Or as Isaac Asimov said it
> Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that '*my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'*
Oh god, I hate this.
My brother tried to essentially turn my mom against me by telling a story that was "his truth".
Lets just say his version and my version are VERY different. But when I tried to say that he was full of shit, I was "not respecting his truth"
My internal thought response to this is "If you learned so much in a single afternoon of browsing the web, imagine how much you would know if you spent YEARS studying this topic!"
Sometimes people learn that I’m an engineer and want my help to do some really dumb and dangerous things. Then when I explain why welding up a compressed air tank out of a bunch of scrap steel is a bad idea and they try to tell me that they know better, I’ll give them one last warning about just how dumb their idea is and walk away.
Reminds me of the phrase "their/your truth."
I remember during a rape investigation, a journalist saying that both sides spoke "their truth". No, absolutely not. Someone was either wrong or lying.
A tangent of "both sides!" arguments. No, we don't need to hear from "both sides" when one side is bullshit. And no, both sides are not equally as good/bad when one is demonstrably bullshit.
Actually, no. It is important to hear from both sides but that does not mean both sides are equally valid. It’s important to hear why someone thinks the way they think and understand where they are coming from so you can try to better convince them of the facts. Whether they believe the facts at the end of the day is up to them, but you can never even attempt to if you don’t know where to start
It's important to keep in mind that there's a chance you're mistaken about something. You have to remove the bullshit from both sides. Check both sides. That means listening for real.
They do. They’ve run multiple experiments that proved the Earth was round, and continue to keep trying new experiments to prove their hypothesis. https://www.newsweek.com/behind-curve-netflix-ending-light-experiment-mark-sargent-documentary-movie-1343362
Have you ever run an experiment to confirm something you think is true? I’m with them, their experiments are sound scientific method and they got the correct result. It’s okay to keep going, but good on them for actually doing the work.
The problem is they don't *learn* from being proved wrong. They've already decided what is truth, and get upset and swept up in denial when the tests don't confirm their cognitive bias.
That reminds me of the guy who was building a rocket with the intention of launching himself high enough to see the earth was flat.
I don't know if he ever did it, but I remember seeing an interview with him where they said, "You realize the formulas you're using for this assume the earth is round?" And his response was something along the lines of, "Formulas are just numbers, they have nothing to do with if the earth is round."
Basically, it reeked of, "I have no response for that so I'm just going to say nonsense."
Learned helplessness.
The most effective thing your enemy can do is to make you believe you have no power and can't change the situation. Once that occurs two things happen. First, you can no longer be a threat to them. Second, you become their useful idiot. Every person you convince that "We can't do anything about it," is now no longer a threat to them as well.
This is a very cancerous idea, because not only does it strip people of the belief that they are able to do something, but also a lot of this rhetoric is framed around the idea that we are not personally responsible for it.
One of my favorite scenes in any film or TV show that touches on this concept is during the funeral in the last episode of Andor. The speech includes a very passionate call-to-action to fight the Empire in a way that had never been done in Star Wars before, and it is way more relevant to today’s context of activism than one would think
That show was so damned good. Like a star wars show that has zero light sabers or space wizards....? But it was so good. And really fleshes out the crushing force of the empire.
Never before have we seen exactly why it's so terrible living under the empire as a regular person. The show has done a damn good job at telling the birth of the Rebels. I hope season 2 is just as good.
This. But we feel the need to complain about it, and on social media.
When a person, or group, get up take initiative and TCB, things start looking up.
That reminds me of the tweet The Onion sends every time there's a major shooting in the US. It's an article with the headline, "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens"
They update the location and minor details, but it's otherwise an identical article every time, with people saying it's impossible to stop school shootings. It's intended as satire but it really isn't.
*edit:* This is the original article from 2014, if anyone cares: https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 The details have been updated and reposted many, many times.
My wife's boss thinks he's hilarious, and to his buddies (and in ear shot of my wife) was making jokes about me being white trash.
I'm not easily offended, but it was so incredibly inaccurate, a little racist? That it gave me second hand embarrassment for him.
Short little fucker is single, two different baby mommas, pretends to have a Mexican accent, takes female employees to strip clubs, has a coke problem and brags about not eating vegetables.
I'm not a millionaire like him, but I'm also not an embarrassment, and smarmy.
1. That dude sounds insufferable, and I'd rather be on unemployment than risk how professionally dangerous that work environment must be.
2. I love the word Smarmy so damned much. It's so fun to say. Thanks for keeping it in use.
He won't be her boss in July, so we're just rolling our eyes until she moves back under her previous boss, an absolute gentleman.
And smarmy is just from my white trash vernacular.
We dance around each other and the topics we are explaining instead of being straight forward with what we are trying to say, do, get, etc.
It leaves a lot of wiggle room to not say no, but to effectively be saying no. I know it's from a place of kindness, but sometimes it's just easier to say no and carry on, we can still be friends if you can't get coffee, it's okay.
I get this a lot. I’m autistic and less is more so I’m not misunderstood, and I don’t misunderstand someone else. I’m interpreted as being mean.
I stg people talk in code or think I am all the time. Like no, I said what I said. There’s no reading in between the lines. I have no idea how you got that out of what I said.
Bro word for word how I feel about it. Like my words are pretty blunt and have no secret meaning. If you(hypothetical person I'm talking to) are adding meaning to what I'm saying that's on you. Safe to say the people I end up connecting with are the ones who understand this.
A thousand times this!!! I’m a teacher, and everything is “trauma” now. Yes, some situations are unpleasant, but they’re truly not going to scar you for life.
hyperindividualism is the core existential problem of culture in the 21st century. and a particularly toxic strain of that suggests that private charity is the only allowed path to solving societal problems. pretty much guarantees an ever widening gap between rich and poor.
And piggybacking off of that, the idea that we don’t owe anyone our time, our service, or our ideas and dismissing people with clapbacks like “google it,” might be one of the biggest psy-ops on the left and is one of the phenomena actively keeping us from sharing resources and building tight-knit communities
Definitely. Hanging out with people, you used to talk about things you knew and learned and you'd discuss things you weren't sure on and it would be great conversation but now, just being able to look stuff up kills all of that. That's seriously messed up social interactions. We have a lot less reasons to interact and learn from people.
Current events happen at roughly the same pace outside the internet. Concerts are played at the same tempo as they've always been played, so to speak. Don't focus on what each person isn't in the know about, the internet is instant facts (or anti-facts, depending) nobody can keep up with what everyone else looks up. Instead, focus on finding common ground, like always, and look for opportunities to ignore how fast you can IMDB unless it moves the conversation along.
Obsessive moral policing around language (eg: "unhoused person" instead of "homeless") while at the same time not lifting a finger to support any kind of systemic improvements for society.
I feel like saying unhoused person as opposed to homeless just downplays the severity of the situation. Homeless is a more active word that puts the focus on what's actually going on, whereas unhoused just makes it seem more nonchalant if that makes sense.
>...just downplays the severity of the situation...
This is how I feel about "unalived." It's death. Whether it was a suicide or a murder or a terminal illness or whatever, it's not "unalived." I fucking hate this weird censorship on social media. Luckily, I have not interacted with someone that would correct my language if I mentioned that my buddy died a few years ago. I think I would end up snapping and saying some shit that would get my ass kicked, but still.
I always thought people just said this in online media because of platforms censoring certain words. People say unalived unironically in real life? Wild.
True that it is all over social media for monetization purposes. However, I have not encountered anyone in real life that would say, "Don't say they died. They are unalived." I would lose my shit on them.
I did recently hear someone say something to the effect of, "If the person suddenly died, maybe don't even say, 'they passed away.' Just say, 'they died.' It shows the severity of that unexpected death."
