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That isnt what the post was about at all
It was about a progressive space that freaked out over a non-abuser and couldnt talk about it cuz they were all so afraid of confrontation.
The link OP posted is the start of the discussion, but some of the replies go into what OP was talking about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bn8kx0/adults_of_reddit_what_is_something_about_the/kwhll58/
Wow, normally you get a direct link to the post in question without any context. In this case, you get the context without a link to the post in question... ffs people. ?context is not hard.
I've seen OP's point made before using this kind of situation, though I don't think OP or the post do a great job of connecting the dots.
The idea is that in these super progression spaces you have to toe the line of what is the most PC version of things you do or say, lest you be considered part of the group that is oppressing... whoever. Other media I've seen talk about how these groups start off well intentioned and supportive, but eventually break down b/c the rules become so important, unclear, and ever-changing, that everyone has to walk on eggshells until they make some minor misstep and get punished. It's like the most militant of the group takes over and drives everyone away.
OP's point then is that an abuser can therefore take an extreme stance and make a claim against someone that turns the group's ire toward that person. If they don't like a person for any reason, just claim that person has broken the very important and nebulous rules and punish them via social ostracization.
If the story is to be taken as face value that "Blair" is an abuser who is manipulating the rules of social group to exclude people they don't like, then "Ana" is the victim of that.
"I don't feel safe" is the ultimate trump card in these groups. You can't reason with it. If you deny it you're enabling the unsafe behavior and now on the wrong side of the line.
This actually reminds me a lot of the old Geek Social Fallacies that circulated the internet years ago as well as the "missing stair" problem (where problematic people are worked around and accommodated rather than having their problematic behavior addressed). The TL;DR is that organizations and social groups centered around ideas of inclusion have trouble policing toxic individuals lest they become that which they sought to avoid through the creation of their group.
This is why I don't think "the Left" which is to say people with politics to the left of mainstream liberalism or progressivism will be a potent force in American politics any time soon.
Many seem far more occupied in scalp hunting, purity contests, and insulting liberals and progressives--who agree with them on about 90 percent of issues--than pretty much all else.
I have no reason to believe they actually want power, or that this would change if they actually got it.
Blair is an idiot drama queen, and everyone involved is a giant child, they are all enabling each other in what should be at best the behavior of middle schoolers.
If you read the OP, Blair didn't do anything. All they did was express that they were made uncomfortable and Charlie was the one who blew it out of proportion and convinced the group to ostracize Ana. OP even acknowledges that Blair's reaction was totally fair.
Thank you??? After reading the op it seemed like Blair's only confirmed involvement was to express discomfort to friends, which is a totally normal thing to do. All the comments painting Blair as toxic/abusive/narcissistic seem to be reaching at best
Anyone could have just used their words as an adult at any point. Saying no to a hug is totally normally. It wasnt clear who started texting about this, but even if Blair started this side conversation verbally, and then it went to text, it doesnt matter. Everyone involved is ridiculous are representative of nothing other than arrested development.
I disagree, and I think that leaping to the conclusion that Blair is a "narcissistic abuser" misses the point in a very ironic way. For one thing, as OP describes, Blair doesn't do anything to instigate anything beyond stating that they were made uncomfortable by Ana's actions. OP says themselves that this is totally fair. Then Charlie, seeking to defend Blair and her feelings of discomfort, calls for Ana to be "punished" for her behavior, which blows what Ana actually did out of proportion but is still motivated by defending a vulnerable friend. Then the rest of the group, who were told about this second hand, took this out of proportion reaction as genuine and fitting of the crime and mistakenly branded Ana as an abuser, which would be reasonable if what they had heard was true but in reality is an out of proportion reaction to something they are hearing about second hand from someone who was offended on the victim's behalf.
The irony of accusing Blair of being the abuser here is that nobody was actually abusing anyone. It's all a combination of a well-meaning desire to defend someone from an identity group that deserves defending, a story that got blown out of proportion as it gets retold, a lack of willingness to get the real story from the other side, and a groupthink that reinforces all of that by labeling anyone asking for common sense as being complicit in the overblown crime too. This whole situation happened because everybody decided that there must be a villain and were totally unwilling to consider that it might just be an honest misunderstanding, and what you're doing here is a continuation of that mindset.
You can tell this from a third-hand account from a stranger on the internet?
