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On ignorance, stupidity and online discourse (or how you may be acting like a grifter)
Picture this:
You're bored to death one night while on your PC and see a clip on social media from this video people have been talking about lately. You decide to watch it and after one hour and half of wasted time you conclude the world really is falling to a dangerous level of idiocracy. It's the "20 Trump Supporters Take on 1 Progressive" video I'm talking about where Sam Seder tries to reasonably explain his points to a bunch of conservatives who not only have not done their research before agreeing to engage in a debate but also have often humiliated or revealed how vile they truly are. But the lack of research, obvious bias and also full on bigotry isn't the what made me want to write about this but the way the way these people tried debating him and failing pretty much resembling every online discourse I've seen online these past 6 or so years at this point, and probably for even longer but my memory as someone directly engaging or encountering it only goes that far. And what do I mean by that exactly? None of them actually tried to prove him wrong or actually come back with an argument that would twist his own words against him therefore somehow showing he is wrong and they're right; they all relied on quippy Ben Shapiro quippy one liners that sound like talking points, accusations and assumptions or straight up blatant misinformation, often to such an extent that it proves they know literally knowing about politics; such as the guy who thinks government agencies pay taxes. And worse of all, more than half of the people that ended up talking to Sam ended up just talking over him loudly and saying the same things repeatedly.
And yes I know what you'll tell me: Molly, they don't care if they're wrong, they'll just grift and stick to a narrative. And yes you're correct. There was even one lady advocating for racism (shown above) and another guy trying to insist gay people should be in straight relationships because that's what religion says you should do (though christianity would also likely state a marriage is a union of two people before god and there's probably no place for god in a loveless marriage) so we shouldn't give these people even the slightest amount of benefit of the doubt or validation. What I was leading into with this is how the average online conversation is slowly becoming more and more like this. People throwing quippy lines at others even if they don't know what any of it means and when proven wrong they just scream the same statements louder so they sound like they're correct and smart. And this doesn't even just apply to political discussion but even discussions about something as simple and basic as video games. If you're familiar with Sonic discourse you know exactly what I'm talking about. You can't even say you dislike something or something isn't your thing online, you have to talk about how it's objectively bad and that if someone likes it that person should not be taken seriously and should be harassed for it and it's gotten so bad that people can't even handle a lukewarm statement as "I don't like xyz, it's not my thing" (case and point; people years later still being angry at Scott The Woz for not liking RPGs or the NeoGeo even though he didn't once put anyone down for liking either and just stated they're not his jam)
This has, to a certain extent, always been an issue online (let's not forget we used to call everything we didn't like gay or fake back in the 00s) but it does feel like these days people have become increasingly vitriolic with their responses and you often see people treating others no different than you treat an NPC in a video game. People just don't want to put in any effort to treat others with decency anymore and it's over increasingly smaller stuff. And I get not treating your bigoted uncle with respect for example - guy deserves to be disrespected if he direspects people. But that's not what I mean. I mean actively looking down on someone and wanting them harm for. idk. defending Sonic 06 or stanning Ariana Grande instead of Taylor Swift or whatever small insignificant viewpoint they disagree on. And these are similar tactics that I'd see with those conservatives in the video.
Online discussion has turned into spouting the same tactics as conservative supporters and the average online user behaves increasingly more like one of those smug 2016 alt right schmucks, that also being applicable within leftist spaces mind you. Social media and the online world was meant to bring us closer together and all it did is become a breeding ground for the opposite. It's gotten so bad that you see tons of queer people genuinely believing there's no such thing as allyship or even solidarity (most of said queer people are online and likely closeted irl so i don't blame them for being misinformed here) because all they see online is people dunking each other and they refuse to actually interact with the average person. Going to an IRL pride event last year made me realize the extent of the skewed perspective the online world gives you especially if you only have one type of interactions with certain people. It's unfortunately similar to a lot of people I've met who used to be centrists or right leaning and fell into that narrative because their only engagement with leftists and feminists were through out of context (or often faked) screenshots of them saying something stupid but once they actually had proper engagement with those groups that was not an argument or throwing quippy lines at them they got to the conclusion they were sold a lie.