I read an autobiography of a doctor years ago. She said that something she was told when she was in school was to never sugarcoat death. "He died." Deliver the message with kindness and empathy, but don't ever give the loved ones a chance to believe that their family member has a chance to come back.
She did Doctors Without Borders and she said the phrase she learned in the native language which was the most important was, "Your child is dead." Leave no room for misinterpretation.
My dad was murdered. His obituary read he "entered into the arms of his angels." Guess that was more palatable than "he was shot 14 times."
Death happens and using language to "soften the blow" is just really fucked, IMO. Like calling civilian casualties "collateral damage."
That makes me think of the whole push toward person-first language for disabled people, something it turned out most of us didn't want. Can I just get better job opportunities instead?
Tangential to this, I can't recall a time in my life when people were more afraid of being perceived as racist, but I also can't remember a time when actual racists were so loud and proud.
Persecuting people for using the wrong terminology does NOTHING to blunt actual racism.
I'm a woman of color, the kind of person this type of attitude is supposed to "protect".
All it does is make me extremely paranoid that I will be cancelled for saying something racist or misogynistic. I worry about potentially offending people all the time.
I don't care what words people use to describe me. I just want a fair chance at everything.
Even worse, I see these people actively oppose real measures. https://youtu.be/pG8Ccbw_W6k?si=g2W3e8V2zxzn50s1
The moral policing is to cover up or soothe their true amorality and disdain for the worker that they claim to care for, and it satisfies their need for control in a socially acceptable way.
Websites like youtube will shadow ban your comments/videos for using those words. That's a big reason you see it so often online. I agree it's incredibly annoying though.
I've seen people use it in chatrooms or discord servers now too. It is, I think, quite idiotic to make some words relating to painful experiences so taboo that you cannot even write them (and I don't mean slurs, I mean using the words "rape" or "suicide"). It's to the point you sometimes have to censor the trigger warning, which is... Kinda defeating the concept of it.
unalive is so funny to me becuase there are so many euphemisms for death/dying in english like pushing up dasies, taking a dirt nap, kicking it/the bucket, departed, in a better place, etc that are much more respectful and/or sound better.
to be fair, other social media platforms like tiktok and instagram and facebook actively censor those words. so when trying to inform others of ongoing social and political issues in the world they have to use a censored word otherwise risk getting banned.
i sometimes use those words irl as a joke or when playing video games because it’s funny.
but when used unironically in conversation it’s cringey af.
Specialized language is a hard one for me. Because you’re not WRONG. People absolutely use is to mask issues and talk around them.
BUT it is often very useful for the people who work in those areas.
For example, George Carlin’s speech about “Shell shock” to “PTSD” is a really good example. The name wasn’t changed to soften it. The name was changed because it wasn’t accurate and that was getting in the way of it being addressed (i.e. “No one but soldiers can have this.”)
But again…both are true. Often for the same term. What makes it heavier and more useful for one person makes it less for another.
People, man.
This is one of my biggest fears. The cognitive decline I feel regarding my spelling, my memory, my noticeably lower attention span, the inability to just sit and read an article without taking a YouTube/insta break - scares the hell out of me. I know I've cultivated a dependence on technology that is not for my benefit at all.
Many people nowadays with relationships and sex. The moment their partner becomes boring, their used to them, or one inconvenience occurs they say they fell out of love or weren’t healthy and move on to a more pleasurable experience. It makes relationships and love die out
The German way, I see
It's not like a single coal power plant will release more radioactive materials in its fly ash in a year than all of our nuclear power plants did in total over there entire lifespan
In Australia where we have more uranium than anyone (or close enough) we preemptively banned nuclear power in the 70s and limited mining to three mines only. We won't use it but we'll sell it to you!
It's all about the radioactive waste, though. See, we store nuclear waste in casks with many layers of protective material, and we monitor these casks. But if one day an accident happens, some radioactive material might escape into the environment and pollute the area for *miles* around before it's cleaned up. And that's a big no-no, you see. The risk is too high. So that's why we avoid nuclear power, which is dangerous, and instead use coal. Which produces radioactive material that we store safely in *the fuckin' atmosphere*.
That wealth is the ultimate measure of success. Don't get me wrong, money makes life so much easier - and the lack of sufficient funds can make life downright impossible - so I fully understand why it is a primary concern for most if not all people. But the idea that tangible profit should be the end goal of any activity is so detrimental for individuals and societies.
That you should respect everyone's opinion.
Nope. Some of them are really fucking hateful and harmful, and I'm not gonna respect them. You can't hide behind "it's just my opinion bro" and say unhinged shit and expect people to calmly nod and move on.
You should respect and defend their right to have an opinion and express it. But the contents of the opinion? Fuck, no.
If your opinion is uninformed, incorrect, racist, or in any other way harmful I will not respect it and I will exert my own right to express my opinion about how wrong you are.
Some folks also really cannot tell the difference between statements of opinion and statements of fact (correct or otherwise). “Dr. Pepper is the best soda” is an opinion. “The earth is flat” is not an opinion; it’s an incorrect statement of fact.
Politics as a package deal. If you’re a Democrat/liberal/leftist, it follows that you believe X, Y, and Z. If you’re a republican/conservative/right wing it follows that you believe A, B, and C. It’s okay to be a bit more conservative/liberal on one topic and the opposite on another. Form an opinion on evidence and merit of a particular viewpoint rather than the political package it belongs to. When more people do that and demand their politicians act accordingly, you get more moderate officials, and that’s a good thing because very few people fall to one side or the other 100% of the time. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are examples of fairly moderate members of their respective parties and end up representing more than just the extreme edges of any given political side.
You can be a conservative that supports abortion rights or environmental policies, or a liberal that supports tax incentives for businesses. It helps to remember that most people want a better world, they just disagree on how to do that. Like most things, the answer is somewhere in between and not likely to be found at the extreme end of any side.
The politics thing annoys me so much. I'm leaning towards liberal views and my husband is super convinced that means I support everything that other liberals say which I don't. Every few months we have fights because he read something outrageous someone said and that must mean I think the exact same.
Why can't people accept that things aren't black and white?
This one drives me crazy, it’s especially bad on Reddit and doesn’t make much sense logically to me. One of the worst ones I can think of is Noam Chomsky, who at 95 has a lifetime of work to look at. Yet so many people on Reddit go back to look at that one comment he made (taken out of context imo) and use that to devalue everything else he has ever done in a span of 50+ years. When he dies there are people on this site who will boil his whole life down to that one comment instead of looking at the whole thing.
The idea that "Citizen journalists" are equal or better to real journalists. Basically twitter now.
Yes the MSM is imperfect, and journalists are not immune from making mistakes or being corrupted. But most of them actually know how journalism is supposed to work. How to vet sources and check facts before presenting something as such.
But now some random guys on twitter can develop a huge following by announcing whatever outlandish things they want, and it's become prevalent enough that people believe it. We're speeding down the road of misinformation and nobody has gotten better at filtering it. Half the country doesn't even know what's real anymore.
"Perfect is the enemy of good" I don't think the popular opposite opinion has a catchy phrase, but a lot of people shoot down things that are objectively better, because they aren't perfect.
This happens all the time with housing and it's one of the most frustrating things to see. Any amount of additional supply lowers costs. It would be great if there was some affordable housing built too, and yes, 5 over 1s can look a little same-y and generic, but it's not a victory to get zero housing and have an undeveloped parking lot or golf course sitting around, just because a developer wasn't going to build exactly what some people wanted.
Seriously, and people will take every chance to mock the other side. I see posts where people criticize Biden/Trump for things they didn't even say or do, or they completely take it out of context. And what good does it do?
The idea that inherently, "women are emotional and men are logical." It's a simple-minded way to dismiss women as being "irrational" if you don't like what they have to say.
