They get to feel superior to vast swaths of the population without doing anything.
Probably generally starting with either an inferiority complex, or being a sociopath.
Emotions are stronger then intellect, much stronger. And most of these people suffered in bad childhoods and were drilled or neglected into disempathy. (That’s not the necessary reaction to such childhoods but it’s a common reaction.)
suffered in bad childhoods
Just to say, but what causes those things are hate and fear.
The second one doesn’t require trauma.
Fear is a general human trait woven into our existences and should/could be reduced in a loving and supporting childhood. If love and support are missing in your childhood you don’t learn to handle your fears in a mature and stable way.
(I know I’m painting this picture with a very broad brush. It’s to point in the general direction of feelings as the most plausible and applicable answer to OPs question.)
To be fair, those involved in the bad childhoods also are likely to have bad childhoods themselves (the adults I mean).
Transgenerational stuff, victims becoming offenders and the likes.
Yep, you’re right, that’s what’s meant here.
Ok so your telling me since when I was bad in my childhood and spanked with a switch that I can become one?
Anyone can become filled with hate.
No. Your response to such childhood is very individual. It’s a very common stance to live your life the opposite way of your parents lifestyle. That’s what produced the 1960s air of change in culture - hippies lived the very opposite of their parents ideals.
I simply point out well researched patterns in childhoods and their influence on character traits. Look up developmental psychology and transgenerational patterns. In Germany there’s a lot of research and publication about “war children” and “war grandchildren” (Kriegskinder und Kriegsenkel) which in general attributes a lot of the countries troubles and shortcomings to the upbringing of kids in a war and post war society with a lot of shame and guilt.
It’s weird how some people turn into neo-nazis or incels after that and I just pay sexy Russian dom mommies to beat me within an inch of my life.
That’s certainly their rationale.
I was raised in a left-leaning, progressive, atheist, LGBTQ+/minority-accepting household, but one surrounded by a white, largely conservative exurban community. I was raised to be inclusive of others, to be thoughtful, to be curious, to be polite and empathetic. I had good* parents who supported me, and taught me to treat others well.
In the middle of fifth grade, I transferred to a magnet program focusing on STEM concepts. It took me from a school that was almost entirely white, to a school which was very much multi-racial. I was really small for my age, nerdy, and the new kid. I’d always been bullied at school, but after the transfer it got a lot worse, and got pretty severely physical. A lot of the people who harassed me the worst were black. I honestly never understood the social circles enough to know what their deal was, and it certainly wasn’t only a race thing, but the fact that many of my tormentors were black wasn’t lost on me, to be sure.
When I was 11 or so, I used all the savings from a lifetime of cumulative birthdays, Christmas gifts, etc. to buy a laptop to play games on. Pretty quickly, gaming became all I did. It was an escape, and I enjoyed it. I played whatever F2P games I could. Diablo clones, random MMOs, shitty pay-to-win FPS games, whatever. My parents didn’t supervise my activities very closely, and to be blunt, I quickly became way more savvy than them about subverting any surveillance they tried to put in place anyways.
Eventually I started looking into hacks for games. I found a really large forum (think 25k members) for sharing game hacks, and joined up. By the time I was maybe 13-14 or so, I was one of the highest-ranking moderators on the forum. I hung out in their IRC server (which definitely isn’t the internet chat-rooms you’re supposed to be careful about, those are different) all day, dabbled in making my own (occasionally illicit) software and hacks, and was firmly in the community. These weren’t good people, but I didn’t know that. When I got home from school and got online, they asked me how my day was. They cared about me, they played games with me, they were my friends. I remember I was gone for like 2 weeks when I was seriously ill, and one of them tracked me down and called my house to check in on me. I didn’t think anything of it, because of course they could do that. I’d been in a Skype call with one of them who was screen sharing the array of webcams they had access to through their botnet. I didn’t realize at the time that they were probably blackmailing people, or holding their data ransom. We just hacked in video games, none of that actually serious stuff. The malware I was toying with was just because I was interested in it, and of course, my friends must have been too, right? Just a learning exercise. I figured I might try to go into cybersecurity when I started high school and could actually start taking courses in computer topics. Programming was SO fucking interesting!
