve lived here for 20 years and the weird ‘tests’ people demand of you is only very recent.
But I’m not responsible for other people being crazy bigoted nutters. I’m not going up to strangers and screaming at them about who they voted for, nor am I requiring folks have read certain books for me to converse with them.