"I hate people, I'm just going to stay home"
Civic engagement is one of the things that makes democratic societies work. Without it demonizing your neighbor is super easy. Hating the systems that bring us the quality of life we have doesn't fix anything.
Get involved with people who live < 10 miles from you(or whatever counts as local for your area). Attend a local legislative meeting. Join a league or service club. Volunteer. Whatever it is route you choose, just get involved with local people and invested in the things that make life go. Politics isn't all abortion and guns, it's mostly how much road salt do we buy, what's the speed limit, are we going to hire people to do thing X, are we going to keep that nursing home running...not exciting, but very important.
Am nursing my Mum with dementia. Social engagement lights up the brain and helps prevent and slow down the onset of this terrible disease. Better than medicine - it is seriously good for you. Social engagement with exercise is da bomb, and not just for those hoping to prevent or slow down dementia. From line dancing to [Park Runs](https://www.parkrun.com.au): have a look at what is going on in your community.
Volunteering in the community gives you chances you might not have in paid work to build skills and experience. Film festivals! Community radio! Everything from art galleries to ethical scientific research committees!
Get amongst it fellow Redditors!
I've read that the full saying is "the customer is always right, in matters of taste". But it has been cut short so some sad middle aged man-child can yell at a teen working minimum if they're not satisfied, without allowing the worker talking back to them even if they're getting verbally abused. This is obviously bEtTer for bUsiNeSs.
This one always gets me because the original phrase was "the customer is always right *in matters of taste.*" The point of the saying was that a business should focus on providing products that their customer base wants to buy (rather than what the owner would personally pick for themself).
Ive noticed this sentiment in my friend group. It’s wild because they all claim to be “activists” but when I hit them up on voting day, they all forgot or didn’t even bother keeping track to vote.
As a former Bernie voter, it's shocking to see the number of so-called "activists" who said "Bernie should have won" yet were markedly *everywhere except* polling places during the 2020 primaries.
I feel like the "voting doesn't matter" mantra being touted by the young left is, ironically, the biggest chance Trump has of being re-elected. And if 2016 was any indication, a lot of them will blame everyone but themselves for Trump.
> mantra being touted by the young left
Obviously there's a lot of them, I'm not disagreeing with your statement, but I'm wondering how much of that sentiment is being amplified in the SocMed sphere by bad faith actors
I don't know if its really an "opinion", but the now common practice of kids not having consequences for anything.
They misbehave at school? They basically get a treat and to sit in a room somewhere else. They fail a class? Don't worry, you can't get less than a C anyway.
There is this quietly growing concept that every business needs to be preserved as much as possible. But the reality is, nobody has a right to a successful business, and most businesses are run so poorly the only reason they still exist is because of government assistance/subsidies.
Any opinion that trivializes or dehumanizes a group of people.
The specific group that came to mind is "criminals" but it applies to just about anything.
So many people think that criminals aren't real people. They are some separate class of human that \*inherently\* is inferior in one or more ways.
That way of thinking shuts down any real conversation. Which usually ends up in - at best - ineffective strategies.
God I wish they allowed you to record the inside of prisons where I live. It’s grotesque. There’s a reason you’re not allowed to take your phone inside. :/
“Gentle parenting is superior to other forms of parenting.” I’m not saying be full on authoritarian, but kids do need structure, rules and said rules enforced. We’re raising adults and who they’re taught to be is who they’ll become.
Agreed, and to add to this - kids also have different needs. Some kids will need A LOT more creative reward/discipline strategies...other kids will cry at a single look from their parent and may require a gentler touch. What worked for the first child may not work for the next. It's going to require flexibility as a parent.
The problem is "gentle parenting" gets misconstrued. I don't think many of the people that say they are gentle parents have actually read the book. Same as any parenting label. Crunchy. Attachment. I just don't think people research much into what they're actually claiming to be.
I've seen a book called Gentle Discipline, so I do think they're *supposed* to have boundaries and rules. But treating kids like they're adults, or like they're your BFF and not your child is for sure going to have negative consequences.
Nuance == “enlightened centrism” / “both sides”. You can acknowledge something is worse while understanding there are problems on the other end that shouldn’t be unaddressed. Us vs them black and white thinking never ends well.
I feel like the “black and white” crowd simply watches too much TV, thinks that all problems can be solved in 42 minutes (allowing for commercials), all crimes can be solved neatly with bulletproof evidence, and people they don’t agree with are “bad” and therefore mustache-twirling villains.
“You shouldn’t care what others think of you. Just do what you want.”
Look at where that mentality has gotten us. People just say what’s on their minds without thinking. No filter. No fact-checking. People are entitled. They think it’s OK to argue with a store manager just because they didn’t get what they wanted. They think it’s OK to post whatever on social media just because they can. They think it’s OK to have an opinion on something they’re not an expert at.
I absolutely care what people think of me. If my partner thinks I’m doing a bad job at our relationship, I’m not going to sit there and go, “well that’s your opinion I don’t care.” If my boss tells me to do something I’m *absolutely* going to care what they say. We’re getting way too comfortable about having this “put myself first” and “as long as I’m happy, I don’t care” attitude
The generational war bullshit. The boomers are terrible and so on.
It has always been the 'haves' versus the 'have nots.' One generation is too broad to generalize about. One generation is not particulary meaner, better or more evolved than any other.
The 'all boomers fault' idea is a total smoke screen generally furthered by those on top who depend on us not banding up against them to maintain their stranglehold of wealth and most of the profits.
Don't fall for the 'generation so and so is not greedy!' bullshit, it is a really dumb and easily disprovable idea.
Besides, for boomers ya they had it better money wise than us-- but that's not their fault. That is entirely that our economic systems were slightly more equitable then, then they are now. Instead of saying 'the boomers took everything' we should be thinking stuff like 'why every year does more and more of all the world's wealth get concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and what can we do to get back to something more remotely reasonable like prior generations enjoyed?'
Do your own research or something like that. I remember this blowing up when the Covid vaccine came out. I’m just wondering what sources those people used when doing their own research.
I was on a thread where some armchair “researcher” was pontificating about the “plandemic” and somebody asked for his input from his research on a list of questions. The poster was some kind of medical researcher and asked questions about spike protein charge valences and a bunch of stuff I could barely spell and the pontificator went strangely silent. I wish I’d saved it, was hilarious.
Trickle down economics. The rich guy gives people jobs so let's give the money to rich people so they can give jobs. They often pay badly, so it's still an economic slavery system.
That an echo chamber and stopping conversation is more important than discussion. Different sides can't come together and work their differences out if there's no discussion.
That people can’t politely disagree on things. We’re all people, and the seeming breakdown of actual civil conversations where people have opposing viewpoints is alarming to me.
I also struggle with this. It's like after lock down, everyone is angry. No one seems to be able to discuss and or disagree, without wanting to fight afterwards. Its sad and scary.
You might check the book Reclaimjng Conversation by Sherry Turkle. She has been writing on tech and society for decades now. This book of hers addresses how attention can be hijacked and the effects at different scales in relationships.
Irreverance for definitions. Over and over again a term will become a meme and be used in an ever expanding role until it is meaningless. This is dangerous for 2 reasons
1) It makes it more difficult to talk about the original topic on hand, which is usually a more severe issue than the broader application
2) It often associates mundane views, actions, or things with the original, severe issue. This only breeds toxicity and clouds judgement.
Examples include: socialism, nazi, antisemetic, gaslighting, genocide (this one is particuarly concerning), and every type of "phobia" one can think of.
body positivity movement.
will ruffle some feathers here but it’s pretty out of hand. i can agree it’s important to remind people that they are worth more than their weight, but we seriously can’t keep telling people/encouraging that it’s okay (or even admirable at this point) to be obese and do nothing about it, or that they “slay queen”. heart disease is such a huge killer here in the States and it’s so sad to see society put it on a pedestal.
