2y ago

The Waterloo attack is shocking only if you haven’t been paying attention

TVO Today | Current Affairs Journalism, Documentaries and Podcasts

OPINION: The hate has always been here. But now it’s boiling over, and it’s become more socially acceptable to let white-nationalist, misogynistic, even murderous flags fly (by Jenn Jefferys/TVO)

17 comments

I think it would be more accurate to say that the people driving this hatred no longer care about being socially acceptable.
- it is no longer socially unacceptable
  
  It still is socially unacceptable in actual society.
  The problem is they've found a micro-community who also embraces similar (and often worse) anti-social ideas and behaviors, and has convinced these losers that their dumb ideas are reasonable.
What's happening is social media.
You have a bigot, what do you do about it?
Sure you can punch the bigot. Violence begets violence; might fix the problem or make it worse.
So what do you? Confront them. Then if they don't change their ways, you shun them. Generally people don't like being excluded, so slowly but surely the bigots would reform and some would die alone with their hatred.
Now? They have online platforms where they find each other through algorithms that encourages those behaviors because it makes them money.
You want to reduce the hatred on society? Police properly the big social medias.
- This is absolutely true: social media has allowed these groups to network, and the same algorithm that knows to feed me pictures of cute dogs to keep me on the platform also knows it helps to feed Nazi-adjacent rage-bait to keep vulnerable people engaged.
  A huge, huge thing we could do is force social media companies to change to a simple, chronological algorithm, instead of one that's predicated on feeding users rage-bait.
People aren't willing enough to speak out. We have a culture of apathy.
As a white guy I feel like I've been labeled by people who should know why that's uncool.
- Did…did you just try to make this about yourself?
  
  The article might not be about that person you are replying to in particular, but the subject of the article is "white men." The language the article uses implies that every single one of them is being infected with hatred, and we know that is just factually incorrect.
  The mayor of my small rural town participated in our Pride week, he is a cis/straight/white male that I don't need to feel afraid of.

17 comments