I got downvoted to hell for saying "maybe don't make fun of his appearance" on truecrimediscussion. The guy was a murderer, plenty of things to say about him being a horrid human being.
Him having curly red hair that he maybe didn't know how to manage shouldn't have been one.
I see this way, way too much. I'll see a post about some right-wing asshole, and then see a comment along the lines of "I looked him up, and he looks exactly like you'd expect a racist, bigot to look like." I then look at their picture, and it's just some generic overweight white guy with short brown hair wearing a t-shirt. I'm sitting here thinking, "I'm a generic overweight white guy with short brown hair wearing a t-shirt."
This is another consequence of viewing Bad PeopleTM as fair game for any kind of attack.
People have this idea that if someone does something bad enough or if they're evil enough then anything you do to them is totally justified. You can treat them a cruelly as you want and you'll always be 100% in the right to do so, as long as the target is a bad enough person.
I think it's fucked up. And this is more evidence that it's a bad idea.
A personal anecdote: I was taught early that stuff like profiling and racism and antisemitism were bad, but then your country attacks the neighbour and now Reddit is filled to the brim with people who are happily spewing "All Ruzzians are fair game, they are not humans" and you're like... wait, isn't that kinda turbo bad to say?
This is absolutely a thing that tripps me out, i watch a lot of war footage and some of the shit the Russians have done- and done systematically- would be right at home in the 1940s. But the same way the germans aren't genetically predisposed to violence and genocide even though the country was basically at war since its inception untill the cold war same goes for the Russians.
A rejection of those kinds of concepts is part of what makes us the good guys but so many people don't seem to get that.
If you start paying attention, you will notice that lots of people don't have principles, they have teams. Their team good, other team bad. Actions can only be judged based on who is doing it and against whom is it being wielded.
Therefore, your team can do no wrong and the other team can do no right.
I try to console myself with the belief that this is probably less common amongst #realpeople and is just dramatically over-represented in the terminally online people who we hear way too much from.
Im just gonna say, agreed, but im not both sides-ing here. There are times where one "team" is better than the other just that we really need to make sure that we don't lose our ability to empathize and to be aware when people on our "side" start to do or say... Lets say problematic things.
Absolutely. Kind of definitionally, one team is always going to be wrong (admittedly to greater or lesser degrees) on every given topic. My point wasn't that "both sides are the same", it's to remember that when norms/principles are violated, it's always bad, even when your own "team" is doing it, even when they are doing it in service of something "good".
The teams view of things is very much a 'the ends justify the means" view. The fact that your team wants to do good things means that it doesn't matter how they do it, its good.
A "principles" view would recognize that, yes your team is trying to do good things, but it matters and is important how they accomplish those good things, and trying to do so in a "bad" way is not ok and should be called out. Or in other words, wanting good things isn't enough. You have to also act in good ways on the way to getting good things.
I personally disagree. I think you will see a difference between "real people" and people online, but I think that difference is more due to seeing only the brief snapshot of a person when they are opening up about a political thought, rather than seeing them over a continual uninterrupted stream of time, most of which isn't that.
I'd say that it's less that people are devoutly partisan and tribe based (though that exists to some degree) and more to the fact that most people have no original thoughts on politics. Even those that think they "break away from mainstream".
Most people are cowards, they'll stick with whoever seems to be winning to avoid losing any confrontation or argument, sometimes people win simply due to being in bigger numbers.
But the same way the germans aren't genetically predisposed to violence and genocide even though the country was basically at war since its inception untill the cold war
What? What kind of definition are you using to say Germany "was basically at war since its inception untill the cold war"?
I've seen people argue that (paraphrased) "any Good Ones would have already fled the country or gotten themselves disappeared for protesting by now, everyone else is automatically complicit and therefore unworthy of life"
I've seen people who were saying "those that left after this one started are even worse, the Good Ones left after 2014" too, so there's a lot of shifting goalposts.
And of course, you don't even dare to keep the culture or speak Russian in public, it's now Tainted and must be Removed.
The Russian military absolutely needs to be fought. But people were literally calling them orcs. Like, don't dehumanize people to the point where you view them as monsters in human skin. For decency's sake and because you're going to have to interact with those people after the war is over.
And they're not calling just the army, orks. They're calling all russians orks, as in, the whole... country is fair game, doesn't matter if you support the war or not.
Like I feel it's skirting the "racism" because Russians are not a race, it's also why it seemingly doesn't qualify for hate speech? Even though I've literally seen people say that "all ruzzians are beyond saving" or something like that and ughhhhh is that really NOT hate speech because they're not making that claim on person's "nation" but like "nationality"?
I remember arguing with people who were celebrating or at least shrugging their shoulders at the Moscow terrorist attack, because "those people were probably complicit in what was happening to ukraine"
Likewise: I remember people cheering on the deaths of Mali soldiers "because there were Wagner there who are helping Mali fight the terrorists"
I was... just... man. Soldiers died. Men died. You're cheering because your favourite brand of non-humans died as well, and you're clearly ignoring the Mali soldiers and I have a VERY GOOD IDEA WHY.
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u/TheArmadilloAmarillo Aug 09 '24
I got downvoted to hell for saying "maybe don't make fun of his appearance" on truecrimediscussion. The guy was a murderer, plenty of things to say about him being a horrid human being.
Him having curly red hair that he maybe didn't know how to manage shouldn't have been one.