My parents didn’t know what was going on. They should have. I was barely a teenager, I can’t possibly have been hiding my tracks all that well. But then, their marriage had started to fall apart, and things were bad a home. I didn’t know anything about that then, I was in my room gaming and running communities for terrible people. The headset kept their fighting far away from me. My parents didn’t know who I was hanging out with. They had raised me well, but now they weren’t doing what they should have been. So when my friends shared hateful content with me, “interesting” videos they’d found about how terrible women were, how violent minorities were, who was I to question it? They were speaking as those with knowledge. They taught me stuff, they knew better than me. And besides, I’d been physically harassed by black people before. I’d seen it for myself, right? My U.S. history teacher was REALLY smart, and she told us (in a MN classroom) that the civil war wasn’t actually about slavery either! That was super interesting to learn! And the women they complained about weren’t me. Just because a lot of the guys I hung out with had bitches for girlfriends didn’t mean they hated women, it was just bad luck with shitty women. Right?
I was a good person. I mean, I was a weird socially outcast nerd, but I wasn’t a bad person. My family was still caring. Still accepting. My Mom’s apartment was always a refuge for any of our friends, even (and especially) the queer ones who had been kicked out by their own terrible parents. They had a place to come and be safe and be themselves with us. So I was a good person too, right? Good people, smart people, they keep their online lives separate from their personal lives. They don’t talk about their online activities with others, and they don’t talk about their personal information with internet strangers in chatrooms. The only people I talked with were my FRIENDS. I ran their Minecraft servers. I discussed the Jordan Peterson videos they shared. He sounds so fucking smart after all. I hardly understand what he’s talking about, but I’m sure one day I will. And the parts I don’t understand, other people can explain to me. I laughed at their racist memes. After all, it’s just a joke. And of course, overt bigotry got stomped on. I was in charge, and I was a good person. I wouldn’t tolerate that sort of thing. But a dog-whistle is just a tool for training a pet, and we’d only ever kept cats.
I eventually joined a different gaming group on the side. We played Jailbreak in CS:S. I got really good at it. Really into it. And I stopped hanging out as much with my older friends. I still kept in touch, but I’d found a new hobby. These people weren’t good people either, but I mean, the fact that they liked my voice on mic wasn’t that they were creeping on a 15 year old who they wanted to fuck, it was because I had gotten a new microphone a few weeks ago and must have sounded good on it. I had gotten lucky though. These people weren’t great people, but they weren’t nearly as bad. They weren’t literally cybercriminals, just asshole kids on the internet. So when I became a moderator in THAT community and started running things, the community actually improved. But eventually that community collapsed, and I moved on again. And again. And again. I ended up with some Brits for a while, and “mate” settled itself into my vocabulary in a deeply unwelcome way.
I’ve been incredibly lucky. I’m 28 now. The last 14 years of my life, I’ve slowly climbed from one community to another, and mostly through random luck each of those have been better than the one I was leaving. I am surrounded now by some of my favorite people. They are TRULY good people. They care about others, and stand up for good causes. Some days, I even think maybe I might be a good person too. I wasn’t a good person. I fell WAY down the alt-right rabbit hole. I’m sure that I’ve hurt people, and I’ve made countless decisions that sicken me now. But I’ve been incredibly lucky. If I hadn’t been, I have no idea where I’d be now. Or what nonsense I’d still be believing, because everything around me told me it was normal.
You know how they say “Show, not tell” when writing? Excellent job mate, thanks for it
I’m glad you appreciated it! I think I can forgive the subtle jab xD
Some days, I even think maybe I might be a good person too
You sound like a good person to me. That level of self reflection rarely / never leads to being a shithead in my experience.
Crazy story but a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
That was quite a read.