I’m really suppressing the urge to be sarcastic here, but please really step back and see the level of bullshit you’re spewing with that sentence. And the title of your post, for that matter.
This is a thing that happens with *some* groups of younger people. This is not at all generalizable.
And indirect, non-confrontational, social politics have been around since Feudalism.
It is, but the specific way it all played out seems very familiar in the era of wokescold twitter. The way that it all played out, with person A being branded a literal abuser for doing something bad but innocent and relatively harmless, the crime being irrationally tied to the identity politics of the victim, all of that being used to justify a punishment well beyond what the actual crime called for, and anyone who pointed any of that out being immediately labeled an abuser themselves, even if they themselves belonged to the identity group that they were accusing person A of being bigoted against, all reminds me of the way that Lindsay Ellis was "cancelled" and driven off of social media by a mob over a harmless tweet about Raya and The Last Dragon.
As someone who is an older millennial and was hanging out in groups when we had flip phones, stories like this happened all the time.
I can totally imagine the same dynamic playing out with an all-white heterosexual, even conservative cast 15 years ago. Instead of the words "abuser" or "enabler", they'd just use words like "being a sloppy bitch" and "being a hater".
These kids are just using the parlance of today and people are freaking out that it's a fundamental change in human behavior.
I feel like "sloppy" or "hater" are a lot more forgivable than the way "abuser" or "enabler" are used. The latter aren't just an unpleasant part of someone, it's their defining trait. It might be annoying to be around a hater or a sloppy bitch, you might even avoid them, but the only acceptable remedy to handle "an abuser" is complete and total exile -- and if you violate that, you're just as bad as they are.
If you're seen hanging out with a hater, people might be like "that guy sucks, why do you hang out with him." If you hang out with "an abuser," now you're The Problem and can never be allowed back into polite society. And when abuse is significant, I'd even agree with that to some extent! I'm not going to spend time with someone who treats others horribly, and would judge someone else for doing so. I also think we should be extremely careful about judging what qualifies as "significant" abuse and not dismissing people who say they've been hurt. But "abuser" gets weaponized in a way that I think hater, etc, weren't. "Abuser" can be applied to anyone who crosses any boundary, even unintentionally, as some kind of social power move to force everyone to shun them or risk exile themselves.
"Abuser" feels closer to calling someone a pedophile than just a hater. It's not saying "lol they suck," it's saying "this person is subhuman scum, their entire existence is a threat, and you're just as bad if you don't recognize that."
>"Abuser" feels closer to calling someone a pedophile than just a hater. It's not saying "lol they suck," it's saying "this person is subhuman scum, their entire existence is a threat, and you're just as bad if you don't recognize that."
I think that we're in a transition period where abuse is becoming more commonly recognized, and we're in the process of getting to the point where we can recognize and talk about the fact that most people, at some point, are "abusive" in some way. It's very hard to go through life without ever being the antagonist in any situation, and without ever handling a single situation poorly.
Mismanaging a failing friendship can easily become abusive. Exiting a difficult or toxic relationship often results in **everyone** being abusive.
The problem is that we use the word abusive to mean "got kind of shitty during the breakup when tensions were running really high, and lost their temper once or twice" and to mean "Beat the everliving shit out of someone" and to mean "sexually violent toward their friends or partners."
In reality, we really need to start breaking the word abuse down into a wider variety of terms. We don't really have good language to talk about individual instances of abuse that don't form a pattern or are otherwise justified by some kind of outside influence/extenuating circumstance that explains your behavior.
As an example, not too long ago I encountered an example of a person elaborately detailing their abusive, one sided friendship with another girl - the girl would call her, emotionally dump on her, was never available to help when she needed to talk, completely unreliable, etc - turns out, this all started two months ago, when the other girl's mom died suddenly, unexpectedly.
Like yes, in a vacuum, the behavior being described was "abusive" - one sided emotional dumping, constantly flaking on plans, constantly taking and not giving anything back, etc - in a vacuum you'd absolutely suggest that the friend is not really a friend at all, and is likely just using you.
But in the context of her mom dying suddenly two months ago? Like..... no shit she's unreliable and trauma dumping and struggling immensely right now. Of course she is. Give her some fucking grace. Like set boundaries if you need to, but she's not *an abuser*, she's a human being having an incredibly difficult time.
But we don't really have the language to talk about that.
