Many people who loudly pride themselves for tolerance, kindness, and openness toward difference drop those principles the moment someone expresses a preference or view they dislike. Disagreement itself is fine. What is not fine is the usual responses that follows: comments whose main purpose is to insult, shame, and make the other person feel small, delivered in front of an audience that can be counted on to approve.
It’s status performance. The goal is not to show why the opinion is wrong or change minds; it is to hurt the speaker and fish for applause. Feeling morally justified does not change the nature of the act; when the sole intention is to hurt they’re being evil and a bully.
The people who upvote or otherwise reward those insults are part of the same behavior. Standing by and cheering while someone is targeted is participation. It supplies the social payoff that makes the cruelty worthwhile.
This is one of the reasons large parts of the internet feel needlessly hostile. When perceived moral superiority is used as cover for meanness, and when an audience reliably encourages it, the result is environments where many people simply stop speaking. The claimed values of kindness and tolerance are revealed, in those moments, as conditional.
And no, this isn’t about being tolerant towards people with extreme views. The idea for this post was sparked by my previous post about AI music and the vicious personal attacks I received for admitting to enjoying some of it.
instead of alchemizing insults i work to bring that attention. you can be aware and care without yelling to the choir and scaring the curious away
I am not here for the curious or silent readers. I have already been shown that no matter what I say or do, over 30,000+ Mexicans, my people, will keep dying every year thanks to the USA arming the Mexican Cartels with guns. The number keeps increasing as well, since 2012. Let alone the number of Arabs and Muslims, also my people, my grandpa escaped Lebanon 100 years ago because of Israel and the USA attacking it.
To try and censor people’s insults is evil. I have spoken to people from the Middle East whose parents and loved ones were killed with American bombs and bullets. Talked to Mexicans who suffer the worst consequences of the Cartels. They all insult the USA so heavily, I’d come across as a Disney character to you if you heard them. But of course, you want to silence them, right? You don’t want people to see the anger they create? You want to protect the evil people who, with their taxes and votes, got those people killed, by not letting them see bad words and insults aimed to them? Why?
Same with someone who supports AI. I keep reading the headlines of how suicides are increasing, many artists and workers who can’t find the joy they deserve anymore because AI replaced them, without creating more jobs.
And even then, my insults to OP were not even that bad. They were tame, for the type of person they really are.
what do you think my argument is? for one thing, people shouting insults at someone else just to feel better is very scary to anyone considering joining the cause. the voice of what you wish to inspire dies within these artificial walls you make.
Surely you, in the much more fortunate position you have now, can afford to redirect that anger into tangible effects you can actually effect with your fortune, and save that energy for somewhere not actively hurtful—compared to those abject.