#MEAN PEOPLE SUCK

[thecurioustale]

Shits Right Out of the Gate

I had an epiphany yesterday! One of those moments where you finally notice something that's just so darn obvious.

There is a tendency on social media, and in activist discourse, and I think among the younger Millennials and generational cohorts younger than them, toward opening posts with a style that's both dictatorial toward and condemning of the intended audience, without preliminary nuance or qualification. The tonality is something like: "You're doing The Thing wrong, you absolute fool, and here's what you're supposed to be doing, you total dumbfuck; any decent person wouldn't even need to be told." Right out of the gate, they're just pure assholes about whatever it is they want—nay, demand—other people to do differently.

I hate that. And I finally noticed this trend.

It's not persuasive. I don't think it's even intended as persuasion. I think it's just disgruntlement, resentment, bossiness, and a form of bullying. There's no attempt at unification, or mutual understanding. There's no sharing of context. There's absolutely no attempt at nuance. And there is, desperately lacking, no goodwill at all.

It's bad behavior, is what it is. Maladjusted, selfish, from people who weren't raised well and didn't independently learn how to be a good person. It's all judgmental contempt and petty demands. And sometimes the demands are well-founded and sometimes they're not—usually it falls annoyingly in the middle—but regardless they are presented in such an off-putting way as to be self-defeating.

We all have our systems for expediently judging a stranger's trustworthiness, character, and so forth. And I do not like people who behave like this. Behavior like this, and the people who practice it without any critical self-awareness of the social pollution they're causing, are one of the larger faults in humankind. And the fact that this style is so common on social media is one of the major contributors, I think, to why I dislike social media so much.

Now that I finally recognize this, I'm going to try and be more deliberate about not engaging with content from people who behave this way, and I am going to be less charitable with the offending content that I do engage with.

That sort of stuff belongs in the trash. And, notwithstanding the inevitable echo chambers of boorish bullies who upvote and redistribute this stuff and force it to persist everywhere in our midst like smog, the trash is where it would substantively end up were it not for people like me taking it seriously. No one who isn't willing to output unreciprocated goodwill is going to take that kind of behavior seriously (except for the aforementioned similarly off-putting people who already fully agree with the demands being made and the style in which these demands are presented, and/or are friends with the offender). And a longstanding trait of mine—I won't call it a "fault," though it functions as a fault here—is that I tend to extend a lot of goodwill to strangers. I need to do less of that. I need to stop wasting time humanizing and dignifying this sort of tactless, petty, demanding, mean behavior.

[lydiaortega1996]

[clatterbane]

Oh Lordy. I wish I were more surprised.

Part of his also that you're in Tennessee. I'm from east Tennessee and we honestly used to be pretty accepting and tolerant of weirdness.

But there have been a lot of people with a lot of money moving in from California and New York because they want to live in a red state where they can afford to buy the farmland from people who are elderly. this has been going on since the pandemic started. they want to live out a farming conservative trad fantasy that never existed here.

not only are they terrible to the locals but they're really intolerant of anybody who looks like they might be gay, disabled, anything like that. I'm a trans person who is visibly trans and I literally had to leave the state to be able to not only be hired, but also not have someone be really aggressive to me in public every few days.

edit: sorry, downvoting me doesn't make it not real. i wish it did!

(Bonus: This came up in the context of SO WRONG: Grown-ass adults running away screaming from a person who has dwarfism )

I really have no reason to doubt what this person is saying. Unfortunately.

I spent my first 28 years not that far from East TN. It was around an hour and a half straight shot down I-81 from where I lived most of that time to Bristol. Both sides of my family are longterm (like, partly precolonial) local. And also eccentric as hell, I might add.

I did understand from what some other people have been saying, that an influx of people moving in and driving up real estate prices has been a pretty big problem basically across the whole region lately. There was already enough issue with that general kind of rural gentrification around my own area, especially orbiting the universities. But yeah, why am I not surprised that it's apparently also meant a lot more intolerant shitpokes inflicting themselves on everybody else? 🙄

The novel part: I only wish I were surprised at that "want to live out a farming conservative trad fantasy that never existed here" demographic popping up to bug the hell out of everybody else. 😰 Especially given some of the political/ideological bullshit going around these days.