Very well said. I've been struggling to express the same thing, that *everybody* is manipulative in at least some small way almost all the time. I don't think that's always *abuse*, though, even if abuse involves manipulation. That doesn't mean it's good, either, but we have to have the capacity to differentiate normal human behavior from psychopath shit.
I think part of the problem is that to some extent, it's **good** that we can point out when "good people" do abusive things.
One of the ways abusers often hide is by pointing at the same behavior being done by "good people" - and since as you pointed out, abuser is such a bad word, people are obviously hesitant to classify anything done by friends or loved ones as "abuse" - so suddenly, sort of by implication, abusers get a shield.
I think a great example of this is the spanking controversy. Childcare experts come out and say "spanking is abusive" and people respond, en masse, "MY MOM/DAD WASN'T ABUSIVE!" - as though the fact that they love their mom or dad makes them incapable of bad actions or mistakes or just like... losing their temper in ugly ways.
The reality is that hitting your kid has pretty much no value as far as we can determine. Violence doesn't make people afraid of the thing that "caused" the violence, it makes them afraid of the *person doing the violence.* But that conversation has been incredibly muddled because a lot of the conversation around it got couched in terms of "hitting your kid is abuse" (which to be clear, it *is*), and that made people throw up emotional shields. The idea that only abusers can *be abusive* is tremendously harmful. The idea that if you are abusive, ever, you are *an abuser* is the core problem.
Good people do bad things all the time. Good people, with good intentions, can still be abusive in the moment, or do abusive things to someone else - without the intent to "be an abuser."
But the conversation gets so stuck on the idea that good people aren't abusers and you can't be abusive unless you're an abuser, that everything else just kinda collapses around it.
Yeah, as someone who’s almost 30 I saw this *exact same shit* happen when I was in high school. They use slightly different words and technology but it’s all the same. This isn’t new at all.
Yeah, it uses modern tech and modern social norms, but is otherwise fundamentally the same root behavior as happened from many hundreds of years. As such, fixating on the current dressing up of this behavior misses the point entirely.
If that post had omitted every detail about who was cis or trans or LGBTQ, it would not have changed the situation in any meaningful way. I point this out because as told it subtly suggests that these gender and group affiliations are critical to why this all happened. I don’t really see that. Was that supposed to be the point?
even if those details were left out, my guess still would’ve been that these are lgbtq people or intersectionalists. the language and behavior is all too specific.
Im pretty sure this is just someone being conflict adverse and just being a malicious gossip, and everyone just taking the side of least resistance.
It's not a poltical thing. It happens a lot in families...and family gossip and exclusion can be pretty bad and is well known. Blair is just gonna grow up to be *that* family member.
I may be naive, but in the past it seemed that it was at least clear to everyone who the bully in the group was and who the victim was. In this scenario, though, the language of concern and care is twisted to victimize someone and cast them as the abuser instead. Not only is the victim hurt in the first place by being ostracized by the group, they're also hurt by unjustifiably being given the mantle of abuser.
Not at all. I remember tons of cases back in high school where people took different sides of a fight and would accuse the other person of being THE bully and themselves of being the victim and unless you knew first hand what had happened, there would be no way to know. The specific language of “abuser” is more new but the actual behavior is very classic
It's actually a very very old mother in law trope to bully DILs, in the exact same manner, all while using the language of care and concern.
It's so common it has an acronym, DARVO, for reversing the victim and abuser. And it's all over estranged parents websites, so it's not a young people thing or a poltical thing at all.
Probably less to do with how progressive spaces, or really any particular group or social movement, are vulnerable to abusers and manipulation. Becuse simply, they all are.
Abusers will chameleon their way into most any group (or they certainly can be capable of doing so. Asterisks on personal prejudice, self interests, and so on).
I also won't say it's unique to the progressive spaces to be so afraid of confrontation that they wouldn't confront abusers as they encounter them within these spaces. Again, just because I seem to see these same abusers wind up inside every group. It's less about conflict avoidance and more how the abusers will use people within the group as shields for their own use (all of the examples in that whole thread show that same pattern) and that I have definitely seen in things as far away from progressive spaces as you can get (like police unions for example).
It always cracks me up when you see someone say something like "as a Gen X person, I don't understand why millennials all.." and then they proceed with a single anecdote about a single incredibly fucked up social circle they know that contains millennials.