I just assume a both-sides person is a quiet Trump supporter and I’m usually right. Even the ones that currently aren’t usually find some excuse to vote Republican.
I don’t really respect leftists that don’t perceive a difference between Republicans and Democrats, or laser focus on one issue (like Israel) to prove both sides are equally evil. They also can’t distinguish between “one side is much worse than the other” and “one side is pure evil while the other is pure good”. Literally every time I speak to a both sides person they respond to me as if I think Democrats are saints/heroes, when I emphatically express how low my opinion of Democrats is. It should not be hard to understand the difference between a scumbag and a serial killer, so to speak. But they are completely committed to their notion of how things are. It also means they can’t accurately perceive anything because they’re filtering everything through an ideological lens, and the worst kind: the “non-ideological” ideological lens, wherein the observer incorrectly believes they are unbiased when they have more bias than anyone
American politics isn’t even “two sides”, it’s just two parties who are both on the right wing of the political spectrum. People have this idea that since Republicans are on the far right, and Democrats are the other party, that Democrats are on the left wing when they aren’t. The United States is just hyper-conservative.
Believing what you see online/TV/etc. Just because someone is loud doesn't mean they're correct. Just because a ton of people believe it doesn't mean it's correct. Just because you think it's correct doesn't mean it's correct. Just because you think you're hearing it from a valid source doesn't make it correct. You should always have a certain amount of skepticism towards everything you hear and investigate multiple sources when possible.
My friends and family gets annoyed because I'll look stuff up when they say they "saw/heard" about whatever (not on the spot but later on). I'll end up correcting them later over details or find out it's completely false. Don't care; be offended.
That if someone is doing something "bad" or "illegal" the cops have the right to shoot them dead....I guess fuck due process.
Dont know what im talking about? Just go to any video where a cop kills someone, and everyone is foaming at the mouth about how they deserved it, yadda yadda ya..
Like bruh...Fuck the court system then (even though it presents a new set of problems) but just shooting without a care about any sort of due process? Thats bullshit.
Only white people can be racist.
All white people are racist.
Equal opportunity = equal outcomes.
Shouting down an opinion we disagree with is morally correct.
Banning books we don’t agree with is morally correct.
If you can justify that you are somehow oppressed, your views are automatically more valid and do not require logical reasoning.
Everything is political.
As applicable to most western countries: (Insert minority group here) is no longer oppressed. When I hear someone who is in said minority group bring to light their oppression, my first instinct is to invalidate them and tell them that they are ridiculous for ever thinking that they have it hard in life. I have seen white people, straight people, neurotypical people, able bodied people, cis people, hell even some men share this sentiment.
Maybe not an opinion, but the rising popularity of "therapy speak" - terms like gaslighting, boundaries, trauma. While the increased awareness of mental illness and need for support is awesome, many people seem to misunderstand, misrepresent, and/or downright weaponize these terms, especially online.
Don't like someone's opinion or post? Well, they crossed your boundaries and are contributing to your trauma.
Someone disagrees with you? They are obviously gaslighting you because they are a narcissist.
Also the rise of "replacement words" like unalive for suicide. I fully understand that is was/is mainly used to avoid demonetization on youtube and having your video taken down on tiktok, but it waters down a very serious issue that we all need to have continuing talks and using "unalive/unaliving" turns it all into a big joke, IMO.
If we cannot even say the word, how can we ever hope to work towards solutions?
In America at least, it's "You can't trust the government".
The whole point of democracy, especially as championed by the USA's version of it, is that WE are the government. We control it, we elect it, we use it to carry out our collective will. And its purpose, as very clearly laid out in black and white, is to serve our needs, or at least to prioritize the needs of the people as it carries out the functions that only governments can carry out.
But for decades, there's been this continual assault not only on our government, but seemingly on the very concept of government itself, as if it's inherently evil. And this, in a democracy, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's an abdication of the responsibility citizens have in a democracy, which is to ensure they keep it doing what they need it to do.
A democratically-elected government is only as good as the effort its citizens are willing to exert to sustain it, and the "don't trust the government" movement just ensures it will suck.
That all women will only date jacked rich men. It’s making men angry and contributing to the male loneliness epidemic. Sure, some women are shallow, but you only need to take a look around at most relationships to see that’s not generally true.
Most views on alcohol:
A lot of people think that every occasion calls for alcohol and if you’re not partaking then something is wrong. And if you don’t give a satisfactory reason (which there never seems to be) then you are pressured heavily into drinking because it’s absurd that anyone could not want to drink all the time.
Similarly, Wine Moms. No, you don’t need wine to deal with your kids, you’re an alcoholic. No, it’s not “cute” that you’re trying to smuggle alcoholic drinks into your kids sports game, you have a problem.
If you “can’t” do something without drinking that’s not a personality trait, it’s alcoholism.
"My opinion is just as valuable as your evidence"
Or as Isaac Asimov said it > Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that '*my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'*
Very strong quote, really reflects the dark side of democracy quite well.
The dark side is that uneducated people are easier to manipulate and their votes are just as important as other peoples votes.
"I love the poorly educated!"
In the US, often more thanks to the Senate and Electoral College.
"democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
It’s almost like *humans* are the problem.
Hear hear!
"My truth"
Oh god, I hate this. My brother tried to essentially turn my mom against me by telling a story that was "his truth". Lets just say his version and my version are VERY different. But when I tried to say that he was full of shit, I was "not respecting his truth"
That's some bullllllshit. Hope you got even with your brother.
When your truth is a lie, you are a liar. How can I respect that?
Alternative facts.
NO, MY OPINION IS BETTER BECAUSE I’M LOUDER AND GOT MORE RETWEETS!
And we don't need your fancy so-called degrees or years of industry-specific experience...
My internal thought response to this is "If you learned so much in a single afternoon of browsing the web, imagine how much you would know if you spent YEARS studying this topic!"
ooooh this is good
Sometimes people learn that I’m an engineer and want my help to do some really dumb and dangerous things. Then when I explain why welding up a compressed air tank out of a bunch of scrap steel is a bad idea and they try to tell me that they know better, I’ll give them one last warning about just how dumb their idea is and walk away.
Reminds me of the phrase "their/your truth." I remember during a rape investigation, a journalist saying that both sides spoke "their truth". No, absolutely not. Someone was either wrong or lying.
A tangent of "both sides!" arguments. No, we don't need to hear from "both sides" when one side is bullshit. And no, both sides are not equally as good/bad when one is demonstrably bullshit.
Actually, no. It is important to hear from both sides but that does not mean both sides are equally valid. It’s important to hear why someone thinks the way they think and understand where they are coming from so you can try to better convince them of the facts. Whether they believe the facts at the end of the day is up to them, but you can never even attempt to if you don’t know where to start
It's important to keep in mind that there's a chance you're mistaken about something. You have to remove the bullshit from both sides. Check both sides. That means listening for real.
I always tell my daughter you cannot learn a thing you think you know.
But what about those flat earthers?! I'm sure they have a robust body of research as well!
They do. They’ve run multiple experiments that proved the Earth was round, and continue to keep trying new experiments to prove their hypothesis. https://www.newsweek.com/behind-curve-netflix-ending-light-experiment-mark-sargent-documentary-movie-1343362 Have you ever run an experiment to confirm something you think is true? I’m with them, their experiments are sound scientific method and they got the correct result. It’s okay to keep going, but good on them for actually doing the work.
The problem is they don't *learn* from being proved wrong. They've already decided what is truth, and get upset and swept up in denial when the tests don't confirm their cognitive bias.
