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The inescapable rise of moral superiority

thewalrus.ca

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Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#41

Post by xboxnolifes »

lapcat wrote: post #15

I think the issue goes beyond moral grandstanding. If you read Hacker News, for example, you see plenty of technical grandstanding every day. I think we humans are simply unprepared for interacting with random strangers online. Our monkey brains did not evolve for that. In most social situations, our opinions are tempered by knowing the other person, or at least being in the same room with them. It's rare that you wo…

> Online, it's often a show where you're playing to an audience

I think this is the most important part. It's not just online vs offline. Even how people converse in DMs differs from public postings (not as good as offline, but different than public online). Instead, many interactions are done with the intent to gather an audience that agrees with you, so you can beat down your opponent by what is essentially intimidation. Or at least make it fruitless for your opponent to even try to defend themselves.

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#42

Post by balder1991 »

This has become so ridiculous that I sometimes scroll through reels just to witness this happening in real time. Is that a video with a joke about some problem in the country? There you go, 27 comments of people cursing and offending the creator because the real life isn’t exactly the way he/she portrayed it (which is, as a funny video should be, exaggerated) or creating drama for something else entirely that has nothing to do with the video. Then someone will eventually make an offensive comment and create an order of magnitude more hateful comments until shortly it becomes people insulting each other.

You see this in all social networks where people with no common ground eventually cross each other. It feels like everything (even mundane routine stuff) will eventually reach someone who’s offended by that action alone.

In fact I feel like this is what killed Facebook and people who check Twitter replies admit they always leave the app feeling angry. At least with TikTok and Reels the comments are hidden by default, so you have to make an explicit action to see the angry comments yelling at each other.

Reddit doesn’t seem to have that problem except in the popular subreddits because the smaller communities settle for an opinion and downvote dissidents.

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#44

Post by akomtu »

antisyzygy wrote: post #25
blueflow wrote: post #4

Having the right opinion as a form of social status.

Wealthy urban men and women do that all the time. While they're working their employees to the bone, refusing raises, and pocketing all the profits to purchase more real estate and nicer cars, or to bribe people at the private school they send their kids to, they whitewash their actions by pretending they care about feminism, LGBTQ+ people, white privilege, and/or the environment. The Rural crowd has a different form…

They do care about those -isms, as those divide the worker folk and keep those from uniting and demanding more.

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#45

Post by gweinberg »

rexpop wrote: post #29
laurels-marts wrote: post #12

> the term “pregnant people” is somehow degrading to women She sneaked that one in though didn’t she.

Sneaked? How's it different from the other examples?

"Pregnant people" is degrading to women in exactly the same sense that "front hole" is degrading to women.

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#46

Post by psunavy03 »

lapcat wrote: post #15

I think the issue goes beyond moral grandstanding. If you read Hacker News, for example, you see plenty of technical grandstanding every day. I think we humans are simply unprepared for interacting with random strangers online. Our monkey brains did not evolve for that. In most social situations, our opinions are tempered by knowing the other person, or at least being in the same room with them. It's rare that you wo…

> If you read Hacker News, for example, you see plenty of technical grandstanding every day.

Oh, you see plenty of moral grandstanding on non-technical articles, too. It's just as likely to be some strange over-analyzed and unrealistic niche belief system as it is a platform plank of either of the two major American political parties.

As expected for a place which attracts engineers and the like, because one of their failure modes is assuming that they can engineer the entire world. Every major social problem has a "rational" engineering wrong explanation, because all people (including them) are only ever quasi-rational beings.

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#47

Post by RhysU »

Awhile back someone* here recommended the book "Days of Rage"* about US domestic terrorism/bombings in the late 60s and 70s. Weather Underground and their ilk were entirely a bunch of morally smug bastards fuelled by exactly this sentiment. It is terrifying to see the parallels between today's trends and things literally blowing up in the 70s.

*Thank you. Apologies for not remembering whom. Excellent read. Eye-opening as someone educated in 90s public schools.

*https://www.amazon.com/Days-Rage-Underground-Forgotten-Revol...

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#48

Post by worrycue »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #32
worrycue wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the kind of posting IMHO. Contributing to a rational civil discussion? Maybe. Flaming, downvoting, and “collectively bullying” someone with a different opinion to enforce an echo chamber? Not so much. The latter just drives everyone who disagrees away so the likeminded can reinforce their beliefs, pat each other on the back, and feel good about themselves.

Through posting alone, the right-wing conspiracy movement (which QAnon is one extension of) has expanded from relative obscurity into a fairly mainstream base with millions of members worldwide over the course of only about 5 years, and has already captured in just the U.S. a number of congressional seats and at least one SCOTUS judge by the looks of it. The format has a rather persuasive appeal that (in my opinion)…

I was thinking about it from the perspective of changing people’s minds.

With right wing conspiracy movements, are they really converting anyone or just organising people who already lean in that direction and just need a rallying flag.

To go off on a tangent, I think a lot of people believe in conspiracy theories because they choose to. To quote Alan Moore,

“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”

I think we all do that to some extent, e.g. in relationships; see “positive illusions”.

Re: The inescapable rise of moral superiority

#49

Post by dbsmith83 »

colechristensen wrote: post #8

People blamed organized religion for this kind of thing but it’s pretty clear theology not required. The spectrum of pepperpots to moral crusaders is quite present with no religion at all. Quite possibly worse than before. At least your organized religions tended to have a nontrivial portion of their teachings about being generally nice to each other.

I've been noticing this a lot too. When I was younger in the earlier days of the internet, it always seemed like it was the religious ones who were judging everyone and demanding they accommodate their beliefs and moral outrages. Nowadays, there is a new crowd that doesn't even go to church but is somehow worse. It's the new religion
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