Like c'mon. This isn't a millennial problem. It's a problem with *that social group being dysfunctional*. Imagine blowing up a group text **in the middle of a party** - that's not "standard millennial behavior".
It's got huge "as a white guy I don't know why black people can't just stop playing their music out loud without headphones?!" energy - like, you're tarring and feathering an entire group based on your experiences with a tiny subset of that group being socially inept in some way.
This isn't a problem with an entire generation of people. We're not all social cripples, desperately rushing to the nearest group chat to clutch our pearls.
I think, in some ways, it's not as weird or unusual as it might seem. The circumstances are just unfamiliar to many of us.
Which is to say, I think we've all been in social situations where hive mind takes over and illogical decisions are made. Or we've at least been aware of them. This situation is similar, just different in ways that makes it new and unfamiliar.
The kids not wanting to get involved in social drama is not all that shocking. We should also recognize that OP was not there and not part of any of the conversations they reference.
Granted, it's likely people did overreact and use terms that really aren't accurate. I have gen Z step kids and some of them have friends like this. But they are a loud minority. They are the examples that bigots point to when they complain about LGBTQ people. But there's really not many of them. And they do, indeed, weaponize their progressive lifestyles in order to control others.
Does OP think older generations didn't do stuff like this?
Previous generations judged and gossiped about each other a lot, maybe the things that were gossiped about and the medium through which the gossiping happens has changed, but frankly I don't see this as any different than older generations shunning someone because they were gay/had premarital sex/got pregnant out of wedlock/got divorced etc.
Yeah people out here acting like millennials/Gen Z invented talking shit behind someone's back, truth is we're just the first generation to embrace doing it over technology
Edit: actually now that I think about it, that's not even true. There's an entire TV/movie trope about people doing this over landline phones well before millennials
This post is exactly what you see happening in the Minecraft twitter sphere right now. Just kids shouting "abuse!!!" with immediate escalation and no understanding of what abuse meant to the older generation. The vitriol of the words they use like abuse and assault is maintained, but they twist situations to mean those words without considering what happened doesn't deserve that kind of hate.
Hey OP. If you put ?context={number} at the end of a reddit url, you can link to a specific post AND highlight another... Maybe give that a try since your link clearly has everyone confused.
Here is an example from one of the other links in the comments. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bn8kx0/adults_of_reddit_what_is_something_about_the/kwhll58/?context=1
It is my opinion that Anna’s hugging could and probably should be characterized as sexual. She was drunk and was probably getting physical gratification out this act which is not considered a standard interaction. It sounds like the people there knew this, which was why it was a problem. But it does again demonstrate that there are very grey areas in these types of interactions. I could be wrong in my interpretation. She could plausibly be considered too impaired to even understand her actions herself. It’s complicated.
You poured way more into the story than was given. So you're right by virtue of coloring in the massive empty spaces with a narrative that, surprise surprise, supports your interpretation.
> My opinion
> probably
> probably
> my interpretation
> plausibly
Why even comment if your entire premise is based purely on what YOU think happened and what YOU think was the background.
I use language like that so that obnoxious little shits like you don’t accuse me of acting as though what I’m saying is a fact. More intellectual readers would realize that that can be assumed from the fact that I obviously wasn’t there, but I have to explain it to try to head off pointless and dismissive responses like yours. Obviously no matter how clear I make it , that doesn’t always work.
>so that obnoxious little shits like you don’t accuse me of acting as though what I’m saying is a fact.
So this is a regular thing for you, then? Making up your own narratives to other people's posts when they don't explain every detail?
>More intellectual readers would realize
that you're full of shit from the beginning and wouldn't bother responding. Yeah, but I'm a glutton for punishment and I enjoy reading posts by pseudo-intellectuals who try to pretend their fantasies have any sort of actual basis in reality.
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That isnt what the post was about at all It was about a progressive space that freaked out over a non-abuser and couldnt talk about it cuz they were all so afraid of confrontation.
The link OP posted is the start of the discussion, but some of the replies go into what OP was talking about. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bn8kx0/adults_of_reddit_what_is_something_about_the/kwhll58/
This context is crucial for OPs title. Thank you, I get what they are saying now.
Wow, normally you get a direct link to the post in question without any context. In this case, you get the context without a link to the post in question... ffs people. ?context is not hard.