We can all agree Leafy was a cyberbully. Maybe let's try not to be like him or people his type if we know they're bad.
Us Gen Z like calling Millenials 'cringe' for it but maybe there truly was some merit to trying not to be offensive towards every group and person because you can because our behavior patterns and even our embrace of cringe culture (since we're on that topic) is very much akin to how the average alt right individual would engage online with people thinking differently. We all like being smug shitlords but we refuse to own up to it because doing so means we accept our reality. We like being selectively ignorant about our behaviors and we also don't want to be the bad guys or act like the bad guys but if in a movie or a show you saw the protagonist behaving no different than the antagonist you'd assume they're about to embark on their corruption/villain arc. It shouldn't be controversial to say leftists should not behave like the alt right and neither should the average person with no strong political lean. And maybe millenials had a point. We should not just be kind but want to be kind too. Instead we like being venomous and cruel. Alternatively we like being ignorant or stupid, or both. Probably both.
Stupidity, to me, is about being wrong about something but being so proudly aggressive about it that you cycle back to believing your own lie even if deep inside you know it's bullshit. If it was just a lack of intelligence that would not be even 1/10th of the issue that is is now because someone who is misinformed can be made to know better if they open themselves up to the new information - the issue is when you know you're wrong but you refuse to accept so because you'd rather not change your mind or approach to new information. And worse, you're smug about how wrong or misinformed you are and you're just maliciously full of shit. This used to be behavior exclusive to right winged grifters but either we've all turned into grifters or we've started adapting grifter techniques to show how not-grifters we are. Either way this is not good and does nothing but hurt even the tamest online discussion and taint them with fearmongering, misniformation or even straight up false narratives people create about something just to push a story further and further in hopes it gets treated like gospel. One example I keep thinking about every now and then is when a friend told me a group of people she knows genuinely has heard and believes that Omori (you know, the indie game that swept the internet in late 2020 and not to brag but I've been waiting for since 2017) is a "child torture porn" game and that it's little more than glorified pedobait and would refuse to accept any alternate answer. Sure you can mention Omocat made some edgy jokes/statements years ago that were in very poor taste but in no way does that turn a game about grief, loss, trauma and guilt into anything else. It really is the equivalent of those news room political grifters from the 90s and 2000s trying to blame Doom on Columbine, GTA and Mortal Kombat on various crimes and so on just so they could dodge what truly led up to those horrifying events transpiring. Or how people for over 30 years have been gaslit to think Night Trap was this highly provocative, lewd, borderling pornographic game where you stalk and creep on women because the discourse surrounding the game in the 90s portrayed it as such but when you actually play it you realize it's none of those things and it's in fact so tame that years down the road when they rereleased the game they lowered the age rating to T (meanwhile the original rating was M).
And sure Night Trap or whatever video game being mistaken or having its impact overstated is nothing too serious but there's so many worse examples out there of people whose lives were ruined or people who have been driven to harm or suicide either through false narrative or assumptions or straight up fabricated information. And unfortunately with the rise of Generative AI and it's already weaponisation I worry the trend will trend towards getting worse and increasingly more and more messed up. Deepfake porn was already a huge issue and Generative AI's usage will only incentivise that (and it ended up becoming a massive issue South Korea where hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been affected by this exact problem). Disinformation, misinformation and stupidity is what put our world on this recent trend of increasing bigotry and the only way to fight it is by fighting the direction the world is heading and being kind to those who deserve our kindness (so no I'm not advocating to be kind to bigots, I'm saying you should not seriously treat someone who thinks pineapple on pizza is good/bad as an inherently lesser person). We should return to the attitude we had several years back where being a vitriolic, malicious or otherwise ignorant person would be looked down on and not encouraged even if your intent was the opposite, such as quote tweeting a bigot with a quippy one liner about how you're ratioing them + their feet stink.
In other words: Be kind, rewind.