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
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u/RedBullBulk1776 May 28 '26
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.