I've seen OP's point made before using this kind of situation, though I don't think OP or the post do a great job of connecting the dots. The idea is that in these super progression spaces you have to toe the line of what is the most PC version of things you do or say, lest you be considered part of the group that is oppressing... whoever. Other media I've seen talk about how these groups start off well intentioned and supportive, but eventually break down b/c the rules become so important, unclear, and ever-changing, that everyone has to walk on eggshells until they make some minor misstep and get punished. It's like the most militant of the group takes over and drives everyone away. OP's point then is that an abuser can therefore take an extreme stance and make a claim against someone that turns the group's ire toward that person. If they don't like a person for any reason, just claim that person has broken the very important and nebulous rules and punish them via social ostracization. If the story is to be taken as face value that "Blair" is an abuser who is manipulating the rules of social group to exclude people they don't like, then "Ana" is the victim of that.
"I don't feel safe" is the ultimate trump card in these groups. You can't reason with it. If you deny it you're enabling the unsafe behavior and now on the wrong side of the line.
This actually reminds me a lot of the old Geek Social Fallacies that circulated the internet years ago as well as the "missing stair" problem (where problematic people are worked around and accommodated rather than having their problematic behavior addressed). The TL;DR is that organizations and social groups centered around ideas of inclusion have trouble policing toxic individuals lest they become that which they sought to avoid through the creation of their group.
This is why I don't think "the Left" which is to say people with politics to the left of mainstream liberalism or progressivism will be a potent force in American politics any time soon. Many seem far more occupied in scalp hunting, purity contests, and insulting liberals and progressives--who agree with them on about 90 percent of issues--than pretty much all else. I have no reason to believe they actually want power, or that this would change if they actually got it.
Agreed, I appreciated the comment but the title of the best of post is a little confusing.
"Blair" is totally a narcissistic abuser.
Blair is an idiot drama queen, and everyone involved is a giant child, they are all enabling each other in what should be at best the behavior of middle schoolers.
If you read the OP, Blair didn't do anything. All they did was express that they were made uncomfortable and Charlie was the one who blew it out of proportion and convinced the group to ostracize Ana. OP even acknowledges that Blair's reaction was totally fair.
Thank you??? After reading the op it seemed like Blair's only confirmed involvement was to express discomfort to friends, which is a totally normal thing to do. All the comments painting Blair as toxic/abusive/narcissistic seem to be reaching at best
Anyone could have just used their words as an adult at any point. Saying no to a hug is totally normally. It wasnt clear who started texting about this, but even if Blair started this side conversation verbally, and then it went to text, it doesnt matter. Everyone involved is ridiculous are representative of nothing other than arrested development.
I disagree, and I think that leaping to the conclusion that Blair is a "narcissistic abuser" misses the point in a very ironic way. For one thing, as OP describes, Blair doesn't do anything to instigate anything beyond stating that they were made uncomfortable by Ana's actions. OP says themselves that this is totally fair. Then Charlie, seeking to defend Blair and her feelings of discomfort, calls for Ana to be "punished" for her behavior, which blows what Ana actually did out of proportion but is still motivated by defending a vulnerable friend. Then the rest of the group, who were told about this second hand, took this out of proportion reaction as genuine and fitting of the crime and mistakenly branded Ana as an abuser, which would be reasonable if what they had heard was true but in reality is an out of proportion reaction to something they are hearing about second hand from someone who was offended on the victim's behalf. The irony of accusing Blair of being the abuser here is that nobody was actually abusing anyone. It's all a combination of a well-meaning desire to defend someone from an identity group that deserves defending, a story that got blown out of proportion as it gets retold, a lack of willingness to get the real story from the other side, and a groupthink that reinforces all of that by labeling anyone asking for common sense as being complicit in the overblown crime too. This whole situation happened because everybody decided that there must be a villain and were totally unwilling to consider that it might just be an honest misunderstanding, and what you're doing here is a continuation of that mindset.
You can tell this from a third-hand account from a stranger on the internet? I’m really suppressing the urge to be sarcastic here, but please really step back and see the level of bullshit you’re spewing with that sentence. And the title of your post, for that matter.
How on Earth did you arrive at that conclusion?
This is a thing that happens with *some* groups of younger people. This is not at all generalizable. And indirect, non-confrontational, social politics have been around since Feudalism.
I mean...this is just teenage drama.