Thanks for sharing.
Genuinely, thanks for sharing your experience. I don’t think most people realize how insidiously easy it is to slowly slide down that path. I’m very glad to hear that you’re moving in a better direction these days.
Great writing style too, for what it’s worth.
This is a fantastic read and a great explanation of how this can happen. You’ve come a long way and made it out the other side.
When you hollow out the middle class (in the US sense of the term), people go looking for a narrative to explain it, to give them a reason they don’t get (or can’t give their children) the lifestyle they were promised in the media.
One narrative that fits is corporate greed, late-stage capitalism, enshittification and staggering corruption.
Another narrative, however, is all this rampant social change going on, people changing the demographics, changing the rules, changing definitions, changing the comfortable rules of thumb they were used to - and now everything’s shit, the two must be connected, we need to slam the brakes and catch our breath, perhaps even go backwards, and maybe conditions will follow suit. Even if they don’t, change is a loss of control, and that’s scary. We need to pull our heads in, hunker down and take back what’s rightfully ours from those we’ve been forced to share it with.
Once people start looking through that lens, everything starts self-selecting to fit - and they start thinking yeah, maybe those guys had a point.
Yes, there’s horrible shitty filter bubbles on social media and 4chan and everything else, but this stuff doesn’t take root without the underlying socioeconomic issues driving it.
As for incels - I don’t think people realise just how much social privilege is involved in having a peer group during childhood and adolescence to develop the give and take of social skills necessary for actually courting a partner. Consider the weird kids, the fat kids, the (disproportionally) poor kids, the ones with a fucked up home life, who didn’t get to form stable relationships, who didn’t get the practice at human-wrangling, who maybe ended up in a socially-isolating job, who had no ‘third place’ to hang out with people, to socialise and to meet people they might be interested in.
And once people start out without social skills, it can be really hard to pick them up; the embarrassment and exclusion that can follow small fuckups get exponentially worse as time goes on. And you don’t have to be painfully awkward, you just have to… not have game. Just enough to kick you to the bottom of the rankings, so failure (or the likelihood thereof) stacks up and becomes progressively discouraging, so you don’t try and don’t get practice.
And then it’s the same situation: the world doesn’t work for them the way they were told it would; they do all the things that they’ve heard were supposed to work (but without any of the nuance needed to do it successfully), and it just doesn’t.
For some of them, they feel like they’re getting singled out to get ripped off, or that the whole damn system is rigged; it’s a big club and they aren’t in it, as it were. So they look for a narrative, they look for someone to blame, they look for the bad guy, they look for a coherent explanation of why they’re the victim here. And of course that spirals out of control and ends up in a very bad place.
It makes a lot of sense when you put in like that, and makes me feel like helping people instead of ignoring/hating/looking down on them. How did you get these insights? Are you in the field of psychology?
As for helping - I think that once they get far enough down the path, there’s probably not much you can do for them. But compassion is always a good thing no matter who you spend it on.
As is sparing a thought for the poorly-socialised, and for the lack of opportunities people have to just hang out in any kind of casual social setting, if you’re not already part of a friend group.
Someone works a shit job in a dingy office with three people they hate and no general public flowing through, they’re exhausted at the end of the day and even if they had a place to go they just want to go home. Weekends are for laundry and chores and recovering from the week - and besides, what are they going to do, head to some bar and spend all their money drinking alone, just getting aloner?
Most of the opportunities out there rely on having either a pre-existing set of people to hang out with, or enough acquired charisma that they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place.
Our society really needs to lower the barrier to entry for this stuff, but I have no idea how you’d go about that.
Our society really needs to lower the barrier to entry for this stuff, but I have no idea how you’d go about that.
I know. At least in the US. It sounds wonky, but think it through: Cars and zoning law. Between the two of those things, there are fewer and fewer third places. There’s nowhere to go to just be around other people. First (home) and second (edit: work) are incredibly isolated, too. You get in the car and pull out of the garage, and interact with nobody until you pull in to the lot at work. At best, you interact briefly with fast food workers for a few seconds at the drive-thru window. There’s no “local,” no stores, no restaurants, no cafés in the neighborhood; you drive to those. They draw from a large area, so you never see the same people twice there.
