Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
As a millennial, we grew up with the phrases “that’s gay” and “that’s retarded” (which meant the same thing) and obviously we had to learn to phase those out.
While I never once meant “that’s disabled” or “that’s homosexual”… We obviously don’t say that stuff anymore.
I still say “That’s pretty gay” but only for things like rainbows or LGBT bumper stickers.
I was totally headed down the alt right pipeline. Throughout highschool I was depressed and lonely. I lost my faith which sent me to the online atheist community which ran out of content, so they started attacking feminists/sjws. I also just distrusted women because I got molested as a child by one and no one took it seriously. This had primed me to just eat up all the content from the MRA/antifeminist crowd. The youtube algorithm, which at the time was absolutely unhinged, pushed me to racist content which I just parroted because I didn’t know any better. I didn’t understand why things were the way things were, but I was taught who to blame.
What saved me was getting friends. These friends shattered my preconceptions, which sent me to the library, which got me talking to more people, which got me reading more. By the time I finished high school I just became utterly incompatible with the person I used to be. I couldn’t take back the things I said to people, but I could join their protests and speak up for them when I heard some heinous shit being said.
Apple products. When it started to take away the ability to tune the noise cancellation feature on airpod pro, I decided that’s it. You can nerf it to say its for the best interest for everyone. But I’m the consumer who paid full price who asked for the feature that was to isolate the noise, not a fucking compromised NC because you say so. You can at least have the decency to let me tune it myself, but no, Apple decides whats best. So fuck it.
The elitist attitudes surrounding Apple products is so unbelievable. “OMG, I have an iPhone!” Yeah, you have an iPhone, so what? You’re the best? You can FaceTime your friends, despite you and your friends probably having, like, 7 other apps to do so? And no UI customizability or jailbreaking?
I’m just unable to understand the Apple/iOS hype. It makes my eyes roll. I’m content with my Samsung and Android, thanks.
I never realized how frequently I called things “lame” until I said it in front of a coworker paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. Hopefully he understood, but it just took that one glance telling me he heard it for me to stop. To try to stop.
I’m just gonna go back to calling everything gay and retarded now because my substitute word “lame” is now unacceptable.
“if I were you”. When I was younger I lack the ability really consider others’ situation and put myself in their shoes. Not because I thought I’m better than them but thought I see a better way. I don’t exactly remember when I stopped using it but I’m pretty sure it’s around when I realized I would beat the shit out of me if I was my own child.
Oh god I’ve got so many.
My latest one is remembering that you can’t really fight fire with fire, unless you’re being extraordinarily strategic about it. Attacking bigotry for instance, simply makes it stronger, as it feeds off strife and fear themselves. Remembering why Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high. Not out of any great preference, but out of a lack of viable alternatives in her situation.
You can’t actually “fight” it. You can exclude it. You can corral it. You can trick it into running itself off a cliff. But you can’t actually destroy it by combating it directly, because it feeds off the combat, just like Trump does. You have to outmaneuver it.
I routinely attack bigots on social media. I enjoy writing and their shitty views are basically writing prompts for me.
At no point have I ever expected to change the bigots mind. They’re not going to read a social media comment and wake up a new person – they’d lose their bigot friends and bigot family.
But I have changed the minds of spectators, and thats important. Which is why assholes should never be left unchallenged when they’re being assholes, especially on the safety of the internet.
Like the black musician who befriended all those kkk members and got them to retire their hoods and leave the kkk. It wasn’t by been mean and condescending he was very nice to them.
There’s a WBC member that was being groomed for politics and he was turned by two Jewish guys while he was in university. They killed him with kindness. He wrote a book about it and there’s a great NPR interview with him and he talks about it.