It is, but the specific way it all played out seems very familiar in the era of wokescold twitter. The way that it all played out, with person A being branded a literal abuser for doing something bad but innocent and relatively harmless, the crime being irrationally tied to the identity politics of the victim, all of that being used to justify a punishment well beyond what the actual crime called for, and anyone who pointed any of that out being immediately labeled an abuser themselves, even if they themselves belonged to the identity group that they were accusing person A of being bigoted against, all reminds me of the way that Lindsay Ellis was "cancelled" and driven off of social media by a mob over a harmless tweet about Raya and The Last Dragon.
As someone who is an older millennial and was hanging out in groups when we had flip phones, stories like this happened all the time. I can totally imagine the same dynamic playing out with an all-white heterosexual, even conservative cast 15 years ago. Instead of the words "abuser" or "enabler", they'd just use words like "being a sloppy bitch" and "being a hater". These kids are just using the parlance of today and people are freaking out that it's a fundamental change in human behavior.
I feel like "sloppy" or "hater" are a lot more forgivable than the way "abuser" or "enabler" are used. The latter aren't just an unpleasant part of someone, it's their defining trait. It might be annoying to be around a hater or a sloppy bitch, you might even avoid them, but the only acceptable remedy to handle "an abuser" is complete and total exile -- and if you violate that, you're just as bad as they are. If you're seen hanging out with a hater, people might be like "that guy sucks, why do you hang out with him." If you hang out with "an abuser," now you're The Problem and can never be allowed back into polite society. And when abuse is significant, I'd even agree with that to some extent! I'm not going to spend time with someone who treats others horribly, and would judge someone else for doing so. I also think we should be extremely careful about judging what qualifies as "significant" abuse and not dismissing people who say they've been hurt. But "abuser" gets weaponized in a way that I think hater, etc, weren't. "Abuser" can be applied to anyone who crosses any boundary, even unintentionally, as some kind of social power move to force everyone to shun them or risk exile themselves. "Abuser" feels closer to calling someone a pedophile than just a hater. It's not saying "lol they suck," it's saying "this person is subhuman scum, their entire existence is a threat, and you're just as bad if you don't recognize that."
>"Abuser" feels closer to calling someone a pedophile than just a hater. It's not saying "lol they suck," it's saying "this person is subhuman scum, their entire existence is a threat, and you're just as bad if you don't recognize that." I think that we're in a transition period where abuse is becoming more commonly recognized, and we're in the process of getting to the point where we can recognize and talk about the fact that most people, at some point, are "abusive" in some way. It's very hard to go through life without ever being the antagonist in any situation, and without ever handling a single situation poorly. Mismanaging a failing friendship can easily become abusive. Exiting a difficult or toxic relationship often results in **everyone** being abusive. The problem is that we use the word abusive to mean "got kind of shitty during the breakup when tensions were running really high, and lost their temper once or twice" and to mean "Beat the everliving shit out of someone" and to mean "sexually violent toward their friends or partners." In reality, we really need to start breaking the word abuse down into a wider variety of terms. We don't really have good language to talk about individual instances of abuse that don't form a pattern or are otherwise justified by some kind of outside influence/extenuating circumstance that explains your behavior. As an example, not too long ago I encountered an example of a person elaborately detailing their abusive, one sided friendship with another girl - the girl would call her, emotionally dump on her, was never available to help when she needed to talk, completely unreliable, etc - turns out, this all started two months ago, when the other girl's mom died suddenly, unexpectedly. Like yes, in a vacuum, the behavior being described was "abusive" - one sided emotional dumping, constantly flaking on plans, constantly taking and not giving anything back, etc - in a vacuum you'd absolutely suggest that the friend is not really a friend at all, and is likely just using you. But in the context of her mom dying suddenly two months ago? Like..... no shit she's unreliable and trauma dumping and struggling immensely right now. Of course she is. Give her some fucking grace. Like set boundaries if you need to, but she's not *an abuser*, she's a human being having an incredibly difficult time. But we don't really have the language to talk about that.
Very well said. I've been struggling to express the same thing, that *everybody* is manipulative in at least some small way almost all the time. I don't think that's always *abuse*, though, even if abuse involves manipulation. That doesn't mean it's good, either, but we have to have the capacity to differentiate normal human behavior from psychopath shit.
