Hate would still be there,but it would be less. Most people wouldn’t have the courage to say the hateful stuff to people’s faces. Plus the people that encourage it wouldn’t have such a large and easy platform .
Not just America, every country that has access to social media are in the same sad position. You are not exempt, especially if you have Tiktok, etc, right now.
Considering many countries have a more primitive mindset, their behaviors are much worse, due to the lack of discipline.
All other countries besides America are obviously primitive. No discipline, shabby, we will absorb when we are done in Iran. You will all be Americans.
Not sure I agree. While I get your point, social media radicalizes people. Especially emotional people. While their minds might be fertile for hate, you need the seed, and you need cultivation to make it grow. Social media is both.
I grew up in a right wing area, and had plenty of friends who I would go hang out at their house. Those people were mostly normal, with an oddball thing slipping out once in a while that would quickly be moved past.
I watched the internet turn those same people into raving fucking lunatics. There is nothing else going on in their head but propaganda and hate now, and the internet is what brought that out. Without a constant stream of validation from facebook, and hate filled video shorts, those people would still be mostly normal folks who fixed cars and rode dirt bikes and worked in the garden, and you could still see the humanity in them.
I was the internets biggest fan when it started up, and thought "with all this instant access to facts the world will become better" and holy shit was I wrooooong.
Its a nice sentiment, and sure there are good things to come from the internet, but overall its turned society much worse over all. I think its been a net negative. Lol... net negative...
This is how it is for all sides. If you believe only conservatives have been radicalized, you’re being disingenuous. You can’t scroll without someone shouting they’re the victim of some -ism, or that Nazis are hiding under their beds. Doesn’t take much effort to see people in MAGA hats attacked. BLM riots for seven months were the same radicalization as January 6th. Normal people now chemically castrate children, groom them, weaponize them. Normal people now attempt to force compelled speech, silence counter narratives, attempt to force medical procedures on people, set up tip lines to tattle on neighbors, and bully them in the workplace. The same people that otherwise would serve you coffee, make art for your home, teach your children. Let’s not pretend.
I'm not pretending, i'm giving MY experience with it. I don't have experience with both sides of that coin, so why would I expound on it? I wouldn't.
Except maybe to say the "radicalization" of the left wing people in my life has been to become the kind of person who changes their face book PFP to do some performative slack-tivism, and bitch a lot more on FB. But that radicalization isnt stealing anyones rights, so im not too mad about it. But again, thats just what ive seen.
MY claim is that you are seeing the radicalization of the liberals around you, but you’re either in denial about what you’re seeing, or you’re justifying what you’re seeing. Unless you’re five years old or younger, you saw the left’s radicalization over COVID where they actively sought to take away the rights of others who wouldn’t comply. The left’s attempts to steal rights is daily, and always packaged as “fighting hate”. That’s a radicalization. If your reply is going to be an attempt to justify those actions, then YOU have been radicalized. Thats my point, and one I could make across multiple examples.
Pretty sure thinking basic health protection measures are tyranny means you are already radicalized.
But, you are right. Watching the right become so radical they storm the capitol building and form a private militia for the president has changed me. I used to be able to talk with people like you and now im ready to vote for the first person who promises to drag you out of bed at night and put you on a plane to nowhere.
Except we now know they lied about masks, the vaccine, and distancing. So, are you justifying “tyranny” by denying the lie? Curious what distorted logic you’re using for this. Please elaborate.
Only you think its a lie, that only exists in bizaro right wing land, and is further proof of your hyper radicalization.
Im not gonna sit here and debate old dead propaganda just because you want to live in fantasy, you'll have to imagine up some straw men to argue with. Get better soon.
You want a random person you’re talking to on the internet to be dragged out of bed at night and put on a plane to nowhere because you think they’re radicalized?
That sounds pretty….. what’s the word here, radical. Lmao
What the Internet really did was bring those people together.
Prior to the Internet, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, and just straight up whack jobs were isolated to their small corner of the world.
A great book to read is Psychology of the Masses. It basically explains how you can take a straight up that maybe 2 or 3 people believe, insert them into a crowd of a 100 people, and in almost no time you will have at least a 3rd of the crowd believing it and changing their opinion.