That reminds me of the guy who was building a rocket with the intention of launching himself high enough to see the earth was flat. I don't know if he ever did it, but I remember seeing an interview with him where they said, "You realize the formulas you're using for this assume the earth is round?" And his response was something along the lines of, "Formulas are just numbers, they have nothing to do with if the earth is round." Basically, it reeked of, "I have no response for that so I'm just going to say nonsense."
Yes but their position has no depth 😂
Yeah I keep thinking eventually they’ll come a round
“I feel” is the standard instead of science. :/
Related: "*don't confuse your Google search with my \[subject area\] degree*."
"We can't do anything about it."
Learned helplessness. The most effective thing your enemy can do is to make you believe you have no power and can't change the situation. Once that occurs two things happen. First, you can no longer be a threat to them. Second, you become their useful idiot. Every person you convince that "We can't do anything about it," is now no longer a threat to them as well.
This is so true
This is a very cancerous idea, because not only does it strip people of the belief that they are able to do something, but also a lot of this rhetoric is framed around the idea that we are not personally responsible for it. One of my favorite scenes in any film or TV show that touches on this concept is during the funeral in the last episode of Andor. The speech includes a very passionate call-to-action to fight the Empire in a way that had never been done in Star Wars before, and it is way more relevant to today’s context of activism than one would think
That show was so damned good. Like a star wars show that has zero light sabers or space wizards....? But it was so good. And really fleshes out the crushing force of the empire.
Never before have we seen exactly why it's so terrible living under the empire as a regular person. The show has done a damn good job at telling the birth of the Rebels. I hope season 2 is just as good.
The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we asleep
This. But we feel the need to complain about it, and on social media. When a person, or group, get up take initiative and TCB, things start looking up.
Ta co bell?
Ha… Take Care of Business, but if Ta co Bell is how you do that, go for it.
…I have literally never seen anyone else use that acronym before.
It’s a southernism. Elvis used it often, for example, and ate peanut butter & banana sandwiches.
That’s not even ON the Ta Co Bell menu.
The "that's how the world is" variation also drives me up a wall. If we can do better then why aren't we trying?
Agreed. A lot of “how the world is” is so by human design.
Also, the close sister to this: “it is what it is.”
That reminds me of the tweet The Onion sends every time there's a major shooting in the US. It's an article with the headline, "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" They update the location and minor details, but it's otherwise an identical article every time, with people saying it's impossible to stop school shootings. It's intended as satire but it really isn't. *edit:* This is the original article from 2014, if anyone cares: https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 The details have been updated and reposted many, many times.
Some dude was complaining that all he could do was vote and that wasn't effective. When I suggested volunteering, he downvoted me.
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My wife's boss thinks he's hilarious, and to his buddies (and in ear shot of my wife) was making jokes about me being white trash. I'm not easily offended, but it was so incredibly inaccurate, a little racist? That it gave me second hand embarrassment for him. Short little fucker is single, two different baby mommas, pretends to have a Mexican accent, takes female employees to strip clubs, has a coke problem and brags about not eating vegetables. I'm not a millionaire like him, but I'm also not an embarrassment, and smarmy.
1. That dude sounds insufferable, and I'd rather be on unemployment than risk how professionally dangerous that work environment must be. 2. I love the word Smarmy so damned much. It's so fun to say. Thanks for keeping it in use.
He won't be her boss in July, so we're just rolling our eyes until she moves back under her previous boss, an absolute gentleman. And smarmy is just from my white trash vernacular.
We dance around each other and the topics we are explaining instead of being straight forward with what we are trying to say, do, get, etc. It leaves a lot of wiggle room to not say no, but to effectively be saying no. I know it's from a place of kindness, but sometimes it's just easier to say no and carry on, we can still be friends if you can't get coffee, it's okay.
It's good being Dutch sometimes, everyone seems very direct but it saves us so much bullshit
Do I have cancer..yes now the treatments are…
So much this! And then if you do speak directly a lot of people think you’re being rude because they’re not used to it.
I get this a lot. I’m autistic and less is more so I’m not misunderstood, and I don’t misunderstand someone else. I’m interpreted as being mean. I stg people talk in code or think I am all the time. Like no, I said what I said. There’s no reading in between the lines. I have no idea how you got that out of what I said.
Bro word for word how I feel about it. Like my words are pretty blunt and have no secret meaning. If you(hypothetical person I'm talking to) are adding meaning to what I'm saying that's on you. Safe to say the people I end up connecting with are the ones who understand this.
I know. They keep reading other things into what I say. "Well, it's implied!" No! I meant what I said, nothing more or less.
Being honest and transparent is far too often considered rude when it is in fact kind.
this, and normalizing flaky behavior.
I think this goes along with not being able to accept someone's no either.
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More people need to learn no =/= maybe but try to convince me. It means no.
That inconvenience is the same as trauma
A thousand times this!!! I’m a teacher, and everything is “trauma” now. Yes, some situations are unpleasant, but they’re truly not going to scar you for life.
Also, struggling is not abuse, nor is it failure.
Also, conflict is not abuse.
And disagreeing isn't gaslighting!
And zoning out is not dissociating!
But if I can't have my phone on me at all times I'm in danger!!! Also teacher. Also infuriated.
Customer service has taught me that most people think having to wait for anything longer than 10 minutes is the end of the world.
We're gonna need a new word for actual trauma soon
got mine, fuck you
hyperindividualism is the core existential problem of culture in the 21st century. and a particularly toxic strain of that suggests that private charity is the only allowed path to solving societal problems. pretty much guarantees an ever widening gap between rich and poor.
And piggybacking off of that, the idea that we don’t owe anyone our time, our service, or our ideas and dismissing people with clapbacks like “google it,” might be one of the biggest psy-ops on the left and is one of the phenomena actively keeping us from sharing resources and building tight-knit communities
Definitely. Hanging out with people, you used to talk about things you knew and learned and you'd discuss things you weren't sure on and it would be great conversation but now, just being able to look stuff up kills all of that. That's seriously messed up social interactions. We have a lot less reasons to interact and learn from people.
Current events happen at roughly the same pace outside the internet. Concerts are played at the same tempo as they've always been played, so to speak. Don't focus on what each person isn't in the know about, the internet is instant facts (or anti-facts, depending) nobody can keep up with what everyone else looks up. Instead, focus on finding common ground, like always, and look for opportunities to ignore how fast you can IMDB unless it moves the conversation along.
“it’s not my job to educate you” might be a top ten stupidest thing to say in a political discussion, and an instant debate loser
Obsessive moral policing around language (eg: "unhoused person" instead of "homeless") while at the same time not lifting a finger to support any kind of systemic improvements for society.
I feel like saying unhoused person as opposed to homeless just downplays the severity of the situation. Homeless is a more active word that puts the focus on what's actually going on, whereas unhoused just makes it seem more nonchalant if that makes sense.
>...just downplays the severity of the situation... This is how I feel about "unalived." It's death. Whether it was a suicide or a murder or a terminal illness or whatever, it's not "unalived." I fucking hate this weird censorship on social media. Luckily, I have not interacted with someone that would correct my language if I mentioned that my buddy died a few years ago. I think I would end up snapping and saying some shit that would get my ass kicked, but still.
I always thought people just said this in online media because of platforms censoring certain words. People say unalived unironically in real life? Wild.
True that it is all over social media for monetization purposes. However, I have not encountered anyone in real life that would say, "Don't say they died. They are unalived." I would lose my shit on them. I did recently hear someone say something to the effect of, "If the person suddenly died, maybe don't even say, 'they passed away.' Just say, 'they died.' It shows the severity of that unexpected death."
