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Actually I see the present problem as exactly the opposite. More and more we live in a culture where people think it's their right to feel offended and for any

Actually I see the present problem as exactly the opposite. More and more we live in a culture where people think it's their right to feel offended and for anyone saying anything that makes them fell that way to just be shut up by someone (some faculty department for instance). It is becoming basically a Politically Correct culture of censorship and we keep seeing opinion texts (just like this one) that appeal to that censorship like if it was a good thing. I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned.

lj3 10y ago
> I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned. People claim to be "thin skinned" because it works as far as effecting an overall narrative. You can limit the conversation to what you want to talk about by declaring anything you don't want to talk about as 'triggering'. It's unreasonably effective, as is the jerk approach. People aren't overly harsh on online communities because they're all jerks. People respond more strongly to harsh or negative rhetoric than they do calmly stated facts or figures. The phenomenon we're seeing are people identifying what tactics work and applying them. It's the weaponization of social media.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
There are people who are genuinely toxic. If they get in your company, they'll destroy it. (The worst I've ever seen, I fortunately never had to work with. But if I did, I would make it clear to management that it was me or him within five minutes of his being hired.) Then there are people who are genuinely too thin skinned. If you listen to their complaints, they'll lead you to destroy your company, because you'll persecute perfectly reasonable behavior and create a "witch hunt" atmosphere. But some of the "thin skinned" stuff is realizing that people shouldn't have to put up with things that used to be considered "normal". Sometimes we grow up and realize that what we used to do was really pretty crummy. For those who haven't realized that yet, it looks like people becoming more thin skinned. (I'm not saying that this is your situation. But if you perceive others as becoming too thin skinned toward specific behavior, you maybe should at least consider whether that behavior is as benign as you think.)
- jkaptur 10y ago
  Five minutes seems awfully short. What made you so sure so fast?
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    The fact that he accused us of hiding the truth from him in the first five minutes, and claimed to have exposed it. (And it was over something where we had told him the straight truth.) I mean, it was an adversarial situation rather than a co-worker one (he was buying a line of business from us), but I saw enough to be fairly sure that he's toxic even when he's "on the same side" as you.
- godshatter 10y ago
  > ut some of the "thin skinned" stuff is realizing that people shouldn't have to put up with things that used to be considered "normal". Sometimes we grow up and realize that what we used to do was really pretty crummy. For those who haven't realized that yet, it looks like people becoming more thin skinned. (I'm not saying that this is your situation. But if you perceive others as becoming too thin skinned toward specific behavior, you maybe should at least consider whether that behavior is as benign as you think.) I'm old enough to have watched this "political correctness" phenomenon rise up and take hold of the masses. I understand it as a reaction to overt racism and actual hatred, but it goes too far and stifles discussion where it's needed the most. A lot of people grow up racist, or sexist or otherwise dismissive of large portions of humanity based on their upbringing. Sometimes they can get past it, other times they can't or won't. Political correctness, for all of it's appeal as "the right thing to do", takes away options people have for getting past their own prejudices. It's also possible that people can use racist or sexist terms and not really mean anything by it. Hell, growing up Pollack jokes were all the rage when I was maybe 8 or 9. I don't know if I've ever met someone from Poland. They were just a stand in for "someone stupid", for whatever reason. I guess all I'm trying to say is that the intention of the communication should be taken into consideration, not just the exact words or phrases used. We should also not be afraid to confront topics that are otherwise taboo. If people are civil and friendly, such conversations can be more helpful than harmful sometimes.
epistasis 10y ago
>I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned. When everybody else seems thin-skinned, is it everybody else that has the problem?
- Noseshine 10y ago
  That is a Dick-from-the-Internet (http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07 http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07) kind of reply. He did not say "everybody". You are making stuff up, see the linked Dilbert cartoon (you are famous).
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Except it's not everybody else that seems thin-skinned, it's "more and more people becoming thin skinned". If people around you are catching flu while you stay healthy, isn't it a problem with them, not with you? All progress is necessarily a change, but not every change is progress.
GVIrish 10y ago
> More and more we live in a culture where people think it's their right to feel offended for anyone saying anything that makes them fell that way to just be shut up by someone (some faculty department for instance). Um, it is someone's right to feel offended, you can't control how anyone else feels. Now others can determine whether someone taking offense at something is reasonable in the situation, but people have the right to feel whatever they feel. Now sometimes it becomes problematic when people who feel offended attempt to shut down discourse, that much is true. > It is becoming basically a Politically Correct culture of censorship and we keep seeing opinion texts (just like this one) that appeal to that censorship like if it was a good thing. I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned. Or maybe there are whole groups of people who had to accept unkind behavior in the past in silence, who now are demanding better treatment. Women in the workplace have had to (and still do) put up with all manner of misogynist nonsense and more women and men are saying this is no longer acceptable. To that, some will complain that things are becoming too 'PC' but the fact is that poor behavior that was tolerated in the past is no longer tolerated. Same deal with race. A few decades ago it was ok to refer to a grown black man as, "boy" in any context. It was okay to disparage other races openly at home, at work, in public, now it largely isn't. Some will cry 'Censorship!' or whatever but the fact is that social norms of decency are relegating those attitudes to history. The people complaining are the ones who refuse to accept that those attitudes belong in the past.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Noseshine 10y ago
  > Um, it is someone's right to feel offended Well, doesn't that mean then other people have the right to say whatever they want even if others feel offended? Which means we don't need to have this discussion and just accept both the offended and the assholes. This argument seems to me to lead nowhere, unless you say being offended is okay, offending is not. Which I would find quite disturbing, not just because Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey) would vehemently agree but because it seems wrong to me.
ygmelnikova 10y ago
Yeah, same thought while reading this. I come from a generation where bagging your friends was common and played a large role in building character. Now if you honk at somebody to prevent an accident, you're flipped the bird. Even mild constructive criticism comes across as a massive assault against one's pride.
mwfunk 10y ago
In my experience, by far the worst thing about political correctness as a cultural force has been anti-PC backlash over the last 20 years. In my lifetime, that's been a far more destructive force than even the most cartoonish forms of PC overreach that people like to cite. Since the mid-'90s we have lived in a world where assholes have been given a blank check to be as dumb and toxic as they want- all they have to do is preface it with, "Now, it might not be politically correct to say this, but..." They also have a blank check after the fact because they can blow off any fallout from some dumb, toxic thing that they said with excuses like, "I'm too busy to be politically correct all the time". I have literally never in my life been affected by political correctness, and I would guess that the reality is that hardly anyone else has been either (especially the people that complain the longest and loudest about it). But I would argue that the most toxic elements of American culture and American politics nowadays come from people who feel empowered to be assholes, because they can blow off any criticism by claiming that their assholishness is just a lack of political correctness rather than plain old asshole behavior. Put another way, I remember several decades before political correctness existed as a concept that people were generally aware of. I think it has enabled a spike in asshole behavior that hasn't been good for anyone involved. Some of those assholes are stereotypical overly PC people doing stereotypically overly PC things, but in my opinion something like 99% of those assholes (that we wouldn't have, were it not for the PC movement) are the vocally anti-PC people who think they can and should embrace the most toxic versions of themselves because to do anything else would be to give in to the PC people that they imagine are lurking around every corner. It has enabled them to be the worst they can be, and to double down on it by lionizing the worst assholes they can find, all in the name of being anti-PC.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
fallous 10y ago
I don't think it's an opposite effect so much as a variation on the same theme. "Cry-bullies" are still bullies, they just opt for an appeal to some other authority in a passive-aggressive manner instead of directly being the aggressor to get what they want.

