this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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Can I ask why you wanted to add the last sentence? You might be right, statistically, but the tone sort of implies that you judge the group rather than the behavior. (apologies if that was the joke).
Personal experience.
From personal experience about 80% of the harassment I recieve is from straight white american males, not kids either, many times they're middle aged. There are some females in the mix, rarely people of colour but there have been a few.
If I were to guess I would imagine it's because women and people of colour also belong to vulnerable communities and run the risk of attracting the wrong type of attention and becoming targets themselves.
Not every white american male is a troll or violent obviously but since 2015 the ones who are continue to become active threats.
Honestly I see them almost as victims themselves. No troll, stalker, mass shooter, etc started out that way. They became radicalized online by getting wrapped up in online activities they were not emotionally nor intellectually equipped to handle.
An example is the Christchurch massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings
He didn't start out as a mass murderer, he was radicalized online in places like 8chan. He even posted on 8chan that they needed to keep an eye on Christchurch because something big was going to happen.
It's not just americans and it's not just white males but so many get caught up in the culture of trolling that there are going to be those who become fundamentally damaged by the continued activity to the point that they take it too far and sometimes that leads to things like mass shootings, or swatting, stalking or other criminal behaviour.
So I am also a straight white American male and the ones I blame for this culture is the old rich white American males. They don't want to lose power so they use their money (Rupert Murdoch as an example) to radicalize those who don't have the education and/or training to tell real from fake. Yes there will always be the "deplorables" as well. But i do feel for those who fall for the bullshit. Doesn't mean they can be allowed to drag everyone else down, but I at least understand how those who might have initially had the best intentions could be radicalized into more extreme mindsets. Propaganda and peer pressure is far more powerful and insidious than a lot of people give it credit.
I imagine you're at least in your 20s and so I've got bad news for you. The younger folks in their teens now are absolutely skewing right in a big way.
Thanks for your response - I think that we agree. My point was just that your post was about being decent, then you randomly dunk on a group.
It's not that your personal experience isn't representative - I think that there is a contingent of privileged people who feel left out by progress towards a level playing field. That sort-of makes sense, right? There are also strong echo chambers pushing those people towards radicalization. I suppose I'm asking you to feel empathy for these, very privileged, victims of a society that doesn't know how to engage with them. Egalitarianism has to bring everyone along - I don't know if that can be done.
look at you pretending you don't use heuristics