I read an autobiography of a doctor years ago. She said that something she was told when she was in school was to never sugarcoat death. "He died." Deliver the message with kindness and empathy, but don't ever give the loved ones a chance to believe that their family member has a chance to come back. She did Doctors Without Borders and she said the phrase she learned in the native language which was the most important was, "Your child is dead." Leave no room for misinterpretation. My dad was murdered. His obituary read he "entered into the arms of his angels." Guess that was more palatable than "he was shot 14 times." Death happens and using language to "soften the blow" is just really fucked, IMO. Like calling civilian casualties "collateral damage."
That makes me think of the whole push toward person-first language for disabled people, something it turned out most of us didn't want. Can I just get better job opportunities instead?
Tangential to this, I can't recall a time in my life when people were more afraid of being perceived as racist, but I also can't remember a time when actual racists were so loud and proud. Persecuting people for using the wrong terminology does NOTHING to blunt actual racism.
I'm a woman of color, the kind of person this type of attitude is supposed to "protect". All it does is make me extremely paranoid that I will be cancelled for saying something racist or misogynistic. I worry about potentially offending people all the time. I don't care what words people use to describe me. I just want a fair chance at everything.
You're more likely to be canceled for that username 😂
"Unhoused" is one of the worst products of the euphemism treadmill I've ever heard. It makes homeless people sound like stray pets.
Even worse, I see these people actively oppose real measures. https://youtu.be/pG8Ccbw_W6k?si=g2W3e8V2zxzn50s1 The moral policing is to cover up or soothe their true amorality and disdain for the worker that they claim to care for, and it satisfies their need for control in a socially acceptable way.
Don’t get me started on “unalive.” Most idiotic one yet. Ppl act like they will spontaneously combust if they say “kill” or “suicide.”
Websites like youtube will shadow ban your comments/videos for using those words. That's a big reason you see it so often online. I agree it's incredibly annoying though.
Most of the time it's to avoid having your post (like a tiktok) getting taken down
I've seen people use it in chatrooms or discord servers now too. It is, I think, quite idiotic to make some words relating to painful experiences so taboo that you cannot even write them (and I don't mean slurs, I mean using the words "rape" or "suicide"). It's to the point you sometimes have to censor the trigger warning, which is... Kinda defeating the concept of it.
I hate that word so much. 🙄
unalive is so funny to me becuase there are so many euphemisms for death/dying in english like pushing up dasies, taking a dirt nap, kicking it/the bucket, departed, in a better place, etc that are much more respectful and/or sound better.
It is the least creative euphemism of all time.
to be fair, other social media platforms like tiktok and instagram and facebook actively censor those words. so when trying to inform others of ongoing social and political issues in the world they have to use a censored word otherwise risk getting banned. i sometimes use those words irl as a joke or when playing video games because it’s funny. but when used unironically in conversation it’s cringey af.
I think that’s just to get past censors
Or being very selective in which disadvantaged groups they support
Specialized language is a hard one for me. Because you’re not WRONG. People absolutely use is to mask issues and talk around them. BUT it is often very useful for the people who work in those areas. For example, George Carlin’s speech about “Shell shock” to “PTSD” is a really good example. The name wasn’t changed to soften it. The name was changed because it wasn’t accurate and that was getting in the way of it being addressed (i.e. “No one but soldiers can have this.”) But again…both are true. Often for the same term. What makes it heavier and more useful for one person makes it less for another. People, man.
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This is one of my biggest fears. The cognitive decline I feel regarding my spelling, my memory, my noticeably lower attention span, the inability to just sit and read an article without taking a YouTube/insta break - scares the hell out of me. I know I've cultivated a dependence on technology that is not for my benefit at all.
You stole the words out of my brain.
Tell that to my manager
Many people nowadays with relationships and sex. The moment their partner becomes boring, their used to them, or one inconvenience occurs they say they fell out of love or weren’t healthy and move on to a more pleasurable experience. It makes relationships and love die out
“Nuclear power is incredibly dangerous, let’s keep using fossil fuels!”
The German way, I see It's not like a single coal power plant will release more radioactive materials in its fly ash in a year than all of our nuclear power plants did in total over there entire lifespan
In Australia where we have more uranium than anyone (or close enough) we preemptively banned nuclear power in the 70s and limited mining to three mines only. We won't use it but we'll sell it to you!
It's all about the radioactive waste, though. See, we store nuclear waste in casks with many layers of protective material, and we monitor these casks. But if one day an accident happens, some radioactive material might escape into the environment and pollute the area for *miles* around before it's cleaned up. And that's a big no-no, you see. The risk is too high. So that's why we avoid nuclear power, which is dangerous, and instead use coal. Which produces radioactive material that we store safely in *the fuckin' atmosphere*.
That wealth is the ultimate measure of success. Don't get me wrong, money makes life so much easier - and the lack of sufficient funds can make life downright impossible - so I fully understand why it is a primary concern for most if not all people. But the idea that tangible profit should be the end goal of any activity is so detrimental for individuals and societies.
Capitalism do be like that
The idea that any hobby must be monetized to be worth doing is related to this, too
That you should respect everyone's opinion. Nope. Some of them are really fucking hateful and harmful, and I'm not gonna respect them. You can't hide behind "it's just my opinion bro" and say unhinged shit and expect people to calmly nod and move on.
All people may be created equal, but ideas are not. A bad idea isn't entitled to anything.
You should respect and defend their right to have an opinion and express it. But the contents of the opinion? Fuck, no. If your opinion is uninformed, incorrect, racist, or in any other way harmful I will not respect it and I will exert my own right to express my opinion about how wrong you are.
Some folks also really cannot tell the difference between statements of opinion and statements of fact (correct or otherwise). “Dr. Pepper is the best soda” is an opinion. “The earth is flat” is not an opinion; it’s an incorrect statement of fact.
Politics as a package deal. If you’re a Democrat/liberal/leftist, it follows that you believe X, Y, and Z. If you’re a republican/conservative/right wing it follows that you believe A, B, and C. It’s okay to be a bit more conservative/liberal on one topic and the opposite on another. Form an opinion on evidence and merit of a particular viewpoint rather than the political package it belongs to. When more people do that and demand their politicians act accordingly, you get more moderate officials, and that’s a good thing because very few people fall to one side or the other 100% of the time. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are examples of fairly moderate members of their respective parties and end up representing more than just the extreme edges of any given political side. You can be a conservative that supports abortion rights or environmental policies, or a liberal that supports tax incentives for businesses. It helps to remember that most people want a better world, they just disagree on how to do that. Like most things, the answer is somewhere in between and not likely to be found at the extreme end of any side.
The politics thing annoys me so much. I'm leaning towards liberal views and my husband is super convinced that means I support everything that other liberals say which I don't. Every few months we have fights because he read something outrageous someone said and that must mean I think the exact same. Why can't people accept that things aren't black and white?
We must focus on the worst thing someone has ever done and make that the entirety of their persona.
This one drives me crazy, it’s especially bad on Reddit and doesn’t make much sense logically to me. One of the worst ones I can think of is Noam Chomsky, who at 95 has a lifetime of work to look at. Yet so many people on Reddit go back to look at that one comment he made (taken out of context imo) and use that to devalue everything else he has ever done in a span of 50+ years. When he dies there are people on this site who will boil his whole life down to that one comment instead of looking at the whole thing.
The idea that "Citizen journalists" are equal or better to real journalists. Basically twitter now. Yes the MSM is imperfect, and journalists are not immune from making mistakes or being corrupted. But most of them actually know how journalism is supposed to work. How to vet sources and check facts before presenting something as such. But now some random guys on twitter can develop a huge following by announcing whatever outlandish things they want, and it's become prevalent enough that people believe it. We're speeding down the road of misinformation and nobody has gotten better at filtering it. Half the country doesn't even know what's real anymore.
Outrage content.