The folks that I had problems with before really did not fit that particular pattern at all, and they were difficult enough to deal with. (Cue OP's "not only are they terrible to the locals...") The particular demographic OP is describing here sounds like an even bigger joy to be around even if you're not, say, both disabled and visibly trans.

(Whereas most of the actual locals will treat that as your own business, and at least stay fucking civil to your face. People here have a little different style about it, but I really do appreciate that they mostly seem to have some similar raising that way.)

Yes, there may be several layers of confirmation bias involved here. But, whether or not I think this comment necessarily has much to do with a negative public interaction at a random rest stop somewhere in the state of Tennessee? (Erm, probably not.) I don't really doubt that OP is fairly describing their own experience. I also don't really doubt that they might have been getting downvoted over it.

[deepbreakfast]

We will know you by the company you keep.

[hectic-hector]

Psycho Alert! XD

Well, have a look at this positively delightful person! All I did was ask her what she meant when she commented "It moves like a dog!" on this video. Below is our entire conversation. Guess somebody woke up on the wrong side of the kitty litter this morning. 😂

Why are there so many pissy people online these days? At least her bio is honest. It says "Not a Nice Person." Should've checked before commenting, I suppose.

[ddlc3177]

[eisenkrahe]

If somebody is a twat to you no matter how nice you are to them and no matter how fairly you treat them, you don't have to start being mean to them and you don't have to get down to their level. You just have to remember that you are not their gynecologist and they are not your twat. ❤️

[madamechrissy]

Your writing pisses me off

You don't have to read it. 😭 That's not very nice though and I've had a horrible day. So thanks.

I literally write for free and because I love it. Just block someone if you hate their shit so bad.

[heisenbahlls]

hey you- you smell like poo

no i do NOT1!1!!1!11 STOP HATING ON ME

[felixisfruity]

My favorite thing to do is be nice back to someone who rudely replies to me on social media (they usually don’t respond back but it’s funny to imagine their response)

[skycotl-before-and-after]

Todays question was “How can you be a good ally?” 🌈

Most people post positive messages. Some post random drabble no matter what the question. They have a tagline they always use, or just post some emojis.

But a few were mean. Sad to say, one was from a player I considered a good friend (not the one pictured). They replied with “Don’t.”

[lilyblossoming]

.

[apixieindreamland]

Every time a person has been randomly rude to me for no conceivable reason, I'd always feel that their behavior was very commonplace and uninteresting, but never really analyzed why until now.

In the first place, unkind people ARE commonplace; they're a penny a dozen. Far more rare are people who try to act from their better natures, who show restraint, and who think before they speak. For every person like that, there are hundreds who will blurt out any vile thing that comes to mind and then congratulate themselves on their forthrightness. So yes, it's very common.

In the second place, people who just respond nastily without provocation are like the antagonists in slasher movies who never speak and don't even have any apparent motivation for their destruction; they're just mindless villains who can't be reasoned with or understood. Likewise, someone who sneers at people out of nowhere is just a "generic mean person." There's never any background to the incident, no build up, no motivation. And I find that incredibly dull.

They're also dull because at least if there were some reason to be rude (like a misunderstanding), there's the challenge there of figuring it out, settling it and parting as friends. There's no reason to do that with generic mean people, because they're not confused; they're just insulting someone to hurt another human being. It's that simple. Yawn...𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨!

[rantsofaveryhurtperson]

If I kill myself, I feel like a lot of people will be surprised. Which is surprising, because I'm depressed as shit and have nothing to live for and everyone would know this if they paid even a little bit of attention.

I can preach kindness, and I can practice kindness, but if it never come back, there's nothing I can do.

[songofthesuns]

I feel like ppl don't talk about how even the smallest things can stick mentally

(For ex) in like 10th grade there was some girls who took pics of me and would send them to other ppl and to this day I'm always so paranoid that someone is taking pics of me when I'm in public

Dont be a jerk!!!

[ddlc3177]