Many people who loudly pride themselves for tolerance, kindness, and openness toward difference drop those principles the moment someone expresses a preference or view they dislike. Disagreement itself is fine. What is not fine is the usual responses that follows: comments whose main purpose is to insult, shame, and make the other person feel small, delivered in front of an audience that can be counted on to approve.
It’s status performance. The goal is not to show why the opinion is wrong or change minds; it is to hurt the speaker and fish for applause. Feeling morally justified does not change the nature of the act; when the sole intention is to hurt they’re being evil and a bully.
The people who upvote or otherwise reward those insults are part of the same behavior. Standing by and cheering while someone is targeted is participation. It supplies the social payoff that makes the cruelty worthwhile.
This is one of the reasons large parts of the internet feel needlessly hostile. When perceived moral superiority is used as cover for meanness, and when an audience reliably encourages it, the result is environments where many people simply stop speaking. The claimed values of kindness and tolerance are revealed, in those moments, as conditional.
And no, this isn’t about being tolerant towards people with extreme views. The idea for this post was sparked by my previous post about AI music and the vicious personal attacks I received for admitting to enjoying some of it.
instead of alchemizing insults i work to bring that attention. you can be aware and care without yelling to the choir and scaring the curious away
I am not here for the curious or silent readers. I have already been shown that no matter what I say or do, over 30,000+ Mexicans, my people, will keep dying every year thanks to the USA arming the Mexican Cartels with guns. The number keeps increasing as well, since 2012. Let alone the number of Arabs and Muslims, also my people, my grandpa escaped Lebanon 100 years ago because of Israel and the USA attacking it.
To try and censor people’s insults is evil. I have spoken to people from the Middle East whose parents and loved ones were killed with American bombs and bullets. Talked to Mexicans who suffer the worst consequences of the Cartels. They all insult the USA so heavily, I’d come across as a Disney character to you if you heard them. But of course, you want to silence them, right? You don’t want people to see the anger they create? You want to protect the evil people who, with their taxes and votes, got those people killed, by not letting them see bad words and insults aimed to them? Why?
Same with someone who supports AI. I keep reading the headlines of how suicides are increasing, many artists and workers who can’t find the joy they deserve anymore because AI replaced them, without creating more jobs.
And even then, my insults to OP were not even that bad. They were tame, for the type of person they really are.
what do you think my argument is? for one thing, people shouting insults at someone else just to feel better is very scary to anyone considering joining the cause. the voice of what you wish to inspire dies within these artificial walls you make.
Surely you, in the much more fortunate position you have now, can afford to redirect that anger into tangible effects you can actually effect with your fortune, and save that energy for somewhere not actively hurtful—compared to those abject.
That is your role. Not mine. I prefer making people like MAGAs or Zionists lose their shit, so it becomes easier for you to reach them out, or the people they insulted around them after showing their true disgusting colors.
I spent years trying to be nice; no insults, no yelling. I used to be so, so different. But it did not work. Shit got worse. They started with the “snowflake” insult back in 2015. I was just a teenager, like 16 years old, very pro-USA. I thought the USA was Humanity’s “best and closest attempt at achieving a multi-cultural utopia” for so long. I was very resilient too, I endured over a decade of constant disappointments, racism and evil shit. It wasn’t until Trump won again that I gave up completely on the majority of the world and America. I kinda appreciate that, though. It completely removed the mask.
I keep seeing a lot of Mexicans who have fell for American propaganda, spouting MAGA talking points, degrading themselves while praising people like Trump. Constant misogynistic comments about our female president, with no argument or opinion worth reading, just plain bigotry. Shit is expanding because they own social medias, including TikTok. They gutted education and can pretty much do whatever they want to children now. All they gotta do is tweak their algorithms I guess.
It’s too late. I am 28, and I won’t have the future I wanted or thought I’d have. There is no “cause” or “movement” here. Everyone is way too conformist and compliant. Both of my parents and grandparents still think “billionaires are ok, they earned it” after everything they have done to us.
People need to keep losing more; they need more pain so they finally reach the point of having nothing to lose and finally do something about their government. Otherwise, you will keep seeing them work for the same unfulfilling minimum wage we have had for decades, like little modern slaves.
I can’t be nice to these people anymore. Trust me, I do try, but it’s so hard once you can see the amount of destruction their ideas will lead to. Even if it’s genuine innocent ignorance, I can’t help but feel the need to stomp it asap. I am aware a goal of the top 1% is to keep eroding the patience and tolerance of everyone who is empathetic, by using botnets to spam heinous shit online, shit that makes people angry and depressed. They want them to get sick and die in silence. They only want the loyal ones alive. They reward them with jobs and high wages, while starving the “woke” ones. I can’t just be nice to people who are supporting something like that anymore, blindly or not. I am sorry for not being emotionally stronger, I wish I was, but I reached my limit.
and you want us to suffer and throw me to do the heavy lifting just because you were young and naive? you want to actively make things worse just because they are bad? stop constantly staring at grime and start trying to mop it, make better friends, or at least stop puking on the floor.