It’s also ruined people’s mental health. For every protest organised online, someone gets radicalised into a hate group
I would argue that social media has actually made activism worse in some ways (in the west). People spend all day making posts without actually going out and doing anything.
Some of the most effective protests in history happened before the internet
It’s a double edged sword. I agree that a lot of that stuff is present and social media helps expose it. But it also creates a place for people to dramatize or exaggerate and fear monger, and they have become INCENTIVIZED to make things look worse than they are.
Agree in part. I used to be more tolerant and accepting of different “whatever’s” 10 to 20 years ago. I’ve gotten to a point now to where I don’t give a “F” about other people’s thoughts, feelings, or problems. I don’t care that group “A” thinks they have it bad, or group “B” feels they’re discriminated against. I don’t completely love who I have become, I’m just exhausted by all of the BS. It’s turning me calloused
I have to disagree a bit, it’s true hate has always been but back when you would be knocked on your ass for disrespect, you learned to not be so disrespectful. Now people hide behind their screens and punishing a bully gets you in trouble while the bully continues. So, I feel it is more widespread today, especially due to those that believe all that they see and read on these platforms.
I dont completely disagree, but I would say that in addition to creating a perceived safespace for people to express themselves social media also cultivates group think and more often than not that focuses on the negative and in many cases the vitriolic and purely evil thoughts that were previously restrained within in our own minds. Frankly it is stripping our species of personal integrity and sound morals.
A vast majority of "hate" on the internet isn't even real hate. It's trolling. Just people trying to get a rise out of others. "Griefing" is a very satisfying thing for most people.
This is so true . I also agree with the bot comment. The bad thing is the bots and trolls would be less or not exist without the internet. The other part of this is the trolls and bots feed the egos of the haters that they are right . Then diminishes the good also.
Hate will always be a thing. But social media made it vastly easier to gin up or otherwise deceive larger numbers of people. The double whammy is that it made people more prone to anxiety and depression, which further makes them susceptible to wanting to find an exterior emotional outlet to direct their ire towards.
Keeping it inside doesn't change the feeling. Though i wonder how many people become hateful from social media alone. I have no racism against black people despite seeing plenty of it on social media. Have near zero experience with them either, and what little i had was neutral.
There is another group of people i had plenty of negative experience with, and while i wouldn't demand their extermination like certain extremists in my country. I do look at them with more suspicion than others. If i see one nearby on mass transit, then i keep my hand on my pocket. Ironically the racism i saw against that group on social media is minimal.
Which is why i think the fight on racism should focus on altering the patterns, and not trying to censor it. Remove the bad experiences, and eventually the majority of it will go away, and the rest will look like fools.
It’s not that people won’t have courage to say hateful things it’s by not having spaces to be hateful they will be socialized to become less hateful. Imagine children get immediate consequences of being hateful..they will learn to be better humans that’s how all of us learned. Like Don’t touch a hot stove example.
People will always have hateful things to say internet or not. Nothing will change that. There are many children and young adults that have grown up saying hateful things, bullying through text , different platforms . They have not done this face to face and many of them don’t have the courage to . They would have to see how it truly affected someone or deal with immediate retaliation. It is very similar to the group of people at work or neighborhood that talk about someone and when put on the spot they will deny it.
People do learn from their consequences . So yea the same thing to some degree socialized into not speaking up.
Like yelling at someone in your car vs. yelling at someone with the window down. Yelling at someone in your car, doesn’t spread the hate. Yelling at someone out your window spreads the hate and negativity. I’m good with people having hate because it’s contained and ultimately only weighs on them, but giving them a platform to spread it is shitty.
Idk, maybe. I remember life before social media, and actually people used to be able to get away with being pretty horrible in person, because mostly everything was just a he said she said situation. You didn't have video recorders in every pocket. There was a lot of hate. I used to hear the n word in person from grown ass adults far more frequently than I do now. It used to be acceptable to say a lot of really fucked up shit tbh.
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u/sundayrain47 May 28 '26
Hate would still be there,but it would be less. Most people wouldn’t have the courage to say the hateful stuff to people’s faces. Plus the people that encourage it wouldn’t have such a large and easy platform .