On so many different news items, threads, etc. People are the first to claim pretty much anyone who has made a mistake, or does something they disagree with deserves to die.
Like, do some people not have the capability to empathise and realise they might have been in a similar place if they were born in a different environment…
I genuinely understand, you think a politician who has lead to countless deaths, a war criminal, or a mass rapists deserves to die.
But here people say it for stuff that falls way below the bar.
A contracted logger of a rainforest (who knows if they have the money / opportunity to support their family another way). Deserves to die.
A civilian of Nazi germany of whom we know nothing about their collaboration/agreement with the regime. Deserves to die.
Some person who was a drug dealer and then served their time. Deserves to die.
Like I don’t get it? Are people not able to imagine the kind of situations that create these people, and that it’s not impossible to imagine the large majority of people in these positions if born in a different environment?
Because it’s a bit of an echo chamber and people get too involved in stuff with anonymity. You will find this sort of social behaviour all over the internet and from any “camp”. It’s just bad people.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
-Gandalf the Grey / J R R Tolkein
Tolkien ftfy
This is a great quote and one I often remember, but I would also add this:
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death or to let live in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Live and let live works, but only if the other also does so. When one does not allow you to live as you want, because what they do harms you, then that ends there.
It’s the result of the “bombastic” mix of false dichotomy, assumptions, and social media dynamics.
False dichotomy prevents you from noticing nuances, complexities, third sides, or gradations. Under a false dichotomy, there’s no such thing as “Alice and Bob are bad, but Alice is worse than Bob”; no, either they’re equally bad (thus both deserve to die), or one of them is good.
In the meantime, assumptions prevent you from handling uncertainties, as the person “fills the blanks” of the missing info with whatever crap supports their conclusion. For example you don’t know if Bob kills puppies or not, but you do know that he jaywalks, right? So you assume that he kills puppies too, thus deserving death.
I’m from the firm belief that people who consistent and egregiously engage in discourse showing both things are muppets causing harm to society, and deserve to be treated as such. (Note: “consistent and egregiously” are key words here. A brainfart or two is fine, as long as there’s at least the attempt of handling additional bits of info and/or complexity.)
Then there are the social media dynamics. I feel like a lot of users here already addressed them really well, but to keep it short: social media gives undue exposure to idiots doing the above due to anonymity, detachment from the situation, self-reinforcing loops (“circlejerks”), so goes on.
“AOC slams Trump.”
They may as well be writing articles that say:
“Trump fucking body slams Biden.”
The rhetorical devices are out of control.
True that. And you reminded me a tidbit of human nature, that interferes in this situation:
If you mince words to make something look stronger, weaker, better, worse than it is, plenty people fall for it. Because they care too much about how something is said (the words) and too little about what is being said (the discourse).
What’s really crazy to me is that it’s not impossible to use a rhetorical device but still have it be rooted in reality. Like you can say “AOC doles out biting critique to GOP leadership” or something and it still allows the use of “biting” but is still living in the reality of that referring to a critique she made with words and ideas.
Possible? Yes. Desirable? No; at least, not for most news sources - the extreme sells better than the simply informative, and often this lack of precision is how they manipulate your views towards a certain subject.
I prefer “Trump fellates any and all authoritarian Heads of State. Emphasis on “head.””
That’s because you’re a textbook example of the infantile minds infecting areas where actual discourse has a chance to happen.
We’ve been transitioning from a dignity culture to a victimhood/outrage culture for most of my adult life. The relevant one here is the outrage culture, where people are trying their damnedest to be the most outraged. Nothing shows that you are more are outraged by something than suggesting that someone should die for being in disagreement with you.
Honestly pretty frickin relevant
I’ve seen this one before, but the alt text had me in a (silent) laughing fit anyways.
As someone older than the public internet, these people and positions always existed. The difference in my opinion is that the 24-hour news cycle and online echo chambers combined with less in-person meeting, particularly with others in the community different to oneself has just further isolated and polarized people. There’s also an argument that heavily-biased cable “news” (which is oftentimes more “opinions” and sometimes “outright lies”) going unchecked has further polarized and divided people.
