Dude I'm legit considering deleting tiktok lately bc the takes are so so bad. I feel genuinely worried about the direction we as a society are walking towards and it's just so insane to watch it.
Like legit the way people talk about privilege on that app is insane. It feels like they've attached such a morality to privilege that it works like fucking badges. Like I'm underprivileged and therefore good and you're privileged therefore bad. And don't get me wrong, privilege should be acknowledge but human beings don't function under such binary ways. Saw someone making a tiktok grieving tuntakmon, a fucking kid, then being roasted by it bc they were grieving a "cishet privileged male" and the person then defended themselves by listing all the ways he was underprivileged. Like collecting minority points. It's insane. It such a dehumanizing way to look at humanity. And it's awful to talk about it bc I've always been down with the left and social justice and progressivness but it seems it has gone to such an extreme you've just walked a circle and ended on the same place you were trying to get away from. The way they navigate life demanding a sense of shame and ppl to be apologetic bc they are not morally clean enough or have privileges without recognizing that fucking everyone has privilege, one or the other, and yes it should be discussed but the goal shouldn't be hating on someone that has enough money to pay for a top surgery and "calling them ou on their privlege" but looking at the system that birthed that situation. Like I'm sick to my stomach with so much that I see there.
Saw someone saying that if you don't cut your friends after they cheat on their SO you're a bad person and everyone saying "if they betray the person they love imagine what would they do you?" Which for one by God the way society goes about putting romantic love above any other relationship is heartbreaking, the way that they assume someone ought to love their romantic love so much more than you, their friend, that imagine what they would do to you, whom they barely love at all in comparison. But mostly, can you imagine if your friend is like "hey dude I fucked up I cheated" and you're like "that's it. We are done"? The idea that people are nuanced and have motives for what they do is non existent. And it's not like I support cheaters but that was such a "hot take" and everyone was jumping on board and I'm just like "so you guys are just.. bad friend huh?"
And here's the thing: I do think we should strive to be better morally but not like this. God, not like this. And I get cutting people off if they do something you can't morally agree with it, but if it's someone you love, a friend, and you don't even given them the chance to explain themselves, do not even try to understand them, then that's fucked up. But here's the whole thing with this extreme extreme political correctness that is going around and where it makes me so very angry: it's not about others. It's not about trying to understand others or to grow as a society or to make things better to those who suffer under systematic oppression or any of this shit. Is just about complaining about things that don't matter, and being a good person in the most performative shallow way ever, the kind that has no regards for humanity and whose understanding of it lacks deeply because it refuses to look at humanity in its complexity instead of clear divisive lines.
And you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that so very hard. It pains me so much to see it. The way art had been suffering under this movement hurts me deeply. The way this movement actually promotes segregation and divisiness over anything else. The way that this movement reduces ppl to labels again and again hurts me. It's just disheartening. It's the same feeling I had and have towards culture appropriation: a movement that came to stop ppl disrespecting different cultures became a movement that divides and claims possession over things that were always meant to be shared. Culture is meant to be shared. To be learned. To be absorbed and reinvented again and again. That's the fucking pointtt
I'm angry and I'm frustrated. This search for a squick clean person will never be achieved. Humans will always be wrong and will always fucked up. Morality does not exist in a binary system, it is so very nuanced. You will never love someone if you can only love them when they are never fucking wrong. They will be wrong. No one has a perfect moral system. No one does. Plus If we continue this way, separating our culture into little boxes and giving them to whoever claimed it was theirs first, what will our future art look like? Our future food? Our future ideas? Inventions? When did humanity went from being a collaborative effort to being segregated groups taking claim over something that shall then never be enjoyed by anyone else?