lj3 10y ago

> I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned. People claim to be "thin skinned" because it works as far as effecting an overall narrative. You can limit the conversation to what you want to talk about by declaring anything you don't want to talk about as 'triggering'. It's unreasonably effective, as is the jerk approach. People aren't overly harsh on online communities because they're all jerks. People respond more strongly to harsh or negative rhetoric than they do calmly stated facts or figures. The phenomenon we're seeing are people identifying what tactics work and applying them. It's the weaponization of social media.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

There are people who are genuinely toxic. If they get in your company, they'll destroy it. (The worst I've ever seen, I fortunately never had to work with. But if I did, I would make it clear to management that it was me or him within five minutes of his being hired.) Then there are people who are genuinely too thin skinned. If you listen to their complaints, they'll lead you to destroy your company, because you'll persecute perfectly reasonable behavior and create a "witch hunt" atmosphere. But some of the "thin skinned" stuff is realizing that people shouldn't have to put up with things that used to be considered "normal". Sometimes we grow up and realize that what we used to do was really pretty crummy. For those who haven't realized that yet, it looks like people becoming more thin skinned. (I'm not saying that this is your situation. But if you perceive others as becoming too thin skinned toward specific behavior, you maybe should at least consider whether that behavior is as benign as you think.)

jkaptur 10y ago
Five minutes seems awfully short. What made you so sure so fast?
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  The fact that he accused us of hiding the truth from him in the first five minutes, and claimed to have exposed it. (And it was over something where we had told him the straight truth.) I mean, it was an adversarial situation rather than a co-worker one (he was buying a line of business from us), but I saw enough to be fairly sure that he's toxic even when he's "on the same side" as you.
godshatter 10y ago
> ut some of the "thin skinned" stuff is realizing that people shouldn't have to put up with things that used to be considered "normal". Sometimes we grow up and realize that what we used to do was really pretty crummy. For those who haven't realized that yet, it looks like people becoming more thin skinned. (I'm not saying that this is your situation. But if you perceive others as becoming too thin skinned toward specific behavior, you maybe should at least consider whether that behavior is as benign as you think.) I'm old enough to have watched this "political correctness" phenomenon rise up and take hold of the masses. I understand it as a reaction to overt racism and actual hatred, but it goes too far and stifles discussion where it's needed the most. A lot of people grow up racist, or sexist or otherwise dismissive of large portions of humanity based on their upbringing. Sometimes they can get past it, other times they can't or won't. Political correctness, for all of it's appeal as "the right thing to do", takes away options people have for getting past their own prejudices. It's also possible that people can use racist or sexist terms and not really mean anything by it. Hell, growing up Pollack jokes were all the rage when I was maybe 8 or 9. I don't know if I've ever met someone from Poland. They were just a stand in for "someone stupid", for whatever reason. I guess all I'm trying to say is that the intention of the communication should be taken into consideration, not just the exact words or phrases used. We should also not be afraid to confront topics that are otherwise taboo. If people are civil and friendly, such conversations can be more helpful than harmful sometimes.