I’ve found that people on the internet generally have low empathy. If it’s not animal or child abuse, the responses are all over the place.
That’s because people are insane and unhinged, and love whipping themselves up into frenzies.
Tbh, they probably deserve to die.
Why are you so quick to say that?
The internet is just a bunch of grown-ups and children arguing “as equals”.
I’ve once read somewhere that the human brain is only REALLY able to include about 100 people at any time in the list of “people one truly cares about”, that we are neurologically unprepared for the level of exposure to other people and their problems that we get nowadays.
But I never bothered checking the veracity of that statement. It might be complete bullshit. A lot of stuff online is. Either way it’s irrelevant because if it IS indeed a problem, then “overexposure to someone else’s problems” is a concept at least as old as the printing press. What the internet adds to the mix is… Well…
… It’s far easier to act like a psychotic jerk to someone that exists as a few paragraphs of glowy text on a slab of silicon and glass. You aren’t forced to look another human being in the eye while you talk about all the horrid shit you wish upon them.
Remembering from my social psychology classes in undergrad, I believe number is 150. But yes, that’s a good point. It’s one of the reasons people in major urban areas like NYC are capable of moving on with their lives when terrible things happen to those around them. We biologically can’t care about people once we reach our 150 limit. Btw, I think the authors of that theory argued that that number is one of the major differences between us and other social species.
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It’s a lot easier to feel like you’re not involved when you’re behind a screen hundreds of miles away.
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A lot of perceived suffering in this world can make a person feel as though a lot of people do on fact deserve to die.
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Most people are led by emotions rather than cold and analytical reasoning. I believe everyone has the capability to think objectively but that capability gets clouded when ever they’re taken capture by strong emotions. That’s why they can reasonably consider an abstract but difficult trolley problem but then lose their minds when Elon says something stupid on Twitter.
I want to believe that the majority of people around me would infact not want to cast death sentences haphazardly like that but rather they’re just expressing how they feel. It’s a way to signal to the group. “Elon is a nazi and deserves to die” roughly tanslates to “boo Elon”
He who is without sin can cast the first stone.
I think you are right. I wanted to add that often times people will have a strong sense of justice or revenge and want to see something bad happen to a person who did bad things.
Other times when people call for someone’s death, it’s because they don’t believe that there is any other way to stop the harm that person is causing. This tends to be the case when political figures start violating the civil and human rights of their constituents.
They are children, or act like them.
Jumping to absolutes is generally the wrong move.
Why do conservatives believe gay, trans, black, brown, Liberals, and the disabled deserve to die?
Whydo conservatives believe gay, trans, black, brown, Liberals, and the disabled deserve to die?Yes, yes they do. Just watch Fox or peruse any Right Wing website.
Fuck Putin, by the way.
Fuck Putin, by the way.
Captain, we’re being scanned!
Did that sound funny in your head? Anyway, you do you.
Tankie or not, i giggled
yeah
Trump literally said “disabled people should just die”
It sounds like you were on the end of the chain in a game of telephone.
When Fred Trump III asked his uncle Donald Trump for money to help with his disabled son’s medical care, he says the former U.S. president suggested letting the young man die instead.
I could see how politicized media could morph that into “disabled people should just die” for clicks, though.
Because people use hyperbole and aren’t always serious. How many times have you said “I’m gonna kill you”?
Unfortunately the examples here are serious. In that I end up arguing with the person and they defend their point that the person should die/be killed.
Yikes.
How many times have you said that to a complete stranger? People generally use hyperbole with people who understand the hyperbole - the more extreme the hyperbole the more you need to trust the person would understand it. It’s the social contract
Never. I’d personally be afraid someone might take that seriously.
Though maybe that one’s cultural and said more casually where you’re from. I’ve heard it in TV shows, I guess.