Proximity has always been the best builder of community in human history, and we’ve done away with it.
Nah, I’m just old - and I was the weird homeschooled kid; there but for sheer blind undeserved luck go I.
A little empathy goes a long way. There are some truely shit evil people in the world, but most people are good people who werent given the same chances, lost their way, etc.
Fantastic summary! Thank you!
Ok, so this is my time to admit my very shameful past. I used to be racist, homophobic, and sexist(known as the big 3). I used my religion as an excuse for the sexism and homophobia and my father(my mom isnt racist and they are divorced) and dam near everyone on his side of the family is racist so I just grew up in that culture. Once I stopped talking to him and met a lot of people from other races, i learned we are all the same. Then I stated reading the Bible, and
once I did that, I obviously couldn’t continue believing in it.now I am an atheist and I don’t rely on a very very old book to come to my moral conclusions.So basically, it’s willful ignorance, and it is always easier to blame others for your own downfalls, and it makes you feel better about your own shitty life if you can hate on someone else.
Edited for clarification.
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I can honestly say looking back idk if I ever really believed in it. I think I was just using it as an excuse to hate people while feeling morally superior.
I think that’s a lot of people in it. Moral superiority feels really good and hating others is a convenient way to avoid dealing with however you feel about yourself
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I’m so glad you were able to see the light and thank you for having the courage to put it out there for others to see.
The most difficult faults to see and change are our own.
I used my religion as an excuse for the sexism and homophobia
I’m my experience that is extremely common.
Good for you.
I dunno it just made me think of that.
Then I stated reading the Bible, and once I did that, I obviously couldn’t continue believing it.
Yeah nothing obvious about that. Your religion is idiotic, all religions are lies made up by con artists or crazy people. You cant be trusted if you need some book assembled over a 600 year period, edited and abused by religious leaders to control and manipulate the masses into maintaining and increasing their own powerbase, to tell you right from wrong.
Religion is just the old world version of todays billionaires
Couldn’t agree more. Fuck a safe space for insane blatherskite.
“willful ignorance” lol
Like I don’t wanna beat up on the guy but… fuckin hell.
Ya, I was willfully ignorant for a while in my life, and then I started to actually practice critical thinking and developing a sound epistemology. I admitted I was wrong and took steps to change that. So what exactly is there to beat up on me about?
Im glad they are a better person than they used to be, but that particular sentence made me laugh out loud
Question: does that sentence lead one to believe that reading the Bible made me think the Bible is against sexism and homophobia or does it lead you to believe that I am no longer religious because I read the bible?
Additionally to what has already been mentioned: People are susceptible to politics that confirm their prejudices. Right-wing political thought is largely based on confirming that whatever prejudices people hold, they are morally good and justified. Thus elevating an in-group above out-groups. That is a powerful lure.
Fascists provide easy (but often fake) answers to hard problems. Loneliness, the fear of replacement, that kind of thing.
Consider this question: how is it that anyone under the age of 40 today has ever smoked?
By the time they were born, the bad effects of smoking were well understood. By the time they were teenagers, not smoking should have been as obvious as not jumping in front of a train. People already addicted find it difficult to quit, but it in no way explains anyone starting.
The question is different and yet very similar, because the things you mention wind up in a similar way. Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to. And these things you mention are much easier to fall into than smoking because parents, family, etc are all pushing it on people. Smokers generally aren’t pushing their kids, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, etc to smoke, and somehow smoking still proliferates to some degree, just consider how much more difficult to avoid it is for those whose families are actively encouraging them to fall into these methods of belief and hate.
Somehow people start in that route even though it should be obvious not to.
Nicotine provides a short term mental stimulus that’s great for people who feel exhausted or have trouble staying focused.
