Everyone is mad, screaming throwing tantrums. Tattle Telling. Cursing, cutting off, calling names, using foul language. Hitting and beating each other. Sometimes killing others.
Incensed by slights that only they see.
And it’s not a kindergarten class.
It’s grown adults. From Congress, down to the streets. In traffic. In stores and businesses. My daughter recently had an experience in her office job at a University.
Even a small message board.
What the heck is wrong with people?
What am I not getting?
I know, I don’t get out much. I should be safe from seeing these things. But I’m not. No one is.
Wrong word to the FedEx man? Little joke to the nurse in the clinic? Don’t even rush someone in a check-out line. A mis-understood movement? You liable to be cursed if not beat down.
There’s no way you can be in public and not perturb someone. It happens. You bump into some one. Or, god forbid step on a toe.
I’ve went through my life not bothering very many people. I know my please and thank-yous. I don’t go to too many sketchy places. I’m kind. I’m silly sometimes. I don’t actively hurt people. And, yet … It’s at my door.
I don’t know the rules anymore. Are there rules?
We have some unhinged people in our neighborhood. The other day I was walking down the street and came across a grown-ass man threatening to beat up some neighborhood teens. He believed they were bullying his son. And they might well have been. But he was using all kinds of vile bigoted slurs and violent threats against what looked to me to be 15 year olds. They could have walked away I guess, but they chose to stand there and argue with him.
A while before that, a lady was parked in front of a house (it’s a manufactured home place) doing work on her car. Another lady came up and lightly admonished her because it’s technically against the rules. You would have thought the lady threatened her dog or something. She went ballistic, throwing tools around and all kinds of stuff, calling the lady a bitch and this and that. Totally out of proportion.
Sociologically researchers have noted an increase in narcissism among the general population, and what goes hand in hand with narcissism: retaliatory aggression. The belief that if someone slights you, you have a right to pay it back tenfold. It’s a very dangerous idea and a really emotionally immature one, I might add. Add that to our increasing polarization and the breakdown of public spaces and public discourse and you’ve got one hell of a conflagration.
Exactly! The average American has more personal freedom and is far better off financially than billions of others on this planet, yet they are ready to tear this society apart because they are so enraged about … … … WHAT, exactly?!
We’ve become very polarized, and social media is a big culprit. There is a documentary on Netflix on just this subject. Try watching, “The Social Dilemma”, on Netflix. It’s an eye opener.
I agree, social media has a big footprint here.
You watch a couple videos. Then the next thing you know they recommend 700 more just like it. They get increasingly more strange. That veers into videos with people on the fringe. If you keep on you get folks spouting crazy ass CTs about a single parts of the original video.
Now of course you’re a part of the algorithm and it’s just no telling what you’ll see.
You(the generic you) get angry and beat the snot out your kid or go to the bar and someone makes an aside. And a bar brawl ensues.
Now you’re madder than ever. And you blame totally innocent people.
Anger pays. Indignation pays. Outrage pays. And not just in attention: it pays in actual cash. Views! Clicks! Get 10,000 followers on TikTok and cash money flows into your account!
Money motivates like crazy. Be crazy: get paid.
I hadn’t heard this but it’s not surprising. Our culture does reward self-righteousness and taking action based on self-righteousness. As mentioned, not only with attention, but with cash.
Unless we change the cash-for-clicks structure of our economy, I don’t see any lessening of outrage and violence based on that outrage. And we can’t change that economic structure without government intervention–which would elicit howls.
I won’t say there’s no hope. We did manage (through legal action plus government intervention) to change one facet of our economy that was substantially large: the tobacco industry. It’s not gone, but it’s not as big as it was. We also managed to change the idea that drunk driving was a forgivable minor issue–something that everyone did and that no one could be criticized for. That part of our culture changed.
With the shirtless, shoeless dudes incoherently raving at a streetcorner at 4 a.m., I am thinking drugs.
The Singapore Penal Code 1871 has a pretty good list of offences classified as a public nuisance;— $2000 fine and 3 months in prison. Actual fighting gets you a year.
If someone is spending a few minutes in her own driveway trying to fix a problem with her car and a busybody comes up and tells her that she is violating page 64, subparagraph 3 of the HOA rules, I can understand someone losing their cool. It sounds like each person has some things to apologize for.
She wasn’t in her own driveway, she was in the street. Also I don’t believe she lived here.
I don’t know if this is really just me, but when I’m upset with someone in public, especially someone I don’t know very well, I do not inflame the situation by calling people names, no matter how out of line I think they are. My only thought is to not make the situation worse.
So I find it pretty shocking when people just go off because they think someone else is out of line.
I think a lot of people seriously de-socialized in 2020, and have not yet recovered. They weren’t that great before then, but they’re a lot worse since.
Unfortunately other than to say “good morning,” or if anyone appears to be in need, I’ve been avoiding ALL interaction with strangers in public for a long time. Of anyone you meet, these days:
10% are armed
10% are enraged
10% are batshit crazy
10%x10%x10% is “I Don’t Like Those Odds.” Adjust the source percentages any way you like, but you still get an uncomfortable answer. It’s not worth taking a lot of chances.
Crap. I wasn’t thinking of actual drugs causing this.
I can see, now, it must be part of it.
Then you see that #1 golfer, what’s his name, getting into that kerfuffle and arrested. Or that thing that went down in the committee in Washington. Or Sean Combs video that’s allover CNN. The crazy Trump trial.
