Nothing particularly insightful, but… It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that this phenom is becoming more common…
Like, I’ve had some really bad stuff happen this week, because I let the wrong person into my life (again), but beyond that… Even just “going out into the world” can be so fucking hostile, it’s really no surprise people retreat like that…
“Social dysfunction” isn’t as obvious where I am as it might be elsewhere. Certainly, you don’t really see it, but have a conversation with the wrong person, or even just sit and observe long enough, and it becomes readily apparent that we’ve become a wider society of petty hostility and just general… Unpleasantness.
Places like NYC, Sydney and arguably Tokyo were always like this, but it’s largely “leaked” far beyond that now. Everyone feels like they’re out to get each other, or at each other’s throats, and that if you don’t play along with the odd beliefs of the person you are talking to? They might just decide to do something really nasty…
A 95-year old with dementia was tasered to death in a nursing home in Sydney a week ago (“She was carrying a knife!”). Just yesterday, a huge fire engulfed a massive historic building in Sydney, and no one put it out, until it was a raging inferno enough to destroy the entire thing (the circumstances of all that are very weird)…
Then there has been escalating brawls and attacks on police in several QLD cities this week.
It all feels… Increasingly hostile. And this is in Australia… “Commie shithole” aside, some of these things are quite unheard of…
So… Filtering this down into “ordinary interactions”, where people have become so hypersensitive and hostile about every disagreement, every little thing… It’s no wonder, honestly, that some young men have decided “Fuck this, why the fuck should I even bother anymore?”
I know I feel that way about “friendship” at this point, so for me, that’s pretty damn understandable…
Just my 10c.
From an American perspective, the challenge has become that there’s no tolerance anymore. Unfortunately I have a lot of liberal friends and it’s an exhausting experience because I know the moment let slip my more conservative viewpoints I’ll be excoriated for it. They were scandalized when I said I couldn’t go to a bar with them because I don’t have proof of vaccination (because I’m not vaccinated). “Why not?” “I didn’t know you’re a reTrumpican!” It took a lot of effort on my part to not call them a bunch of retards and end the relationships right there. Pretty sure there would have been a time when they would’ve responded with the same dispassion as learning I’m behind on tetanus shots. So yeah, people just aren’t worth the effort. It used to be a sign of weakness to not be friends with people who weren’t just like you, but now it’s a matter of survival.
I had that (vaxx thing), once, at an extended family dinner…
I posted about it at the time.
My uncle’s “girlfriend”…
Went full off at me, too. For like half an hour. To the point where I thought she might do something violent. In front of everyone…
I’ve barely spoken to her since, despite running into her multiple times. And it fundamentally altered my (already tense) relationship with my uncle, too…
So yeah.
Then again, my family also treats being unemployed as like a drug addiction or a disease (lol), so…
Anyway, I feel ya, man.
What's both sad and funny for me is how this is like a "take 2" of what I already had to endure when I was growing up with overly religious conservatives, and me being ex-religious. Only now it's the inverse extreme.
Bleh. I'm so bloody sick of all the mindless sheep in this world.