That’s why lots of people start smoking in school and lots of professionals continue smoking well past the point at which the health effects are obvious.
I know a pulmonologist who smoked until he was in his thirties. Literally “how do you expect me to do my job without this?” was his response when I pressed him on it. Lawyers still smoke like chimneys and for the same reasons
The core of the issue is the “Just World Fallacy” sometimes also called the “Prosperity Doctrine” and a few other things. It boils down to one core idea “Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.” Basically, everyone tends to think of themselves as, more-or-less, good people. So when bad things happen, as they inevitably do, these people start going “Huh, more bad stuff is happening to me than I’ve done bad things. WTF?” So, they come to a reasonable if flawed conclusion that “someone ELSE is doing bad things, and I’m collateral damage.” This isn’t entirely wrong, although sometimes bad things do just happen. However, since at least as far back as the Civil War (and probably since time immemorial), the people whose fault it REALLY is (i.e., the people with power and privelege) have pointed at outgroups, commonly immigrants but also slaves or Catholics or trans people, and said “THOSE people are being bad. THOSE people are why you are suffering. Give me more power and I’ll get rid of THOSE people.”
Wow, well said and succinct, much love.
External locus of control.
Bad things in someone’s life is not their fault, but the fault of whatever scapegoat.
Can’t get a girlfriend? It’s women’s fault.
Can’t get a job? It’s illegal immigrants.
Can’t afford to do the things you like? It’s the government taking too many taxes.
Whatever problem someone has, they are looking to blame someone rather than make any changes in their own life.
As someone who used to visit incel communities (though I never supported the misogynist views), I think a lot of the appeal comes from the fact that they seem to be the only support groups for lonely men. Why aren’t there any non-toxic ones?
Few exist, but they do exist.
The issue is that many times in the past when men have tried to creat men only groups, they get called sexist and forced to open the group.
Men aren’t allowed to discuss their issues (men’s rights discussion is seen as hate), they aren’t allowed to discuss that they aren’t allowed to discuss men’s issues ( this is seen as hate ). Because men are seen as privileged.
I fully expect hate for this comment and I won’t engage.
The biggest reason support groups for men aren’t well supported, is due to men enforcing the ideas of stoic machismo onto men. This leads to numerous things, one is a lack of support for men who are struggling, failing, lonely, whatever. Men aren’t allowed to discuss their feelings because men have created a society that looks at them as losers for doing so. This is, very slowly, changing though.
The problem with a lot of men’s right advocacy is that is really does end up being misogynist. Most men’s right spaces I have encountered want to blame women for being lonely, for failing to make a family, etc. Meanwhile it is men that have had the primary hand in creating society, and it has been that way for thousands of years. We can’t really affect change if we don’t recognize that this is a bed that we made. If we are not happy lying in it, then we need to change, not women. I am also saying not saying women are just perfectly fine. Clearly everyone can have serious negative issues due to life. However, as it stands, the problems we believe are brought on by society, are the constructs of men.
We can’t really affect change if we don’t recognize that this is a bed that we made.
The problem is the men that are struggling generally aren’t the same men that made the bed.
Obviously, however that doesn’t make it not a problem with men. We still need a collective introspection, and course correction.
How do you propose we bring this change about about? The one’s who need to do it have no incentive. The rest of us can sit and think about things and blame ourselves for being men all we want but it won’t change anything. I can encourage and support my peers all day long but it won’t help them be more successful in life or get women to like them romantically because I have no social capital either.
You have to blame the men in charge, but also yourself, your upbringing, and realize you need to work on personal betterment just as much as trying to help other men. Real help, not just creating safe spaces to bitch about chads, and hate on women. Simply creating a place to support men, with actual counseling in mind, that diverts from just blaming women, will actually make things better, demographically. This social capital idea you have isn’t the all encompassing thing you think it is. I have seen very meh looking men, who were fucking homeless, and jobless, in relationships with women. Having support groups, that are just not echo chambers of hate, and instead are implementing counseling methods, that certified people use, that you have researched yourself (do not call yourself a councilor, or claim any professional expertise, diagnosis, etc. just offer as help, man to man, with the increased knowledge) will, broadly, increase other men’s sense of self. This will increase their personal confidence. This will lead to personal betterment. Then you push to branch out.
