💾 Archived View for polaris.voyage › Gemlog › 2022-06-22%20Wonderfully%20fucked%20up%20society.gmi captured on 2022-07-16 at 13:59:26. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Everything is political now. Every fucking thing. You don't like driving big ass gas guzzling trucks that cost more than the GDP of Ethiopia to fill up? You must be a hardcore liberal. You like guns and don't want them to be completely banned? You must be a raging Q-Anon Trump worshipper that's itching to kill children the next time a democrat opens their mouth. You want privacy? What are you, a child porn merchant who keeps voting for <insert opposing party here> so you can keep abusing children? Politics getting involved in everything is just a side effect of the main issue in our society.
You don't agree with me? You must be a fucking <insert generic insult here> that <insert generic thing that most people can agree is bad>. In my sociology class that I took a while ago, I wrote a paper on polarization and there was a massive rise in polarization after Ronald Regan lifted the restrictions on official news broadcasters that made them actually report things fully and without bias. The fact that more and more media keep leaving thngs out, twisting things, or flat out making shit up to get more money is the issue. People eat that shit up and share it with other people that also eat that shit up who also share with their friends who do the same and no one in the process takes any time to actually verify they're getting the entire story or even getting real news in the first place.
Take the Kyle Rittenhouse case that happened a while ago in America. A lot of news stories stated that he drove across state lines to shoot black people yet failed to mention that's where his job was and he was only about 30 minutes away. A lot of them twisted the story stating that he shot three unarmed black men yet literally none of them were black and most were armed with some weapon. Bicepless dude (formerly bicep dude) literally had an illegally obtained handgun pointed at Kyle Rittenhouse yet no major news outlet or media reported on it and it was only after a bit of digging that some internet detectives dug up bicepless dude's criminal record finding he was a felon thus can't legally own any firearms. Kyle isn't a hero as well, he's had a track record of being a pretty shitty person to be around.
During the trial, people were throwing shit at each other, some spouting that he's an evil man who just wanted to shoot black people, some praising him and building shrines of them for fucking up those rioters and teaching them a lesson and fighting against the leftist communist takeover. It became such a big thing that people literally had physical fights over it at some local schools and started groups that would fuck each other up because they didn't agree on the trial. So little people stepped back and thought, "huh, I may not agree with this person or this trial but I won't let it affect my life or make me destroy friendships because of it." People go ape shit over shit that doesn't affect them in any way and then try to force their opinions down the throats of people who are affected by the aforementioned shit and saying the people unwillingly deepthroating other's opinions are wrong.
Alongside the polarization, there's the issue of almost everyone generalizing everything. Take this one reddit post where some woman was struggling with getting food and out of all places, went to Craigslist asking for a handout and got disugsted at men offering to pay for her groceries in exchange for sexual favors and then somehow came to the conclusion that all men are shit.
Woman, you went to a site where people literally prostitute themselves out/look for prostitutes and got disgusted that someone offered to pay you for sexual favors when you were asking for free money? And then you turn around saying that all men bad because of one dude who wanted a blowjob in exchange for giving you money.
It's not just this one specific thing, it's also a very prominent issue with anything firearm related. People spout misinformation and throw shit at each other if there is even the slightest disagreement. "I want a full on ban on guns and the hanging of any gun owners. You want to highly regulate them under a license obtained by taking a safety course because it's unconstitutional to completely ban firearms? You fucking school shooting pedophile." "I want to completely deregulate all guns and have it so anyone can buy them anywhere without any hassle other than paying. You want to have universal background checks on anyone who buys a gun and safe storage laws but modify the NFA to remove suppressors and SBRs and SBSs and to repeal the Hughs amendment? You fucking libtard communist." There's no compromise, it's all or nothing for both sides. People generalize the 'others' and bash on them leading to more shit being thrown around. You're either a gun loving school shooter or a transgender communist libtard hippie. They just take the worst of both sides and think everyone with slightly similar opinions/beliefs are exactly the same.
It's gotten to the point I literally have had to defend my fucking biological sex because some people just can't accept all biological males aren't violent pedophile rapists. I've even had to fucking defend women as well because some men just can't accept that some women actually have hobbies and interests as well rather than just being a hard to get sex toy to be used and disposed of. It's all really fucked up and the fact that this kind of generalization is becoming more and more common makes it hard to even communicate with people since many times if they hear an opposing opinion, they just shout insults back and don't listen.
I've met quite a few people who have vastly diferent completely opposite opinions/beliefs than me but they were willing to actually discus why they believed that and why they don't believe what I believe. They're now some of my closer friends and give me some hope that there's a solution for this issue of polarization and generalization. One of them is a hardcore christian creationist and one is a literal full blown anarcho-syndicalist yet we get along since we're able to disagree without going full monke and throwing shit at each other.
In my paper I had to write about polarization for my sociology class, I remember stumbling upon an MIT study on finding a solution to this issue and they proposed pretty much exposing people to people of opposing opinions in real life and having them actually try to hang out. If the person isn't already too far gone extreme, they actually work it out and become less polarized in their views. People that are too extreme in their views usually don't budge in their views and it sometimes actually reinforces their views. Thankfully, most people aren't too far gone yet and can be depolarized via this method.
Thank you for reading my TED talk and please don't go full monke in converstations and please at least do a small fact check before readying your keyboard and no Barbera, Facebook is not fact checking.
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Contacts:
Matrix ( @mikhail:licas.dev:8448 )