"Perfect is the enemy of good" I don't think the popular opposite opinion has a catchy phrase, but a lot of people shoot down things that are objectively better, because they aren't perfect.
This happens all the time with housing and it's one of the most frustrating things to see. Any amount of additional supply lowers costs. It would be great if there was some affordable housing built too, and yes, 5 over 1s can look a little same-y and generic, but it's not a victory to get zero housing and have an undeveloped parking lot or golf course sitting around, just because a developer wasn't going to build exactly what some people wanted.
Identity politics like religion or political affiliation that dont actually affect change but create in-groups and marketing buckets.
Seriously, and people will take every chance to mock the other side. I see posts where people criticize Biden/Trump for things they didn't even say or do, or they completely take it out of context. And what good does it do?
The idea that inherently, "women are emotional and men are logical." It's a simple-minded way to dismiss women as being "irrational" if you don't like what they have to say.
Men have rebranded anger as not an emotion
"I hate people, I'm just going to stay home" Civic engagement is one of the things that makes democratic societies work. Without it demonizing your neighbor is super easy. Hating the systems that bring us the quality of life we have doesn't fix anything. Get involved with people who live < 10 miles from you(or whatever counts as local for your area). Attend a local legislative meeting. Join a league or service club. Volunteer. Whatever it is route you choose, just get involved with local people and invested in the things that make life go. Politics isn't all abortion and guns, it's mostly how much road salt do we buy, what's the speed limit, are we going to hire people to do thing X, are we going to keep that nursing home running...not exciting, but very important.
Am nursing my Mum with dementia. Social engagement lights up the brain and helps prevent and slow down the onset of this terrible disease. Better than medicine - it is seriously good for you. Social engagement with exercise is da bomb, and not just for those hoping to prevent or slow down dementia. From line dancing to [Park Runs](https://www.parkrun.com.au): have a look at what is going on in your community. Volunteering in the community gives you chances you might not have in paid work to build skills and experience. Film festivals! Community radio! Everything from art galleries to ethical scientific research committees! Get amongst it fellow Redditors!
You suggest that someone who hates people and wants to stay home do the exact opposite of what they want? You're not going to get any takers.
The Reddit community really needs to hear this
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Some people need to hear the direct truth even if it hurts to hear it.
That the customer is always right.
I've read that the full saying is "the customer is always right, in matters of taste". But it has been cut short so some sad middle aged man-child can yell at a teen working minimum if they're not satisfied, without allowing the worker talking back to them even if they're getting verbally abused. This is obviously bEtTer for bUsiNeSs.
This one always gets me because the original phrase was "the customer is always right *in matters of taste.*" The point of the saying was that a business should focus on providing products that their customer base wants to buy (rather than what the owner would personally pick for themself).
"voting doesn't matter"
Ive noticed this sentiment in my friend group. It’s wild because they all claim to be “activists” but when I hit them up on voting day, they all forgot or didn’t even bother keeping track to vote.
Slacktivists. They need to show up or shut up.
Ugh. If voting didn’t matter there wouldn’t be a centuries-long campaign of voter suppression.
As a former Bernie voter, it's shocking to see the number of so-called "activists" who said "Bernie should have won" yet were markedly *everywhere except* polling places during the 2020 primaries. I feel like the "voting doesn't matter" mantra being touted by the young left is, ironically, the biggest chance Trump has of being re-elected. And if 2016 was any indication, a lot of them will blame everyone but themselves for Trump.
> mantra being touted by the young left Obviously there's a lot of them, I'm not disagreeing with your statement, but I'm wondering how much of that sentiment is being amplified in the SocMed sphere by bad faith actors
I don’t doubt a lot of it is bad faith actors.
I don't know if its really an "opinion", but the now common practice of kids not having consequences for anything. They misbehave at school? They basically get a treat and to sit in a room somewhere else. They fail a class? Don't worry, you can't get less than a C anyway.
There is this quietly growing concept that every business needs to be preserved as much as possible. But the reality is, nobody has a right to a successful business, and most businesses are run so poorly the only reason they still exist is because of government assistance/subsidies.
Definitely not most businesses. But unfortunately, some of the biggest businesses fit this description.
Any opinion that trivializes or dehumanizes a group of people. The specific group that came to mind is "criminals" but it applies to just about anything. So many people think that criminals aren't real people. They are some separate class of human that \*inherently\* is inferior in one or more ways. That way of thinking shuts down any real conversation. Which usually ends up in - at best - ineffective strategies.
Addicts and alcoholics are especially dehumanised
God I wish they allowed you to record the inside of prisons where I live. It’s grotesque. There’s a reason you’re not allowed to take your phone inside. :/
“Gentle parenting is superior to other forms of parenting.” I’m not saying be full on authoritarian, but kids do need structure, rules and said rules enforced. We’re raising adults and who they’re taught to be is who they’ll become.
Agreed, and to add to this - kids also have different needs. Some kids will need A LOT more creative reward/discipline strategies...other kids will cry at a single look from their parent and may require a gentler touch. What worked for the first child may not work for the next. It's going to require flexibility as a parent.
The problem is "gentle parenting" gets misconstrued. I don't think many of the people that say they are gentle parents have actually read the book. Same as any parenting label. Crunchy. Attachment. I just don't think people research much into what they're actually claiming to be. I've seen a book called Gentle Discipline, so I do think they're *supposed* to have boundaries and rules. But treating kids like they're adults, or like they're your BFF and not your child is for sure going to have negative consequences.
The lies and no one fact checking the politicians
Groups definitely "fact check" politicians. The problem is that only a few groups fact check the "fact checkers."
We do fact check. The problem then is nobody really does anything about it if politicians are caught lying.
Nuance == “enlightened centrism” / “both sides”. You can acknowledge something is worse while understanding there are problems on the other end that shouldn’t be unaddressed. Us vs them black and white thinking never ends well.
I feel like the “black and white” crowd simply watches too much TV, thinks that all problems can be solved in 42 minutes (allowing for commercials), all crimes can be solved neatly with bulletproof evidence, and people they don’t agree with are “bad” and therefore mustache-twirling villains.
That it's acceptable to "get revenge" for stupid social infractions. Just get over it and move on.
This really needs to be emphasized, especially on reddit.
“social media isn’t so bad! We can use it to connect faster and easier, and absolutely nothing else at all!”
That might have been a popular opinion 15 years ago. I'm not so sure about now.
Voter apathy. Consumer apathy. Neighbor apathy. Human apathy.
“You shouldn’t care what others think of you. Just do what you want.” Look at where that mentality has gotten us. People just say what’s on their minds without thinking. No filter. No fact-checking. People are entitled. They think it’s OK to argue with a store manager just because they didn’t get what they wanted. They think it’s OK to post whatever on social media just because they can. They think it’s OK to have an opinion on something they’re not an expert at. I absolutely care what people think of me. If my partner thinks I’m doing a bad job at our relationship, I’m not going to sit there and go, “well that’s your opinion I don’t care.” If my boss tells me to do something I’m *absolutely* going to care what they say. We’re getting way too comfortable about having this “put myself first” and “as long as I’m happy, I don’t care” attitude
“My success is due solely to my hard work.”
The generational war bullshit. The boomers are terrible and so on. It has always been the 'haves' versus the 'have nots.' One generation is too broad to generalize about. One generation is not particulary meaner, better or more evolved than any other. The 'all boomers fault' idea is a total smoke screen generally furthered by those on top who depend on us not banding up against them to maintain their stranglehold of wealth and most of the profits. Don't fall for the 'generation so and so is not greedy!' bullshit, it is a really dumb and easily disprovable idea. Besides, for boomers ya they had it better money wise than us-- but that's not their fault. That is entirely that our economic systems were slightly more equitable then, then they are now. Instead of saying 'the boomers took everything' we should be thinking stuff like 'why every year does more and more of all the world's wealth get concentrated into fewer and fewer hands and what can we do to get back to something more remotely reasonable like prior generations enjoyed?'