The idea that men need serious fucking help is already out there. Has been for a good while. It is slowly manifesting into society being more accepting of seeking mental health care, men processing their emotions, etc. Like I said, it is slow, but it is happening. If you are so inclined, do real research into the problems men face in society, like academic research, there is a lot out there to read through, and write a book. Maybe start a podcast, or YT channel. Sure you might not get anywere, but you got stuff out there, in the collective space, for others to see. Which is orders of magnitude more than any MRA, redpill, or incel community has done. Those communities just make the situation worse. They blame women, and even when they discuss men in power enforcing this, they just go “well this is a monumental task to change. Instead I will just stew, in this toxic echo chamber.” While they are just making people advocating for reform for the betterment of men look bad. Look for people who want to publicly advocate reform. From the soap box, and maybe, eventually, to the larger public domain.
I do work on personal betterment quite a lot and encourage my peers to do so. As for the rest of it, how can I start a support group or YouTube channel if no one gives a shit about me or what I have to say? No one with the power to actually make changes will listen to me. The rest already know change needs to happen but can’t do anything either so it would just turn into another echo chamber. Yes, a more positive one but still an echo chamber.
(emphasis added)
Men aren’t allowed to discuss their feelings because men have created a society that looks at them as losers for doing so.
The implication here, that societal norms are created and maintained by only men, and therefore any aspects of it that affect men negatively deserve to be blamed on them, is one of the most pervasive anti-male sentiments that people try to fly under the radar with. Women have at least as much (arguably more) influence on societal norms and conventions, as men do.
This entire comment is teeming with this undertone; that is, until the end, when they come out and just say ‘all the bad stuff is men’s fault’ at the end, lol.
I didn’t say only by men, there is more comments for context to that statement you are leaving out, I said men have had most of the control through out history, so they have, by far, the greatest influence
And women spaces are allowed to blame men but they dont get closed
Yes, there are instances where men’s support groups have shut down, due to misogyny, and there are women’s support groups that did not, despite being misandrists. Guess who is the primary factor in the creation of this society in which this happens?
It’s leftist groups that shut them down. Not defending the right, but that is what it is.
Can you give me specific instances so that I may scrutinize the situations?
Mens shelters for one. They got shut down for being anti feminist in my country at least. Shut down is kind of the wrong term. Maybe pushed out or gate kept? Please don’t think this me trying to get out of the conversation I just don’t have the words to describe my views. And I am exhausted from arguing with Republicans kn Facebook
You missed it lol
Then correct my aim.
The preferred alternative is a healthy relationship after enough therapy, the latter being a [pay]wall for some
There are more straight men who want a partner than women, so someone will be inevitably left out no matter the amount of therapy.
Social media algorithms present different things to different people. So if you fall for a grift, the algorithm will just show you things that support the grift and never show anything that debunks it.
Someone going down a weird rabbit hole will stay on that for a long time, watching many ads along the way. Someone that starts to think “hey maybe there’s something to this thing” then immediately sees something debunking it may conclude “well that last video was a waste of time” and may decide to go do something else that’s a more worthwhile use of their time. End result, they watch fewer ads. Less revenue for the social media companies.
Weird internet rabbit holes are more profitable than seeing contradicting opinions. So the algorithms are tuned to send people down rabbit holes and not offer information contradicting them.
I just confronted a guy I know who told me with a straight face that poor people struggle with budgeting and that’s why they’re poor.
I asked him where he got that info. He then sent me a bunch of YouTubers.
Payday loans sort of suggest this. Bit it’s more how society is biased to keep poor people poor.
Payday loans don’t suggest this. Those are predatory businesses aimed at the poor and desperate.