epistasis 10y ago

>I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned. When everybody else seems thin-skinned, is it everybody else that has the problem?

Noseshine 10y ago
That is a Dick-from-the-Internet (http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07 http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07) kind of reply. He did not say "everybody". You are making stuff up, see the linked Dilbert cartoon (you are famous).
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Except it's not everybody else that seems thin-skinned, it's "more and more people becoming thin skinned". If people around you are catching flu while you stay healthy, isn't it a problem with them, not with you? All progress is necessarily a change, but not every change is progress.

GVIrish 10y ago

> More and more we live in a culture where people think it's their right to feel offended for anyone saying anything that makes them fell that way to just be shut up by someone (some faculty department for instance). Um, it is someone's right to feel offended, you can't control how anyone else feels. Now others can determine whether someone taking offense at something is reasonable in the situation, but people have the right to feel whatever they feel. Now sometimes it becomes problematic when people who feel offended attempt to shut down discourse, that much is true. > It is becoming basically a Politically Correct culture of censorship and we keep seeing opinion texts (just like this one) that appeal to that censorship like if it was a good thing. I don't see it as more and more people becoming jerks, I see it as more and more people becoming thin skinned. Or maybe there are whole groups of people who had to accept unkind behavior in the past in silence, who now are demanding better treatment. Women in the workplace have had to (and still do) put up with all manner of misogynist nonsense and more women and men are saying this is no longer acceptable. To that, some will complain that things are becoming too 'PC' but the fact is that poor behavior that was tolerated in the past is no longer tolerated. Same deal with race. A few decades ago it was ok to refer to a grown black man as, "boy" in any context. It was okay to disparage other races openly at home, at work, in public, now it largely isn't. Some will cry 'Censorship!' or whatever but the fact is that social norms of decency are relegating those attitudes to history. The people complaining are the ones who refuse to accept that those attitudes belong in the past.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Noseshine 10y ago
> Um, it is someone's right to feel offended Well, doesn't that mean then other people have the right to say whatever they want even if others feel offended? Which means we don't need to have this discussion and just accept both the offended and the assholes. This argument seems to me to lead nowhere, unless you say being offended is okay, offending is not. Which I would find quite disturbing, not just because Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey) would vehemently agree but because it seems wrong to me.

ygmelnikova 10y ago

Yeah, same thought while reading this. I come from a generation where bagging your friends was common and played a large role in building character. Now if you honk at somebody to prevent an accident, you're flipped the bird. Even mild constructive criticism comes across as a massive assault against one's pride.

mwfunk 10y ago

In my experience, by far the worst thing about political correctness as a cultural force has been anti-PC backlash over the last 20 years. In my lifetime, that's been a far more destructive force than even the most cartoonish forms of PC overreach that people like to cite. Since the mid-'90s we have lived in a world where assholes have been given a blank check to be as dumb and toxic as they want- all they have to do is preface it with, "Now, it might not be politically correct to say this, but..." They also have a blank check after the fact because they can blow off any fallout from some dumb, toxic thing that they said with excuses like, "I'm too busy to be politically correct all the time". I have literally never in my life been affected by political correctness, and I would guess that the reality is that hardly anyone else has been either (especially the people that complain the longest and loudest about it). But I would argue that the most toxic elements of American culture and American politics nowadays come from people who feel empowered to be assholes, because they can blow off any criticism by claiming that their assholishness is just a lack of political correctness rather than plain old asshole behavior. Put another way, I remember several decades before political correctness existed as a concept that people were generally aware of. I think it has enabled a spike in asshole behavior that hasn't been good for anyone involved. Some of those assholes are stereotypical overly PC people doing stereotypically overly PC things, but in my opinion something like 99% of those assholes (that we wouldn't have, were it not for the PC movement) are the vocally anti-PC people who think they can and should embrace the most toxic versions of themselves because to do anything else would be to give in to the PC people that they imagine are lurking around every corner. It has enabled them to be the worst they can be, and to double down on it by lionizing the worst assholes they can find, all in the name of being anti-PC.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

fallous 10y ago

I don't think it's an opposite effect so much as a variation on the same theme. "Cry-bullies" are still bullies, they just opt for an appeal to some other authority in a passive-aggressive manner instead of directly being the aggressor to get what they want.