You are making us suffer way more, dude. Your country killed my family in Mexico and the Middle East, in Lebanon (and Gaza, they are all family to me now). Yes, go do the heavy lifting yourself. I cannot, I am too angry at your government and the people who support it, they eroded my patience, and you still come here to keep punching me down after everything I have lost?
It’s the least you can do for all the pain your people voted in with their voice, vote and money. Their laziness and ignorance. Yes, it is your role. They are your neighbors, your people. I am doing the same with mine; there are so, so many Mexicans who support the USA. I am teaching them, with calmness, that the USA is empowering the Mexican cartels they hate so much, and I show them the evidence. Some of them react with extreme violence despite me not insulting them. All because they love the USA more than themselves. That takes a toll on anybody.
Young and naive for asking people to be more mindful about the poor and the victims using a calmer, nicer tone than the one you’re currently using? Really? What do you even talk about with them, to convince them? What do you do that you found to be very effective?
I don’t want to actively make things worse. Closed-minded people prefer to be racist killers than admit they are wrong and grow a conscience. And they do it because they are comfortably rewarded, filled with luxuries and wealth. But now that people are losing that, losing access to food and healthcare and housing, they got nothing to lose and are finally looking up, not sideways. They absolutely deserve to feel what they have made others like us feel.
How do you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? Good luck dealing with all the MAGAs in your country. I even told you, I am disarming them, for you to reach them out more easily. People become more malleable to kindness when their ego gets deflated and humiliated, when they feel vulnerable, offended or betrayed. If you really think kindness or a “calm sharp wisdom” alone will get you far, I am sorry, but you probably haven’t interacted with enough of them.
A lot of those people literally value might over reason, “might makes right.” A lot of them smile and laugh when talking about killing Muslims and Latin Americans, saying they won, they deserve to do whatever they want to us. They are all about getting physically violent when you show them the truth, no matter how calm or kind. They will still insult you and stomp you, call you a liar or drop an NPC one-liner like “go take your meds, schizo, not reading all that, you need help” etc. They attack the messenger, never the message. Never address or dismantle anything, just insult and leave.
I am just playing their own game, and beating them on it successfully. That is not making things worse. Look at how far you’ve reached, electing more and more socialist democrats now, because it’s impossible for people to ignore their financial realities thanks to social medias. I haven’t heard the words “spic, wetback, beaner” in probably 15+ years. There is still a lot of work to do, but maybe bullying the bullies actually works.
not my country
MAGA is global. We are literally talking about the people that support those ideologies, no matter the country. You’re arguing that I should be nicer to them, which comes across as evil. You’re trying to protect evil from hearing “harsher language” or facing their consequences. You don’t want them to experience the ire, anger and desperation they themselves planted and sowed.
If you are being genuine, if your gamble is that kindness is the path right now, you can do it. I am not getting in your way, I am making your job easier if anything as I already explained. It’s a real psychological phenomenon, I didn’t made it up.
Or are you trying to guilt-trip me to try and censor me? To shut me up because I am being very effective at slapping rapeblicans down? All it takes is to spam this comment in different social medias, to plant the seed in their heads:
“How come you will never have even a quarter of what the average baby boomer had at their age, like 7+ children, a home at 19 years old, economic stability, or at least a happy family of four without a college degree? What happened? Are they smarter, work harder, or what?”
Absolutely no one, for the past year I’ve been using this after I myself came up with it, has been able to dismantle or counter it properly without looking like assholes. Whether they say they are an outlier, or try to justify their misery by saying baby boomers had it easier, different times or whatever, it won’t matter. Once they show their true colors, it’s so easy to humiliate them in front of all the silent readers.
They are incredibly narcissistic, they CANNOT withstand being seen as less, of being told the truth, that an old man who babbles about the Bible all day and didn’t go to college had a more fulfilling, fortunate and joyful life than they did and will ever do. Since the majority of the Americans that are terminally-ill online are usually Middle-Top Class nepo babies who can afford an air conditioner or a computer unlike half of the world, it becomes impossible for them not to compare what they have vs what their parents or grandparents do. It includes me.
One grandpa has 10 children, a mansion with 6+ bedrooms, 3 backyards, illegal statues he bought in Africa and Asia, like 8 dogs, turtles, 2 SUVs, no college degree, only the Bible. The other had 7, was a gynecologist, big pool, big house too, 5 bedrooms, a ranch where he had cattle. Both own multiple terrains they rent to businesses. Then I see my uncles and aunts barely having 2 children. The lucky ones had 4 tops, and decent houses, but not as big. Then I see my generation, my friends, cousins, strangers complaining about the Steam Machine’s price, RAM, housing, healthcare. They have no home, 0 children, maybe 1 if they got “lucky,” I hear about Americans sleeping in their cars, working two shifts, being on the verge of death, the “Kill Line” and so on. This reality is the default for the majority of the world right now, in different scopes, among young generations.
After that, if they blame immigrants, people of color, women or whatever, you slap them with something like:
“Immigrants, minorities, women, or LGBTQ people didn’t decide wages, housing costs, healthcare prices, or wars. People with capital did, and they love it when we fight sideways instead of up.”
And bam. They also cannot dismantle that without looking like racist irrational imbeciles. Why exactly do you want to stop me?
how does that slap rapepublicans down? it only makes people block you.