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.
I literally have you tagged as “fuckcars apologist.”
And in the thread where I tagged you as such, you used an LLM to defend your position.
Food for thought.
No idea whether OP actually did so, but you’re tagged on mine as ‘crazy AI accuser’ for false AI accusations, so others might want to verify for themselves.
Edit: I tracked down the comment thread you mentioned tagging OP in and damn, that is some serious reframing of the situation you did. All OP said was he uses AI to check his grammar. You also accused another person of using AI solely because he uses em dashes.
That’s hilarious.
Yes, I indeed use an LLM to check the grammar on my writing. That is no secret.
So you’re saying OP is morally inferior because he… uses AI and… wait, does he defend cars or does he defend the position of fuckcars?
all ze did was reply and say “LLMs can be used for grammar and orthography corrections” when Foggy said I am AI because I emdash (and I’m guessing because I used a “We all … , but when … , we …” rhetoric).
well actually there’s two comments ze made in the “fuckcars is the worst” thread Foggy is probably referring to, and in the other comment ze actually agrees with @foggy@lemmy.world that fuckcars is bad as “built around the mutual hatred of something” which is extremely similar to the point of being a summary to half of Foggy’s argument there.
Thanks for the links I hadn’t seen this. Foggy is actually making an interesting argument about the sociological and propaganda mechanisms of the modern hate train, then gets in his truck and drives over someone he suspects uses AI and backs up a few times.
It’s the very “when in doubt, even the tiniest evidence shall count for the absolute moral guilt of the accused”.
Probably none of us can really escape this mechanism where we have some kind of trigger.
It’s remains unclear to me as well whether a “fuckcars apologist” is a pro- or anti-car stance.
Just the AI part is enough to be inferior. Can’t come up with your own thoughts to defend a point you’re making? Yes, you’re on a lower rung of the ladder.
A complete stranger claiming without evidence that an AI has been used in the past is all it takes to be labeled inferior.
And in a thread about getting unfairly personally attacked/insulted for petty things.
Nice.
What does any of this have to do with anything I just said?
“moral superiority”
It shows that you’re an obvious troll
reddit alternatives will have those, reddit has those, 4chan thrives on them.
It’s the internet get over it.
k, valued insight