Found on Reddit: how extremism breeds extremism

"Wheelerguy" (wheelerguy) 04/17/2019 at 12:45 • Filed to: Found on Reddit, Extremism, Musings, Super GT

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But first: watch some racing, will ya?

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There’s another step here with reform movements that I think is becoming even more prevalent with the rise of social media. I’ll preface this by saying that likely this phenomena has existed for as long as humans have existed, but with everyone having a “voice” and a platform to air their uneducated opinions to the world, it’s just getting that much worse.

Extremism breeds extremism.

OP actually laid out the progression quite beautifully. You get a reasonable person who wants to do right by people and do their best to make sure everyone else is happy and healthy. Then they’re told their wrong about something and to correct themselves. So they try to. But then they’re still wrong and now there’s another step to follow. But as they keep getting pushed and pushed to constantly “fix” their “problem”, they start to realize there isn’t a fix. Perhaps there was never even a problem . There is no way to satisfy the people who are constantly getting on their case, or so it seems, so they reject the stance that has been pushed upon them.

Which is how we get to this point:

“ I hate it all so much. I hate every last one of them. I hate them, hate them, hate them.”

“ Sorry, but I’m officially a “terf .”

Where OP goes from here is up to her, but we’ve essentially seen the potential birth of an extreme viewpoint. This is an important process to understand , especially because we are seeing it so much more nowadays. Often, these people begin to turn to established groups with genuinely malevolent intentions that are run by actually bad people.

For example:

White people who don’t want to feel bad about being white turning to white nationalism and hate as a defense mechanism.

Men who think they should be given equal parental rights turning to misogyny.

Feminists who want equal rights and pay for women becoming more extreme because of the pushback they receive from society.

Conservatives and progressives becoming more and more caught up in hating one another because they are becoming less able to understand and interact with each other and are more prone to extreme remarks about the other group. So they grow to hate the other side.

It’s important to clarify here that we can apply this to not just reasonable people - we can say this about all people.

Edit: Though the progression, I’d argue, is a little different in some cases, as outlined below.

So the nutjob holed up in his room with a fuckload of guns only ever sees the vitriolic opinions espoused on his favorite internet forum about how blacks and Muslims are subhuman, so he’s eventually radicalized enough to go out and kill a bunch of them. The Muslim boy in the Middle East who sees his friends and family beaten, raped and killed by US soldiers grows up to join terrorist cells. And so on it goes.

I’m not interested in providing advice about what to do about this or in providing some sort of crystallization of this circumstance here. In some sense, some ideas need radical pushback. We cannot give equal platform to every bad idea out there. However, I also do not know if we can trust people anymore with making the determination of what is “right”, because we are very clearly losing our ability to understand opposing viewpoints... assuming we have ever had it to start with.

But hey the ice caps are melting so we’re dead in fifty years anyway. So what’s it matter?

For Sweden > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 12:57

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Reddit was a mistake

My bird IS the word > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 12:59

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It’s all about threatening your way of life. You can’t really change people (nor will I argue that you should) but people don’t want to become different people. By attacking race, sexuality, social status, finances, you are essentially threatening to destroy people. It is the antithesis of a truely liberal society. I read a really good article on the subject that I can’t find now, but basically neither the democrats nor the republicans are pushing for a free society, they are only pushing for the rights of their voters.

Wheelerguy > For Sweden 04/17/2019 at 13:02

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Facebook was an even bigger mistake. At least Reddit has motorsport forums like r/formula1, r/wec, r/motogp and r/rally, the greatest of their kind.

For Sweden > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 13:04

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The only Reddit forum that might be work saving is meow_irl

Mini Guy- Now has a 4Runner > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 13:07

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you’re forgetting r/weccirclejerk

i86hotdogs > For Sweden 04/17/2019 at 13:14

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dont forget the weekly dosage of r/justrolledintotheshop

DipodomysDeserti > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 13:20

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I think the issue is that we have a whole generation of people who have no interpersonal relationships, because they spend all day on the internet. This breeds extremely antisocial behavior.

In the past, extremely antisocial people couldn’t really participate in society until they dealt with the issues causing them to be antisocial. Now, because of the internet, they can. So we now have extremely antisocial people actively participating in society. Extremely a ntisocial people aren’t very good at being empathetic to other people’s point of view, and thus tend to hold extreme views. So now we have a bunch of Travis Bickle’s running around.

There’s quite a bit of literature discussing why people turn to terrorism that deals with this same theme. When people become disenfranchised from society, they tend to become more extreme in their beliefs.

VajazzleMcDildertits - read carefully, respond politely > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 13:21

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I try not to be hugely political online. I make a few points here and there but I have found people don’t wanna really argue or learn, they just want to say their piece and mic drop... a behaviour that I kind of find detestable when the context is literally sharing info and understanding one another. Instead we typically see an online environment where one person talks over the other person louder and louder until one of them is downvoted in the realm’s context of popularity.

But this shit is pretty salient, the way that one progresses into a mental state where they are going to be more receptive to an opinion that might hurt others. How they get there. Who else affects them.

People say the internet was a mistake, but it was only a mistake because OUR mistakes are way amplified on it. We shouldn’t blame our tools for shedding light on our own shitty behaviours, of which humans have a FUCK TON.

It’s us. We’re the problem. All of us. And the more emotionally defensive that you get about your personal role in it, the more I’m betting you’re unaware of how bad it’s going. I mean, you can’t bring logic to a gun fight, but if we want anything even close to fact in a post-truth age, we need to set our personal convictions aside. We need to generate the demand for objectivity. If, you know, we don’t all die in 50 years. 

Disclaimer: I don’t mean YOU you, don’t take it personally, but everybody knows at least one. And we, ourselves, should not be exempt from the process, regardless of how private we want to be online.

Mercedes Streeter > Wheelerguy 04/17/2019 at 13:54

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And that thread ruined my day...The OP clarified that they’re not actually a TERF and they wrote the post to vent bottled up emotions. I’m fine with that.

But gosh, those comments really brought out the transphobes in Reddit.

The trans community actually has quite a bit of infighting. Everyone seems to have different demands, expectations, terminology, and reasoning for everything. We then expect our cis allies to just get it.

That bit about pre-op transwomen demanding lesbians to sleep with them isn’t a myth...I’ve personally seen that argument made a few times by trans people. I absolutely do not support that notion that it’s transphobia for a lesbian not to be interested in a pre-op transwoman.

When it seems our own community can’t make its mind, I legit can see how an ally can be turned into an enemy.  

VajazzleMcDildertits - read carefully, respond politely > Mercedes Streeter 04/17/2019 at 13:58

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I’m just your average selfish CISmale, but the extremely vicious arguments inside and outside the LBGTQ community pain me on several levels.

VajazzleMcDildertits - read carefully, respond politely > i86hotdogs 04/17/2019 at 14:23

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That place is good reddit.

nFamousCJ - Keeper of Stringbean, Gengars and a Deezul > For Sweden 04/17/2019 at 17:19

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The key to enjoyable Reddit is super tailoring your sub list. For example, r/aww, r/wtf, r/awwwtf, [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], r/nononoyes, r/yesyesyesno 

speeddemon807 > Wheelerguy 04/18/2019 at 20:50

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Keyboard warriors.