I just don’t get it.
Is it systemic? Is it temporary?
If the COVID lockdowns, unavailable goods and illness fear were at the bottom of this can we really come back from that? You can’t really erase it from memory. We have scars.
I’m seriously worried. Not for me. I can hide easy enough.
I worry, first about my kids and grandkids. And, of course, greater society.
Will we have to live on the ready to fight just to survive?
I admit that this is 100% just me making something up (old man yells at cloud, news at 11), but I think that one of the strange things that social media has trained us to do, along with ‘reality’ TV and related trends, is to perform every action for an audience.
Like, even if there’s no conscious intention, in a world where we have turned most of our personal interaction into public display (“Happy birthday”… “hey, I saw this and thought of you”… “Long time no see”… “Hi friend, remember when we went to that concert?”… all of these are posted for people we don’t even know) many people have lost perspective on what is important. The American psyche has acquired a lack of a sense of self without an audience, and so more than ever we feel satisfied only when we’re drawing attention to ourselves.
I think this is around 60-70% of it, but with a touch more nuance. I think this is human nature (although America is certainly exceptional and not in a good way about it) to consider yourself the center of the universe. You are the star of your own story, and everyone else is a bit player.
So, take that with the social media / reality TV emphasis, and yes, not only are you performing at all times for an audience, but you also assume that everyone else is doing the same. Right back to @Spice_Weasel’s reporting on narcissism and agression.
Thus the huge number of complaints that if someone does something, it’s entirely for “virtue signaling” or the oft repeated running gag here that “every accusation is a confession.” You judge everyone else by your standards.
Combine this with the religious zeal that modern reformers and reactionaries have (and I know which side I’m more sympathetic with, but the zeal is the same) where any compromise or concession is tantamount to surrender, and well, no reason not to act with righteous outrage at every moment.
A lot of these videos are explicitly designed to draw someone in. Create doubt, bring up things that seem weird, or funny, or off. And then you watch some more, maybe just a touch more out there. And you further spiral down. People oft talk about “radicalization” on the internet - well, it isn’t just taking a disaffected youth and making them a jihadist, it’s about bringing someone in, and then making their entire life revolve around the revelation you’re selling for $$$, Lolz, or power. Qanon, CT’ers, SovCits, they’re all just cults with different (or NOT so different) trappings.
For some segments though, the complaint and hate comes from @jasmine’s point:
The What, for a lot of people, is that the WRONG people have personal freedom, and is better off financially. And they feel, and are being told every single day that it’s a zero sum game. If THOSE people have more freedom to marry who they want, be the gender they want, believe in the deity that they want, then those who used to get the default approval are somehow losing, being belittled, impoverished or imposed upon.
FOX and it’s various propaganda pieces about the “War on Xmas” along with everything else, along with reactionary celebrities that made outrage and hate a unifying element among their base has as much or more to do with the whole situation as social media.
Social media is, to use geek speak: Quicker, easier, more seductive.
But it’s a symptom, and a tool, rather than the source IMHO.
Agree with everything you wrote. I’d add my own nuance to this bit, which is that even though we’ve got it all in America (well, some do), many are or feel like they are at risk. Americans are wealthy compared to much of the world, but we are not economically stable or secure. The more one feels like their own security is at risk, the more alluring the idea of easy scape goats is.
I do believe if more people didn’t feel like they were on the edge, or falling farther and farther behind, they would be less apt to view anyone else’s gain as a threat. And there are plenty who are hateful for other reasons.
Of course there are reasons to speak out about real civil problems. There are times to get angry about what the world is doing to you and your people.
There’s also the right way to do that.
I watched the College protests of the last few weeks. Whatever side you agree with there were bad actors. The ones throwing sticks and rocks. The ones spraying pepper spray. The ones harassing students just trying to walk thru campus.
Flying your flag and getting up on your soapbox and stating your case is lost when someone is trampled or hurt.
It turns into a crime against another human.
This is that unregulated (personally) anger that’s seeping into the mindset. Once the first smoke bomb is thrown people just go bat shit. It just takes one very angry out of control person.
If you happen to be in the area, well, good luck.
I wanted to tell the kids on those campuses “this ain’t working out, go home”.
I looked at some of those kids wearing scarves. They had no business even being there.
And the ones who were standing around filming it, I just have no words…
[quote=“Beckdawrek, post:16, topic:1001712”] I looked at some of those kids wearing scarves. They had no business even being there.
[/quote]
Fashions come and go, but I’ve always kind of liked scarves. They are kinda cute on the right person. Reminds me of sledding in the snow as a kid. Hot cocoa when we got home.
a lot of this started back in the 90s. politically when people like Newt Gingrich took over and destroyed “compassionate conservatism” and set out to destroy political correctness which started a social war over the right-to-be bastards with both sides digging their heels in and slowly becoming isolated echo chambers
Then add in the trendy paranoia that everything is a scam or just plain lies that started on topics like UFOs and such that started (think x files Kennedy assassination etc.) and now is taken to be gospel on things like medicine and education …
Could you imagine Truman, Eisenhower, or even Kennedy putting up with the COVID BS that went on? or people back then acting like that, to begin with
I said on here back in 2008 or 9 that after Obama there would be a backlash by the old rich white fake Christian guys but wow …