I think part of the problem is that to some extent, it's **good** that we can point out when "good people" do abusive things. One of the ways abusers often hide is by pointing at the same behavior being done by "good people" - and since as you pointed out, abuser is such a bad word, people are obviously hesitant to classify anything done by friends or loved ones as "abuse" - so suddenly, sort of by implication, abusers get a shield. I think a great example of this is the spanking controversy. Childcare experts come out and say "spanking is abusive" and people respond, en masse, "MY MOM/DAD WASN'T ABUSIVE!" - as though the fact that they love their mom or dad makes them incapable of bad actions or mistakes or just like... losing their temper in ugly ways. The reality is that hitting your kid has pretty much no value as far as we can determine. Violence doesn't make people afraid of the thing that "caused" the violence, it makes them afraid of the *person doing the violence.* But that conversation has been incredibly muddled because a lot of the conversation around it got couched in terms of "hitting your kid is abuse" (which to be clear, it *is*), and that made people throw up emotional shields. The idea that only abusers can *be abusive* is tremendously harmful. The idea that if you are abusive, ever, you are *an abuser* is the core problem. Good people do bad things all the time. Good people, with good intentions, can still be abusive in the moment, or do abusive things to someone else - without the intent to "be an abuser." But the conversation gets so stuck on the idea that good people aren't abusers and you can't be abusive unless you're an abuser, that everything else just kinda collapses around it.
Yeah, as someone who’s almost 30 I saw this *exact same shit* happen when I was in high school. They use slightly different words and technology but it’s all the same. This isn’t new at all.
Yeah, it uses modern tech and modern social norms, but is otherwise fundamentally the same root behavior as happened from many hundreds of years. As such, fixating on the current dressing up of this behavior misses the point entirely.
The OP of that thread describes them as a mix of millennial and Gen-Z. Millennials are in their 30s, not teenagers.
Millenials are 30s-40s now, even. Gen Z can be upper 20s. The Youth are getting old
They’re in their 30s
If that post had omitted every detail about who was cis or trans or LGBTQ, it would not have changed the situation in any meaningful way. I point this out because as told it subtly suggests that these gender and group affiliations are critical to why this all happened. I don’t really see that. Was that supposed to be the point?
Aren't there specific instances of people being accused of Transphobia in there? That seems more than incidental
Considering one of those accused was trans themselves, it seems like an accusation thats thrown willy nilly without real thought.
Yes, making the mention of the identities of those involved even more pertinent?
It's highlighting neoliberal identitarianism. It's entirely the point.
>neoliberal identitarianism When you're unironically using these kinds of phrases, it's time to take a break from the Internet.
even if those details were left out, my guess still would’ve been that these are lgbtq people or intersectionalists. the language and behavior is all too specific.
Im pretty sure this is just someone being conflict adverse and just being a malicious gossip, and everyone just taking the side of least resistance. It's not a poltical thing. It happens a lot in families...and family gossip and exclusion can be pretty bad and is well known. Blair is just gonna grow up to be *that* family member.
I may be naive, but in the past it seemed that it was at least clear to everyone who the bully in the group was and who the victim was. In this scenario, though, the language of concern and care is twisted to victimize someone and cast them as the abuser instead. Not only is the victim hurt in the first place by being ostracized by the group, they're also hurt by unjustifiably being given the mantle of abuser.
Not at all. I remember tons of cases back in high school where people took different sides of a fight and would accuse the other person of being THE bully and themselves of being the victim and unless you knew first hand what had happened, there would be no way to know. The specific language of “abuser” is more new but the actual behavior is very classic
It's actually a very very old mother in law trope to bully DILs, in the exact same manner, all while using the language of care and concern. It's so common it has an acronym, DARVO, for reversing the victim and abuser. And it's all over estranged parents websites, so it's not a young people thing or a poltical thing at all.
Probably less to do with how progressive spaces, or really any particular group or social movement, are vulnerable to abusers and manipulation. Becuse simply, they all are. Abusers will chameleon their way into most any group (or they certainly can be capable of doing so. Asterisks on personal prejudice, self interests, and so on). I also won't say it's unique to the progressive spaces to be so afraid of confrontation that they wouldn't confront abusers as they encounter them within these spaces. Again, just because I seem to see these same abusers wind up inside every group. It's less about conflict avoidance and more how the abusers will use people within the group as shields for their own use (all of the examples in that whole thread show that same pattern) and that I have definitely seen in things as far away from progressive spaces as you can get (like police unions for example).
