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This is one of the main reasons I feel like the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone is ultimately toxic. A

This is one of the main reasons I feel like the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone is ultimately toxic. As a person with (currently treated and doing fine) psychological issues I don’t expect any single comment to get through to you, but if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong. Particularly so in the case of the unfortunate stereotype of lonely loser who lives in his mother’s basement and spends all his time on the computer.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
> if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong. Then again, depending on the psychological issues it doesn't matter how many negative indicators there are that you are the problem. Some people just seem unable to accept they have issues, or unable to correctly process that people's reaction to them is in fact negative. There's just such a wide range of things here.
- emerged 5y ago
  Narcissists consider both positive and negative interactions to be positive, and narcissism has been on the rise for years owed primarily to social media.
news_to_me 5y ago
I totally agree. In my friendships, I highly value people that will tell me when they disagree, and I try to avoid people who are hard to disagree with. Some of my favorite people are stereotypical “New York” types.
3grdlurker 5y ago
> the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone I'm not sure what you're talking about--I wonder if this is just your extremely subjective experience of the internet? Because I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement. Perhaps it's disagreement across tribes, but mandatory agreement within each tribe?
  - skissane 5y ago
    > but mandatory agreement within each tribe? There's seems to be a decent market for contrarian opinions within each tribe though. Such as "Conservatives against Trump" [0] and "Liberals against Cancel Culture" [1] [0] e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/disaffected-republicans-launch-new-group-to-impact-2022-midterms https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/disaffect... [1] e.g. https://medium.com/arc-digital/the-whispered-left-wing-dissent-on-cancel-culture-234d0aaa9107 https://medium.com/arc-digital/the-whispered-left-wing-disse...
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      Both of your examples, I think, counter rather than support your point, because neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within, but are trumpeted by the opposing tribe (but only for their dissent, not for the views that mark them as in the tribe thet dissent from.) Unless by “...against cancel culture” you mean “...who deny thr existence of ‘cancel culture’ as a significant new or especially liberal/left phenomenon”, but then, those arent dissenters at all.
      - skissane 5y ago
        > neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within I don't think anti-Trump conservatives are particularly unwelcome in mainstream American conservatism though. Take someone like the Orthodox Christian journalist Rod Dreher, who says very negative things about Trump ("Donald Trump is flat-out lying to manipulate the political process", [0]), but who has also written a book (Live Not By Lies) claiming that American progressivism is evolving into Soviet-style totalitarianism. Getting invited on to Tucker Carlson's show is a pretty clear sign of being welcome by mainstream American conservatism, and Carlson has invited Dreher (in September last year) on to promote his book, and I'm sure the Fox News audience loved it. Carlson just avoided asking Dreher about his opinions on Trump, he knows what his audience likes and he didn't get where he is by upsetting them. [0] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-truth-totalitarianism/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-...
wpietri 5y ago
I like your point, but I think you take it too far here: > if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong A lot of my self-improvement has come not because of explicit negative feedback, but through paying attention to people and reflecting on who I want to be in the world. That's not to say that any approach is generally superior. People have all sorts of ways of dealing with the world.
- darkerside 5y ago
  What you may not realize is, some people literally don't know how to do that, or that it's even something anyone would ever do. If you dropped into an alien culture, you'd need to learn a new raft of different signals all over again.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Sure! Everybody's born not knowing how to do that. Or understanding most social signals. Some of us learn. As I said, people have all sorts of ways of dealing with the world.
  - derefr 5y ago
    A lot of the bad in the world comes from leaving people unequipped of certain basic "soft skills". It's not the same thing as mental illness, but it has similar effects. And, for some reason, people become seemingly completely unwilling to learn-by-example any new-to-them soft skills, once they reach adulthood. Or perhaps "lifelong learning of soft skills" is itself a soft skill that people aren't being taught. ----- Anecdote: I was diagnosed/treated for ADHD as an adult, whereupon the "social soft skills" part of my brain suddenly started working like it never did through my childhood. I went from thinking I was on the autistic spectrum, to noticing all sorts of new patterns while observing social interactions. I quickly realized that my capacity for social-skill learning had never been missing; but rather, the learning itself had just sort of been "paused", for lack of "voltage" in the right brain areas. I did / am still doing a lot of delayed soft-skill learning as an adult. And it's really starkly obvious how much other people with me in the same situations, aren't deriving the same learning I do from those situations — even when those people are sorely lacking in the relevant social skill, but aren't otherwise socially unskilled. It seems like they just aren't bothering to look at the situation under the right "lens" to see the pattern, even though it's a "lens" they clearly possess.
darkerside 5y ago
I continue to believe that downvotes would make Twitter and Facebook a healthier and happier place.
amznthrwaway 5y ago
> This is one of the main reasons I feel like the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone is ultimately toxic. This culture doesn’t exist in the real world. A bigger problem is people like who who soak themselves in hyper-partisan media and ideas, lose the ability to engage in critical thought and analysis, and whose brains turn to mush. So let me be clear: you’re a moronic idiot who is completely and totally fucking wrong both on the facts and your (dull-headed) interpretation of your invented reality.
bawolff 5y ago
The internet though is a terrible place to take personal advice to heart. Imagine taking the youtube comments on a video to heart. shudder
toofy 5y ago
> ….I feel like the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone… I’m not sure I follow. Do you see a culture where no one disagrees with each other? From my perspective it would appear that the opposite is true. Particularly in social media which is jam packed full of people who disagree with each other very very often. Where are you seeing a culture where people aren’t constantly disagreeing with each other?
watwut 5y ago
This sounds like you want feedback that you behaved badly. And I have hard time to map that on first paragraph that is about disagreement or offense.

bluefirebrand 5y ago

> if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong. Then again, depending on the psychological issues it doesn't matter how many negative indicators there are that you are the problem. Some people just seem unable to accept they have issues, or unable to correctly process that people's reaction to them is in fact negative. There's just such a wide range of things here.

emerged 5y ago
Narcissists consider both positive and negative interactions to be positive, and narcissism has been on the rise for years owed primarily to social media.

news_to_me 5y ago

I totally agree. In my friendships, I highly value people that will tell me when they disagree, and I try to avoid people who are hard to disagree with. Some of my favorite people are stereotypical “New York” types.