This is a super long rant but I'm so very angry and came into your blog to dish it out bc I think maybe you can share the frustration with me
Also just saw someone saying that adopting is bad because it traumatizes the kid who had a biological bond with theit mother and if you adopt you're taking a child without their consent so I guess let kids die on the street then?
raising a glass to all of this and genuinely get what you mean here anon, I frequently honest to god feel like I'm going crazy because this kind of attitude is so interwoven with how people respond and interact to things now, and it's so widely accepted and even expected, that I often wonder what the fuck is in the water. I remember feeling shades of this way back in 2012 when this kind of attitude started on Tumblr and people started getting called out for every little thing, and since then I've watched it grow to such epic and unhinged proportions that it honestly horrifies me. I think that TikTok -- and the overarching attitudes that it's a perfect microcosm of -- have done irreversible damage to society, in multiple different areas. I would encourage absolutely everyone to delete that app, and also to severely limit their time on websites like Twitter and Tumblr. it is genuinely harmful to be exposed to this shit for too long; it quite literally rots your brain.
I'm a person with incredibly solid morals and I am not afraid to go against the party line, I will not be guilted or pressured or shamed into any attitudes or opinions that I don't have, and I consider myself to be completely separate from these attitudes, having never vibed with it even when it was new and still, on the surface at least, reasonable. even so, I have seen my own attitude towards things take a hit from being exposed to the garbage I see on Tumblr alone. the more time I spent on social media, the more aggressive and uncharitable I was, and the more suspicious I was of other people's motives for saying or believing things. it went against everything I know about myself, and it was honestly disturbing to see this kind of erosion of my own ability to think critically and weigh up arguments. I cut down my time on social media drastically, and spent time doing other things (mostly reading a lot of books!) and the difference is night and day. time slows down, there's room to think, you can make your own opinions in your own time without pressure and shaming from warring sides, you get to learn things and make mistakes and correct attitudes without being cancelled or whatever... like damn, nobody should have to go through the natural process of learning and growing in a panopticon where they'll only be remembered as their worst self. I feel desperately sorry for young people growing up in this environment, because it's honestly abusive; nobody has anyone's best interests at heart, they just want gotchas and moral righteousness over any genuine growth and progress.
the problem is that there's no nuance anymore. people honestly seem to believe that the world can be put into strict black-and-white, binary terms. nobody with privilege can suffer, and the less privilege you have, the more ideologically pure you are. this creates so many problems because it's bullshit. suffering does not discriminate, and nor does being a jerk. all of this incredible line-drawing is quite literally recreating segregation: we must all stick to our own "kind" and not doing so is cultural appropriation or being a race traitor, or otherwise "betraying" your community. it's also creating insanely condescending and patronising attitudes, and reinforcing harmful ideas -- I have seen people saying, completely seriously, things like "all womanhood is nothing but suffering," "we should hold Native writers to lower standards than white ones because Native storytelling can't be expected to be as good," "rich people can't be mentally ill/suffer abusive parents," "women can't do loads of stuff because it's too frightening and they're too emotionally volatile to do it," "people should primarily stick only to their own race/interracial relationships are cultural appropriation/inappropriate"... these people do not hear themselves literally taking giant leaps backwards. in the race to deify lack of privilege they are making any meaningful progress impossible. the world cannot fit into simple rules to ensure that morality is easy. the more simple you try to make it, the more deranged it's going to be in practise.
literally everything to do with society has been damaged by this attitude in some way, and said attitude is only becoming more accepted. everyone is in too deep to realise the harm they're doing, led by the outspoken minority who have never been in it for anything other than power and self-righteousness. I have long said that this online brand of leftism is a cult; it has all the hallmarks, and all the issues and criticisms of organised religion apply here. replace the concept of sin with the concept of privilege, and replace the concept of heaven with the concept of ideological perfection, and there you have it. absolutely no difference from the theory right down to the hypocritical way the people who are supposed to benefit the most are treated. this attitude is dragging us rapidly backwards in progress, and the people who practise it are just as brainwashed and idiotic as the thickest Qanon cultist.
thankfully there is a very easy cure. delete that shit, log off, and read widely. these attitudes thrive because they are so prevalent and aggressive that people are bullied or shamed into going along with it; they have no recourse and no way to speak up because they'll be shouted down. this is how the attitude thrives and spreads. separate yourself from it, do your thing, and while you'll never be able to change the minds of the people genuinely committed to this stuff (as at this point it is straight up delusional behaviour) you will be able to prove an alternative for the thousands of people out there who know it's bullshit but don't know where to begin untangling themselves.
for the record, a very, very good place to start is deleting TikTok.
amandla
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