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.

    • PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al
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      5 days ago

      MAGA is global. We are literally talking about the people that support those ideologies, no matter the country. You’re arguing that I should be nicer to them, which comes across as evil. You’re trying to protect evil from hearing “harsher language” or facing their consequences. You don’t want them to experience the ire, anger and desperation they themselves planted and sowed.

      If you are being genuine, if your gamble is that kindness is the path right now, you can do it. I am not getting in your way, I am making your job easier if anything as I already explained. It’s a real psychological phenomenon, I didn’t made it up.

      Or are you trying to guilt-trip me to try and censor me? To shut me up because I am being very effective at slapping rapeblicans down? All it takes is to spam this comment in different social medias, to plant the seed in their heads:

      “How come you will never have even a quarter of what the average baby boomer had at their age, like 7+ children, a home at 19 years old, economic stability, or at least a happy family of four without a college degree? What happened? Are they smarter, work harder, or what?”

      Absolutely no one, for the past year I’ve been using this after I myself came up with it, has been able to dismantle or counter it properly without looking like assholes. Whether they say they are an outlier, or try to justify their misery by saying baby boomers had it easier, different times or whatever, it won’t matter. Once they show their true colors, it’s so easy to humiliate them in front of all the silent readers.

      They are incredibly narcissistic, they CANNOT withstand being seen as less, of being told the truth, that an old man who babbles about the Bible all day and didn’t go to college had a more fulfilling, fortunate and joyful life than they did and will ever do. Since the majority of the Americans that are terminally-ill online are usually Middle-Top Class nepo babies who can afford an air conditioner or a computer unlike half of the world, it becomes impossible for them not to compare what they have vs what their parents or grandparents do. It includes me.

      One grandpa has 10 children, a mansion with 6+ bedrooms, 3 backyards, illegal statues he bought in Africa and Asia, like 8 dogs, turtles, 2 SUVs, no college degree, only the Bible. The other had 7, was a gynecologist, big pool, big house too, 5 bedrooms, a ranch where he had cattle. Both own multiple terrains they rent to businesses. Then I see my uncles and aunts barely having 2 children. The lucky ones had 4 tops, and decent houses, but not as big. Then I see my generation, my friends, cousins, strangers complaining about the Steam Machine’s price, RAM, housing, healthcare. They have no home, 0 children, maybe 1 if they got “lucky,” I hear about Americans sleeping in their cars, working two shifts, being on the verge of death, the “Kill Line” and so on. This reality is the default for the majority of the world right now, in different scopes, among young generations.

      After that, if they blame immigrants, people of color, women or whatever, you slap them with something like:

      “Immigrants, minorities, women, or LGBTQ people didn’t decide wages, housing costs, healthcare prices, or wars. People with capital did, and they love it when we fight sideways instead of up.”

      And bam. They also cannot dismantle that without looking like racist irrational imbeciles. Why exactly do you want to stop me?

        • PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al
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          5 days ago

          Even if they block me, which has become rare, because they cannot help but reply to stuff that is roasting them too hard, their financial reality won’t change. Their narcissism and ego will be naked to the rest as well. Everything they said before or say after that won’t hit the same to everyone there. As I said, they are all about “Might makes right,” and being told that they can’t even beat a baby boomer is like a silver bullet to these mouthbreathers. Not to us, because we blame the top 1%, not our neighbors.

          I’ve already seen people jumping in to help me, chiming in and kicking those assholes further. I’ve seen it make my cousin, who I deemed a brother for so long, but became a crypto bro who supported MAGA, (and he’s a Mexican) squirm and lose his balls when I slapped him with it. I changed his mind so easily. He is super narcissistic, a nepo baby who thought would become a multi-millionaire playboy before his 30s, but dude’s a fucking loser, even after graduating as a doctor from the ITESM, he has no job, no children, no future, because he refuses to be paid 100k a month, he thinks he deserves more.

          Shit works. What you said is not happening.

          Why don’t you instead tell me or show me how do you do it? You make it sound like you found an even-more effective way to do this. What is it?

          • Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 days ago

            they cannot help but reply to stuff that is roasting them too hard

            i can’t help but think your tinted lenses are only picking up the times you get a notification from the Big Addiction overlords and ignoring the majority of times you don’t get one. I’ve been to these comment sections before.

            What is it?

            Empathy. The vast majority can only accept voices between humans.

            • PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al
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              2 days ago

              Still changes nothing. I keep seeing more people adopting my messages and attitudes online to stomp MAGAs and Zionists.

              You called me naive for doing the Empathy path when I was younger, and being bashed for it with violence. And now you’re telling me that’s the correct way? ???

              I am starting to believe you are just a concern troll. Either that or the “you are morally inferior” comment really got you. That’s all you care about, don’t you? About looking “righteous” or “good” while debating or whatever? You are not. You might someday be forced to kill to achieve what you want (you already have more blood in your hands than I do, you voted with your voice and money, votes that have gotten thousands of innocent Latin Americans and people in the Middle East killed. Your lazy “empathy” path, which is the long and riskiest, is not making you look right. It’s only getting more people killed by the minute, all because you don’t want to get your hands dirty or risk your life for your brothers and sisters). Of course, you’re too privileged to even think about that. You have never faced real hardship in your life, so, that’s why it’s so easy for you to play this cheap fake role.

              You have done nothing but come across as a complicit of the Jeffrey Epstein Class. You’re trying to censor us, to incapacitate our anger so we don’t go as hard on them as we should.

              You don’t want us to eat the rich, to kill them and fix all this once and for all. You want to keep us obedient, conformist, submissive. That’s why you are trying to guilt-trip us into being “empathetic,” because that only benefits the top 1%. The pedophiles in power who rape and kill without shame, (and their fans, the cucks who protect them and benefit them like crypto and pro-AI “bros”), those are the people you want to protect from these harsh words. Why?

              Who are you being empathetic for? God? God doesn’t give a shit about your moral compass. God clearly doesn’t give a fuck about the millions of innocent people that die unjustly every year. The Bible itself encourages us to kill evil, not tolerate it or be empathetic to it. Your parents? Friends? Family? You are wasting your time. You are doing more harm to them by not fighting fiercely. Stop being a sensitive coward.

              Goodluck with your pacifist protests. The last one I saw, people like you got ran over by a MAGA in his truck, and that was the end of it. You didn’t do another one like that. That’s how easy it is to silence empathetic people. After all, the government behaves like a Mafia, and the Mafia has no problem using your loved ones as collateral damage. It’s so pathetic to see that there are still people like you who don’t have the courage to kill those demons. I feel way more unsafe and hopeless being surrounded by people like you. I wish our grand grandparents came back from the death, those who killed Nazis, we need people like that again. Not people like you. You are only costing us more innocent people per minute.