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I've noticed a very notable dropoff. As you said, people are angrier, but more-so I've noticed that far fewer people are willing/able to be open and empathetic, especially towards others. It feels like all that's left is surface-level talk and shared activities, with no real care or consideration for those you're with. For example, within my own circles, the things we used to do to mutually support one another have almost entirely stopped, and as no one discusses anything deeper than what they did today, connections are starting to die off.
personally, I've been bitten too many times being open to random people and getting vitriol back. Well that may be because at the height of my online activities were in reddit, just at the right moment when it started gaining mass traction and getting all sorts of assholes.
being here in lemmy/piefed (can we settle on calling it threadiverse yet?) is of course a nice breath of fresh air.
Agreed. I feel like the definition of what empathy is also changed. Most people seem to use the term in a very adversarial way now, and not, as you said, in the sense of mutual exchange.
I definitely miss that sense of exchanging things, especially without expectation. Now it feels everyone is in a kind of empathy stand-off, or has all these 'requirements' you have to pass before you're worthy of their regard as a fellow human being.
Very curious about the requirements you've encountered.
mostly political and identity stuff. you have to have a degree from a fancy school, have read certain books or be in therapy, and have voted democrat only. sometimes it also requires your parents to have been educated/liberal as well.
because we all know if you don't go to a fancy college, read Toni Morrison, and only ever have voted for democrats your entire life, you're not a real human being or something.
my folks didn't go to college and were republican. Had many a person in my life recently lecture me how this makes me a monster and i should disown them entirely. then I say they are dead, and they go 'good riddance'. and I realize they are the awful person.
i can't think of anything more disgusting than hating on someone for their parents choices. It's so fucking weird.
I'm just trying to sort how all of this happens so blatantly at once.
To be completely clear I live in a deeply progressive part of the country and am surrounded by every stereotype of the bottom left quadrant. I know there's a cliche of 'doing the reading' but I've never felt pressured by my education. I'm a college dropout and I kind of low key refuse to read theory out of a mild obstinance but that hasn't been a barrier, def. Unsusre where to go to find those people.
My parents went to college in varying degrees and they were/are neoliberal conervatives. My Dad confessed some sex crimes to me from when 'it was different in those days' so yeah good riddance to him for that and a few other things but my Mom is a deeply toxic person, so I do gravitate towards the no contact crowd to commisserate. Genuinely though I do think that politics do reflect a personality to a certain degree so I'm not sure what to say there. Everyone from my parent's generation were all about 'never talking politics' and I think it's an admission that you probably would hunt the homeless for sport if it was legal and you don't know how to not get baited in a conversation into admitting it. Keep in mind everyone from that generation voted for Reagan and that's a huge ding any day.
I do think you're abbreviating details here probably for good reason, but if the only people you meet are like this it's time for a new bar. Or you're maybe very young in a relative sense as it takes some time to temper the edges of this kind of purity politics. That and I think guilt by association is valid only if you are trying to be deeply guarded about something and that kind of defensiveness does get overblown in circles built on performativity.
Best example of an extreme I'd personally encountered and had to deal with for friend circle issues is a guy we hung out with for a while who was socially awkward, for sure, but I wanted to try giving him the benefit of a doubt. Dude even admitted to being a transphobe but 'was just asking questions' so I thought maybe there was a path to tolerance and change there. Sure enough though after a couple months all he did was creep out the women in the group and be really insistent that everyone should start playing Smash Bros at every hangout(an unfortunate red flag admittedly), and when I asked him how he thought he was coming off he went off the rails and started talking about how everyone had impossible standards and our trans friends were delusional, so later dude.
I say all of this to at least try to put the defensiveness you might run into in a sympathetic light. I imagine these people have run into some real creepos and if they get any sniff of it they shut down.
oh, dude people just assume I'm transphobic because I'm a white guy with visible muscles and short hair. I've literally been accosted on the street for voting for Trump too. Of course, neither of these things is true, but it doesn't stop 'woke' people from assuming it solely based on how I look. Because you know, they take once glance at you and they KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE.
I live in Boston, plenty of horrible people here who think their leftist values gives them free reign to be bigoted assholes to everyone they don't like the look of or who isn't as 'educated' as they think they are. My neighbors call the cops on black people using the park across the street, despite having black lives matter signs on their laws. They never call the cops when it's white or asian people having an event in the park... funny.
It's peak leftist hypocrisy in this town. It's all recent too, none of this crazy shit happened before Covid and Trump. I've lived here for 20 years and the weird 'tests' people demand of you is only very recent.
But I'm not responsible for other people being crazy bigoted nutters. I'm not going up to strangers and screaming at them about who they voted for, nor am I requiring folks have read certain books for me to converse with them.
Yeah that just sounds wild to me. I can see how you would justify disparagement for hypocrisy here. That being said if you're using 'woke' as a strictly 'other' term I would reflect on that.
I used to live in Texas where people were pretty forthrightly awful. Or there was a lot of 'bigotry of low expectations' going on that I realized I fell into for quite a while after I came to my current blue haven. I don't think anyone here calls the cops on black people in public spaces but I do think some of that is probably a bit of co-policing on that end too
Assuming everything at face value I feel like Boston is pretty insufferable. I don't actually know that much so I can't comment directly but I would still recommend getting out of the space for some perspective. Good chance you either go somewhere where people are openly shitbags and find out how much tolerance makes a difference even if people are overstepping in their social justice warrioring, or you find a place that's had a chance to cool off and think about it for a mo.
But yeah, white liberalism is everywhere and super annoying in all places. Just keep looking until somewhere meets your speed.