Online or offline. News keeps reporting about loneliness and disconnection, but in my experience it’s just that it’s harder to interact with people in a civil way because they are so hostile, angry, and arrogantly convinced their viewpoints and experiences are the only legitimate ones.
Not to mention the lack of civility towards servers and other service workers. I can’t recall if I was just indifferent 10 years ago, but on a almost daily basis it blows my mind how openly rude many people are to servers and such, which seemed like a much more rare thing when I was younger.
In 2016? No about the same as now. 15 years ago in 2011? Yes.
People have been assholes to service staff and service workers for decades. I did a lot of restaurant work in the early 90s (in College) and the shit that people did to wait staff back then was unreal. Did they do that before I observed it, I am sure.
With that said, social interactions really started to get beyond stupid since the wide spread adoption of Smart Phones and really ramped up after the pandemic.
I go out to restaurants and bars and everyone has their head buried in their phone. People also can’t stop looking at their fucking phones when driving, walking up stairs and in public are just completely oblivious to those around them.
The result of the obliviousness is, they saunter slowly up stairs, stupidly occupy too much space in aisle ways etc.
Its almost like this is a thing https://apnews.com/article/meta-verdict-appeal-social-media-addiction-f2fc62210b02f1945bfd416f5554dd5c
There have always been bad people, but I think that, so to speak, they periodically gain a lot of influence.
The current situation seems to me to stem from the success of the Tea Party movement in the U.S., which also appears to have thrown things off balance internationally. They’ve established a new kind of anti-politics and, unfortunately, have been quite successful with it—relying on crude rabble-rousing, hatred, and a complete lack of willingness to engage in any constructive cooperation. That was a key precursor to today’s uncivilized MAGA style, which just about every far-right party in virtually every country now espouses.
Where I’m from—Germany—it’s the AfD that spreads racist nonsense and hatred. They’re neoliberal through and through, but they use their nationalist bullshit to blind their dim-witted followers to this fact. They’re exactly like MAGA: uncivilized and primitive and corrupt.
I think the success of this wretched political style, or rather it’s revival, has poisoned social coexistence worldwide, especially since it’s, of course, relentlessly promoted by the billionaires who profit from it and spread this poison through their enormous media power.
You kind of get the impression that the resurgence of fascism—with its super-rich supporters—is spoiling the mood for decent people worldwide with its dystopian crap, its wars against humanity, and its idiotic megalomania.
In so many words I agree. I find socialization to be difficult when you try to make an offhand comment about, generally, ‘the bad stuff going on’ and there’s a 30% chance the person you’re talking to will suddenly and very loudly start agreeing with and cheering on the ‘bad stuff’.
And then if it’s not that then you have a 30 percent chance that they will shut down and say ‘I don’t have enough information about the blatantly bad and terrible things to have an opinion or want to talk about it’, and then you’re left wondering what kind of conversation you could have with a person like that.
And I fucking hate Magic the Gathering so that’s right out. Admittedly it’s all on me, I get way too table flippy about TCG’s.
Online, no, the discourse is actually better. 20 years ago phrases ending with !!!111!!! were not just a joke. By 2016 that was a lot better, but I think the trend has still continued, somewhat. The pain of the internet now is paywalls and ads and slop everywhere.
IRL, quite possibly. Where I am service workers still get treated with respect (elitism seems to be left-coded), but on the other hand you never know if you’re talking to a far-right wingnut or a normal person, and that makes it harder.
+1
/joke
Eleven. It was easier to talk with people eleven years ago. By about this time in 2016 it was too late.
Online, yes. In the world, no, if you can find anyone without their face glued to a screen.
There always were (and always will be) some shitty people in the world, but mostly people are ok in person. If someone sucks, you can just walk away.
Online is different, especially for people who don’t go outside. Too many people tend to hyperbolize everything and then block everyone they disagree with. It exacerbates the echo chamber and increases the fear/hate/isolation.
I’ve seen mostly OK people change over the past decade and become shitty. But they’d also argue it was me who became shitty, no doubt. In real life. And I know they are social media addicts, because they were always on their phone, or they were always referencing Twitter/Tiktok, etc.
Some became anti-vaxx, others just became entiteld assholes, and many just started blaming other people and past events on their current unhappiness. And if you dare to disagree, well, you are the problem too.
Yes, MAGA has absolutely shredded any social contract which used to exist in polite society. Literally any random person you meet now has a chance of being a completely unhinged fascist who will try to ruin your life for being a “radical Antifa terrorist.” Even in a city where statistically 8 in 10 of my neighbors are not trump supporters, the ones which are left are particularly radicalized and enthusiastic about being a MAGA warrior.
It is more difficult because the billionaire right wing media machine has filled idiots heads with idiotic talking points and deliberate bad faith rhetoric.
What’s real or true, or seeing someone else’s pov is a rarity. Polarization is the result of giving evil a megaphone.
Yes, but I’d argue the biggest contributing factor was COVID
Isolation just kinda “does that” to people. Yes, the problem predates 2020 but anecdotally I think we’ve all met that abrasive, lonely trucker and statistically mental health hospitalizations sky rocketed in 2020 and still hasn’t returned to the previous baseline, especially for those under 18
https://www.cdc.gov/mental-health/about-data/emergency-department-visits.html
I realize this isn’t a perfect measure but I suspect there’s a correlation
It has been trending that way for a while, but COVID really did a number on people randomly interacting with others and creating small talk.
I think hostility has been weaponized. We’ve been divided and conquered.
Yup. Far too many people refuse to admit that they’ve fallen prey to an intentional campaign of foreign agitprop. On the right, it’s understandable because a lot of those people are legitimately fucking stupid, but a ton of people on the left keep getting caught in the same basic playbook over and over again, even though they should know better.
Yes. Up to 2019.
Covid messed up human interaction on a level never seen before. And the most horrifying thing is how many people seem completely unaware of this.
Maybe. I can say that I just don’t want to socialize much anymore because it’s just… not fun anymore. It used to be fun… but now it’s mediocre and disappointing at best.
I seem to no longer be able to have fun and engaging conversations with folks, even when we have mutual interests. And when I try to engage with them in the way I did pre-covid they just respond with hostility or disengage. If I keep thing surface level and talk in a lot of cliches, however, they seem to enjoy that.
I don’t think I’ve had a talk with any depth with a stranger since like 2018, specifically. Not that it was common, but it was more common and more pleasant and folks seemed to be willing to make an effort to know you rather than basically looking to dismiss you or label you as soon as possible.
I have realized that my ability to navigate a conversation has gotten a bit scrambled since COVID. We still make it through, but we’re going to have people calling me ‘eccentric’ when I get just a bit older.
Maybe just getting old and ready to enter my yelling at clouds phase, but feels like the younger generations are less and less open to the possibility of casual conversation. I can start a conversation with a 60 year old lady any day of the week anywhere about damn near anything.
Yes.
Online people don’t have real world consequences so they can be pretty vile. Out in the world people still seem fine, except I find some are just aloof.
My experience is that folks are much more openly vile in person now, than they ever were in the 2010s. I see a lot of the vile online discourse openly discussed in real life between people, and also directed at myself.
For example I’ve riding bicycles my entire life, and never did anyone make a big fuss about it. The past few years people I meet will openly tell me to fuck off and die and what a douche I am if the topic comes up. Or they might go to the other extreme of patronizing me about it. Either way, it’s not longer like a fact or a quirk, it’s an Issue. in 2015 nobody cared that I rode a bike to work.
Which is exactly what I see in a lot of online discourse, people going to one extreme or the other, very rarely treating it as not a big deal. About so many things.
