zekinler

[zekinler]

Extremism

Extremism is the death of community.

The want and need for yourself and others to be on the “right” side of things almost always causes polarization. You feed into the othering of people you don't agree with, and you start hating people you've just met over small things.  Polarization will create rifts in otherwise close communities for the smallest of grievances.  Some people will genuinely believe that people who disagree on a issue with them, disagree with their identity. They'll see people who agree with them but don't hate the ones who disagree, as just as bad, and they'll either hate them or too, or convince them to hate the ones they disagree with.

People outside of the heated debate that might agree with both sides, have their own opinion, don’t care about the argument, or just want the argument to stop, are the worst to the extremists. They aren't on one of their sides and therefor aren't contributing anything to this "very productive" conversation.

It’s in these arguments that free-thinking dies. Why think for yourself, why go through the trouble of seeing or researching what actually happened and coming to your own conclusions from that, when you can just trust the person who is saying what this other person said about what this other person said about this other person’s exaggeration of this other person’s association with this other person’s comment about one of this other person’s beliefs…  Why go through the effort of making your own food, when you have this person’s regurgitation of this person’s leftovers of this person’s screwed-up version of this person’s gourmet dinner.

Nowhere is this more obvious, than on Twitter/X.  With how easy it is to have Twitter users believe whatever propaganda you want – and I do mean propaganda – someone in bad faith could make up an army more powerful than the world has ever seen.  That's hyperbole, but in a more real example, their collective power to do what’s “right” can topple a person’s reputation and mental health in a matter of moments if they so choose. If there’s little to no one in that person’s corner backing them up, they will fall.  Sometimes Twitter's actions and their consequences could be net-positive, maybe, but more often than not, it is down-right evil what they do to people.

Polarization has gotten to the point that people can spew endless hate and wish death upon a person who made a passing comment, positive or neutral, about someone who associates with someone else who people are mad about saying something that they didn’t even say, and they'll feel good about it.  They can feel like they’re doing the right thing, by telling this person to end their life, because of something they didn’t say, believe, or do, because they were vaguely associated with someone else who also didn’t say, believe, or do anything wrong.

It does not stop at the present either.  People will stalk you and your family and friends and they’ll dig into your years-old past to bring “evidence” against you, like it’s a vigilante court where they’re judge, jury, and executioner.

People love being right to others, people love being mean to others, and people don’t love others.  Others aren’t them or the people that they actually know and care about.  They’re strangers and they don't matter.  Nothing about them matters, the only thing that matters is that they disagree, and that they should be hanged for their transgressions.

Love, acceptance, and understanding is cool and all, but this person said something I didn’t like.

We can disagree without hating each other. People tend to agree that that is possible.  But, we agree to disagree and we agree to hate each other for it. We shouldn’t, but we do.

At the end of the day when someone's ideals are threatened, many are short to understand. They will defend, they will attack, they will rip each other to pieces.  Because I’m right, you’re wrong, and there’s no middle ground in between that.

I hate extremism, extremely. Thanks for reading.

#argument #debate #internet #polarization