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.
Even if they block me, which has become rare, because they cannot help but reply to stuff that is roasting them too hard, their financial reality won’t change. Their narcissism and ego will be naked to the rest as well. Everything they said before or say after that won’t hit the same to everyone there. As I said, they are all about “Might makes right,” and being told that they can’t even beat a baby boomer is like a silver bullet to these mouthbreathers. Not to us, because we blame the top 1%, not our neighbors.
I’ve already seen people jumping in to help me, chiming in and kicking those assholes further. I’ve seen it make my cousin, who I deemed a brother for so long, but became a crypto bro who supported MAGA, (and he’s a Mexican) squirm and lose his balls when I slapped him with it. I changed his mind so easily. He is super narcissistic, a nepo baby who thought would become a multi-millionaire playboy before his 30s, but dude’s a fucking loser, even after graduating as a doctor from the ITESM, he has no job, no children, no future, because he refuses to be paid 100k a month, he thinks he deserves more.
Shit works. What you said is not happening.
Why don’t you instead tell me or show me how do you do it? You make it sound like you found an even-more effective way to do this. What is it?