3grdlurker 5y ago

> the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone I'm not sure what you're talking about--I wonder if this is just your extremely subjective experience of the internet? Because I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement.

nitrogen 5y ago
I thought that the internet lately has been nothing but disagreement. Perhaps it's disagreement across tribes, but mandatory agreement within each tribe?
- skissane 5y ago
  > but mandatory agreement within each tribe? There's seems to be a decent market for contrarian opinions within each tribe though. Such as "Conservatives against Trump" [0] and "Liberals against Cancel Culture" [1] [0] e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/disaffected-republicans-launch-new-group-to-impact-2022-midterms https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/disaffect... [1] e.g. https://medium.com/arc-digital/the-whispered-left-wing-dissent-on-cancel-culture-234d0aaa9107 https://medium.com/arc-digital/the-whispered-left-wing-disse...
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Both of your examples, I think, counter rather than support your point, because neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within, but are trumpeted by the opposing tribe (but only for their dissent, not for the views that mark them as in the tribe thet dissent from.) Unless by “...against cancel culture” you mean “...who deny thr existence of ‘cancel culture’ as a significant new or especially liberal/left phenomenon”, but then, those arent dissenters at all.
    - skissane 5y ago
      > neither of those arr particularly welcomed in the tribe they notionally dissent within I don't think anti-Trump conservatives are particularly unwelcome in mainstream American conservatism though. Take someone like the Orthodox Christian journalist Rod Dreher, who says very negative things about Trump ("Donald Trump is flat-out lying to manipulate the political process", [0]), but who has also written a book (Live Not By Lies) claiming that American progressivism is evolving into Soviet-style totalitarianism. Getting invited on to Tucker Carlson's show is a pretty clear sign of being welcome by mainstream American conservatism, and Carlson has invited Dreher (in September last year) on to promote his book, and I'm sure the Fox News audience loved it. Carlson just avoided asking Dreher about his opinions on Trump, he knows what his audience likes and he didn't get where he is by upsetting them. [0] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-truth-totalitarianism/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-...

wpietri 5y ago

I like your point, but I think you take it too far here: > if there are never any negative indicators that you are the problem, rather than everyone else… there is a mathematically insignificant chance you will ever realize something might be wrong A lot of my self-improvement has come not because of explicit negative feedback, but through paying attention to people and reflecting on who I want to be in the world. That's not to say that any approach is generally superior. People have all sorts of ways of dealing with the world.

darkerside 5y ago
What you may not realize is, some people literally don't know how to do that, or that it's even something anyone would ever do. If you dropped into an alien culture, you'd need to learn a new raft of different signals all over again.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Sure! Everybody's born not knowing how to do that. Or understanding most social signals. Some of us learn. As I said, people have all sorts of ways of dealing with the world.
- derefr 5y ago
  A lot of the bad in the world comes from leaving people unequipped of certain basic "soft skills". It's not the same thing as mental illness, but it has similar effects. And, for some reason, people become seemingly completely unwilling to learn-by-example any new-to-them soft skills, once they reach adulthood. Or perhaps "lifelong learning of soft skills" is itself a soft skill that people aren't being taught. ----- Anecdote: I was diagnosed/treated for ADHD as an adult, whereupon the "social soft skills" part of my brain suddenly started working like it never did through my childhood. I went from thinking I was on the autistic spectrum, to noticing all sorts of new patterns while observing social interactions. I quickly realized that my capacity for social-skill learning had never been missing; but rather, the learning itself had just sort of been "paused", for lack of "voltage" in the right brain areas. I did / am still doing a lot of delayed soft-skill learning as an adult. And it's really starkly obvious how much other people with me in the same situations, aren't deriving the same learning I do from those situations — even when those people are sorely lacking in the relevant social skill, but aren't otherwise socially unskilled. It seems like they just aren't bothering to look at the situation under the right "lens" to see the pattern, even though it's a "lens" they clearly possess.

darkerside 5y ago

I continue to believe that downvotes would make Twitter and Facebook a healthier and happier place.

amznthrwaway 5y ago

> This is one of the main reasons I feel like the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone so you can never possibly offend anyone is ultimately toxic. This culture doesn’t exist in the real world. A bigger problem is people like who who soak themselves in hyper-partisan media and ideas, lose the ability to engage in critical thought and analysis, and whose brains turn to mush. So let me be clear: you’re a moronic idiot who is completely and totally fucking wrong both on the facts and your (dull-headed) interpretation of your invented reality.

bawolff 5y ago

The internet though is a terrible place to take personal advice to heart. Imagine taking the youtube comments on a video to heart. shudder

toofy 5y ago

> ….I feel like the current culture of never disagreeing with anyone… I’m not sure I follow. Do you see a culture where no one disagrees with each other? From my perspective it would appear that the opposite is true. Particularly in social media which is jam packed full of people who disagree with each other very very often. Where are you seeing a culture where people aren’t constantly disagreeing with each other?

watwut 5y ago

This sounds like you want feedback that you behaved badly. And I have hard time to map that on first paragraph that is about disagreement or offense.