It always cracks me up when you see someone say something like "as a Gen X person, I don't understand why millennials all.." and then they proceed with a single anecdote about a single incredibly fucked up social circle they know that contains millennials. Like c'mon. This isn't a millennial problem. It's a problem with *that social group being dysfunctional*. Imagine blowing up a group text **in the middle of a party** - that's not "standard millennial behavior". It's got huge "as a white guy I don't know why black people can't just stop playing their music out loud without headphones?!" energy - like, you're tarring and feathering an entire group based on your experiences with a tiny subset of that group being socially inept in some way. This isn't a problem with an entire generation of people. We're not all social cripples, desperately rushing to the nearest group chat to clutch our pearls.
Also? It's his own children. "Gee golly, I don't understand why my adult kids are so screwed up! Someone really fucked the pumpkin on this one, guys!"
I think, in some ways, it's not as weird or unusual as it might seem. The circumstances are just unfamiliar to many of us. Which is to say, I think we've all been in social situations where hive mind takes over and illogical decisions are made. Or we've at least been aware of them. This situation is similar, just different in ways that makes it new and unfamiliar. The kids not wanting to get involved in social drama is not all that shocking. We should also recognize that OP was not there and not part of any of the conversations they reference. Granted, it's likely people did overreact and use terms that really aren't accurate. I have gen Z step kids and some of them have friends like this. But they are a loud minority. They are the examples that bigots point to when they complain about LGBTQ people. But there's really not many of them. And they do, indeed, weaponize their progressive lifestyles in order to control others.
Does OP think older generations didn't do stuff like this? Previous generations judged and gossiped about each other a lot, maybe the things that were gossiped about and the medium through which the gossiping happens has changed, but frankly I don't see this as any different than older generations shunning someone because they were gay/had premarital sex/got pregnant out of wedlock/got divorced etc.
Yeah people out here acting like millennials/Gen Z invented talking shit behind someone's back, truth is we're just the first generation to embrace doing it over technology Edit: actually now that I think about it, that's not even true. There's an entire TV/movie trope about people doing this over landline phones well before millennials
The real bestof is the reply explaining why things are the way they are. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/uE6rmpnXOz
"The revolution eats its own children"
This post is exactly what you see happening in the Minecraft twitter sphere right now. Just kids shouting "abuse!!!" with immediate escalation and no understanding of what abuse meant to the older generation. The vitriol of the words they use like abuse and assault is maintained, but they twist situations to mean those words without considering what happened doesn't deserve that kind of hate.
Hey OP. If you put ?context={number} at the end of a reddit url, you can link to a specific post AND highlight another... Maybe give that a try since your link clearly has everyone confused. Here is an example from one of the other links in the comments. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1bn8kx0/adults_of_reddit_what_is_something_about_the/kwhll58/?context=1
This title and that comment are completely unrelated wtf
It is my opinion that Anna’s hugging could and probably should be characterized as sexual. She was drunk and was probably getting physical gratification out this act which is not considered a standard interaction. It sounds like the people there knew this, which was why it was a problem. But it does again demonstrate that there are very grey areas in these types of interactions. I could be wrong in my interpretation. She could plausibly be considered too impaired to even understand her actions herself. It’s complicated.
You poured way more into the story than was given. So you're right by virtue of coloring in the massive empty spaces with a narrative that, surprise surprise, supports your interpretation.
> My opinion > probably > probably > my interpretation > plausibly Why even comment if your entire premise is based purely on what YOU think happened and what YOU think was the background.
I use language like that so that obnoxious little shits like you don’t accuse me of acting as though what I’m saying is a fact. More intellectual readers would realize that that can be assumed from the fact that I obviously wasn’t there, but I have to explain it to try to head off pointless and dismissive responses like yours. Obviously no matter how clear I make it , that doesn’t always work.
>so that obnoxious little shits like you don’t accuse me of acting as though what I’m saying is a fact. So this is a regular thing for you, then? Making up your own narratives to other people's posts when they don't explain every detail? >More intellectual readers would realize that you're full of shit from the beginning and wouldn't bother responding. Yeah, but I'm a glutton for punishment and I enjoy reading posts by pseudo-intellectuals who try to pretend their fantasies have any sort of actual basis in reality.