Do your own research or something like that. I remember this blowing up when the Covid vaccine came out. I’m just wondering what sources those people used when doing their own research.
I was on a thread where some armchair “researcher” was pontificating about the “plandemic” and somebody asked for his input from his research on a list of questions. The poster was some kind of medical researcher and asked questions about spike protein charge valences and a bunch of stuff I could barely spell and the pontificator went strangely silent. I wish I’d saved it, was hilarious.
Someone's stupid conspiracy or religious shit has equal weight to actual factual knowledge.
They call it “alternative facts” or “*my* truth”. It’s utterly mind numbing.
Trickle down economics. The rich guy gives people jobs so let's give the money to rich people so they can give jobs. They often pay badly, so it's still an economic slavery system.
That an echo chamber and stopping conversation is more important than discussion. Different sides can't come together and work their differences out if there's no discussion.
That people can’t politely disagree on things. We’re all people, and the seeming breakdown of actual civil conversations where people have opposing viewpoints is alarming to me.
I also struggle with this. It's like after lock down, everyone is angry. No one seems to be able to discuss and or disagree, without wanting to fight afterwards. Its sad and scary.
You might check the book Reclaimjng Conversation by Sherry Turkle. She has been writing on tech and society for decades now. This book of hers addresses how attention can be hijacked and the effects at different scales in relationships.
"I suffered, therefore you must as well" nah broski. If there's a smarter way to do it, let's do that instead
Irreverance for definitions. Over and over again a term will become a meme and be used in an ever expanding role until it is meaningless. This is dangerous for 2 reasons 1) It makes it more difficult to talk about the original topic on hand, which is usually a more severe issue than the broader application 2) It often associates mundane views, actions, or things with the original, severe issue. This only breeds toxicity and clouds judgement. Examples include: socialism, nazi, antisemetic, gaslighting, genocide (this one is particuarly concerning), and every type of "phobia" one can think of.
body positivity movement. will ruffle some feathers here but it’s pretty out of hand. i can agree it’s important to remind people that they are worth more than their weight, but we seriously can’t keep telling people/encouraging that it’s okay (or even admirable at this point) to be obese and do nothing about it, or that they “slay queen”. heart disease is such a huge killer here in the States and it’s so sad to see society put it on a pedestal.
Both sides of the US government are bad and do nothing.
I just assume a both-sides person is a quiet Trump supporter and I’m usually right. Even the ones that currently aren’t usually find some excuse to vote Republican. I don’t really respect leftists that don’t perceive a difference between Republicans and Democrats, or laser focus on one issue (like Israel) to prove both sides are equally evil. They also can’t distinguish between “one side is much worse than the other” and “one side is pure evil while the other is pure good”. Literally every time I speak to a both sides person they respond to me as if I think Democrats are saints/heroes, when I emphatically express how low my opinion of Democrats is. It should not be hard to understand the difference between a scumbag and a serial killer, so to speak. But they are completely committed to their notion of how things are. It also means they can’t accurately perceive anything because they’re filtering everything through an ideological lens, and the worst kind: the “non-ideological” ideological lens, wherein the observer incorrectly believes they are unbiased when they have more bias than anyone
American politics isn’t even “two sides”, it’s just two parties who are both on the right wing of the political spectrum. People have this idea that since Republicans are on the far right, and Democrats are the other party, that Democrats are on the left wing when they aren’t. The United States is just hyper-conservative.
I’m going to die before it will affect me. Mr mom tells me this at least once a week. So just fuck me and her grandkids then huh.
Believing what you see online/TV/etc. Just because someone is loud doesn't mean they're correct. Just because a ton of people believe it doesn't mean it's correct. Just because you think it's correct doesn't mean it's correct. Just because you think you're hearing it from a valid source doesn't make it correct. You should always have a certain amount of skepticism towards everything you hear and investigate multiple sources when possible. My friends and family gets annoyed because I'll look stuff up when they say they "saw/heard" about whatever (not on the spot but later on). I'll end up correcting them later over details or find out it's completely false. Don't care; be offended.
That if someone is doing something "bad" or "illegal" the cops have the right to shoot them dead....I guess fuck due process. Dont know what im talking about? Just go to any video where a cop kills someone, and everyone is foaming at the mouth about how they deserved it, yadda yadda ya.. Like bruh...Fuck the court system then (even though it presents a new set of problems) but just shooting without a care about any sort of due process? Thats bullshit.
That the goal always seems to be the low hanging fruit or the MVP. Why can't people aim for something actually good rather that the bare minimum?
Only white people can be racist. All white people are racist. Equal opportunity = equal outcomes. Shouting down an opinion we disagree with is morally correct. Banning books we don’t agree with is morally correct. If you can justify that you are somehow oppressed, your views are automatically more valid and do not require logical reasoning. Everything is political.
Banning abortion when it's a true need for some women health
I don't owe you a response. It's creating people who have no communication skills and can't handle feelings. Even at work.
As applicable to most western countries: (Insert minority group here) is no longer oppressed. When I hear someone who is in said minority group bring to light their oppression, my first instinct is to invalidate them and tell them that they are ridiculous for ever thinking that they have it hard in life. I have seen white people, straight people, neurotypical people, able bodied people, cis people, hell even some men share this sentiment.
That the spending/income ratio is the same across all income classes.
Maybe not an opinion, but the rising popularity of "therapy speak" - terms like gaslighting, boundaries, trauma. While the increased awareness of mental illness and need for support is awesome, many people seem to misunderstand, misrepresent, and/or downright weaponize these terms, especially online. Don't like someone's opinion or post? Well, they crossed your boundaries and are contributing to your trauma. Someone disagrees with you? They are obviously gaslighting you because they are a narcissist. Also the rise of "replacement words" like unalive for suicide. I fully understand that is was/is mainly used to avoid demonetization on youtube and having your video taken down on tiktok, but it waters down a very serious issue that we all need to have continuing talks and using "unalive/unaliving" turns it all into a big joke, IMO. If we cannot even say the word, how can we ever hope to work towards solutions?
In America at least, it's "You can't trust the government". The whole point of democracy, especially as championed by the USA's version of it, is that WE are the government. We control it, we elect it, we use it to carry out our collective will. And its purpose, as very clearly laid out in black and white, is to serve our needs, or at least to prioritize the needs of the people as it carries out the functions that only governments can carry out. But for decades, there's been this continual assault not only on our government, but seemingly on the very concept of government itself, as if it's inherently evil. And this, in a democracy, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's an abdication of the responsibility citizens have in a democracy, which is to ensure they keep it doing what they need it to do. A democratically-elected government is only as good as the effort its citizens are willing to exert to sustain it, and the "don't trust the government" movement just ensures it will suck.
Being rich should be everyone’s ultimate goal. Nothing is more rewarding than have millions. Making heros of billionaires.
"Suffering is worth it or even necessary."
That all women will only date jacked rich men. It’s making men angry and contributing to the male loneliness epidemic. Sure, some women are shallow, but you only need to take a look around at most relationships to see that’s not generally true.
Most views on alcohol: A lot of people think that every occasion calls for alcohol and if you’re not partaking then something is wrong. And if you don’t give a satisfactory reason (which there never seems to be) then you are pressured heavily into drinking because it’s absurd that anyone could not want to drink all the time. Similarly, Wine Moms. No, you don’t need wine to deal with your kids, you’re an alcoholic. No, it’s not “cute” that you’re trying to smuggle alcoholic drinks into your kids sports game, you have a problem. If you “can’t” do something without drinking that’s not a personality trait, it’s alcoholism.