When you’re one month from disaster and you break a leg, it’s a payday loan or your family doesn’t have a home/food when you work a job without paid leave. And good luck with the disability approval, because even if it eventually comes through, you are on the hook until it does.
Being poor has very little to do with budgeting. I’m sure a substantial portion, if not the majority of them, could figure out how to budget with a $100k income instead of a $30k income.
I agree. My point was that rich people don’t take payday loans, but i recognise that not being able to afford a safetly cushion doesn’t necessarily imply bad planning.
rich people don’t take payday loans
Some do, depending on their circumstances. But when you’ve got a big income it’s easier to get out from under the debt.
Most rich people just use credit cards, though. They’re arguably worse than payday lenders, since the credit limits are much higher. But they’re also very risk averse, so they don’t extend credit to the lower income groups.
Payday lenders and other loan sharks have to spend more on collections and run tighter margins as a result. Far easier to be a credit card company and simply wage a finger at someone’s credit rating to extort payment than to actually execute a repo.
Those are predatory businesses aimed at the poor and desperate.
society is biased to keep poor people poor.
Seems like you agree
Yes, but it’s important to note that confirmation bias is always present in our views of the world because our brain tends to keep things simple by prefering confirming to contradicting information. It just has been amplified by recommendation algorithms meant to increase engagement by showing you “more of the stuff you like”, thus trapping you in a filter bubble you might not even be aware of.
In case it wasn’t a typo, and just to help OP for the future…
It’s “this day and age,” not “this day in age.”
I know I’ll probably get downvoted for the pedantry here especially since everyone understands what was meant, but hopefully OP will appreciate the information about the common phrase.
Also to answer the OP’s question: inferiority complex. It runs rampant in society, especially among men.
What they get is blaming others for their problems.
Seriously? So they fill themselves up with this shit and are ok with putting it out there? I will never understand it because I am very very lazy and it kind of seems like hate requires alot of effort.
Ironically, this kind of hate requires no effort, someone says “GROUP BAD!” and you just sneer and shout towards them. It’s way, way easier to blame a group than understanding all the things that are making your life/city/country/world go wrong
“Of COURSE the evil jew gay black communist feminist conspiracy is the root of all evil, they hate MY way of life!”
There’s also the point that most conspiracy theories capitalize on the “this is a secret THEY don’t want you to know!”, so it makes people feel smart (despite them believing in utter bullshit)
Well I grew up with cable tv and the only news I got was PBS. And never felt hatred or whatever to a person who is different from me. I may have gotten the shit beatin out of me alot of time in school because of it. But it did not change my views.
Nazis and incels need to be dealt with, yes, but the important thing to keep in mind is they are symptomatic of suffering swaths of the population. People don’t just do hate because it’s fun.
We let big businesses and the rich steamroll entire communities and industries, pay lip service to helping people who’ve been damaged by capitalism, and then after the election cycles are over leave their communities to rot. They are desperate and turn to the wrong answers because there aren’t any others.
We allow entertainment and advertising to blast our society with a particular view of what relationship “success” is, and accept mockery of those who cannot thrive in that narrow definition due to social anxiety or other mental issues as fair game. Those men are desperate and turn to the wrong answers because there aren’t any others.
Yes, Nazis and incels are absolutely awful, hateful problems that must be dealt with. And by the time they reach that point, I’d argue they probably can’t be saved. But they don’t fall out of the sky. They come from normal people whose cries for help went unheard, sometimes for decades, or generations. They’re the product of systemic injustices that we can mitigate with outreach programs and getting serious about mitigating the social problems that create the soil they spring from. Stopping them is a necessary band-aid, but the real solution is to address the situations that allow them to thrive in the first place.
symptomatic
Still reading your post and came across the word symptomatic being used correctly and if I had a hat I would either tip it to you or say my hats off to you…no sarcasm.
if I had a hat I would either tip it to you or say my hats off to you
Hat inequity… yet another social ill we need to address.