Mentally ill people destroyed much of the good parts of the internet – and more.
It’s a sentiment I have felt, mostly quietly for years. Now, before we go any further I want to lead into this by saying as clear as day I am not a right-leaning person, at all. For most of my life, dating back to my early teens, I have found vast alignment with teachings and philosophies of socialism. Today, I would say I best feel at home in the likes of Scandinavian left-leaning parties. I am a huge advocate for social safety nets, a lover of social medical care, environmental protection and awareness, universal rights, and equality.
I still hate much of America’s current progressive left.
This hate has been rooted in a very disturbing trend I watched over the years. A trend where a group of seemingly mentally unwell, usually wealthy, seemingly devoid of real problems, and often white – but not always – group of people moved to and from issues, picking battles and waging wars over seemingly the dumbest things possible under the flag of progressiveness. In the early days, prior to Trump, it focused on things that I could not quite figure out, and would chase victories that were seemingly meaningless.
I can’t say for sure where the first instance of this movement really started or why, but I can recall the first time I became acutely aware and annoyed by the issue in real time. It was a Twitter post by a individual named “Abi Bechtel”, who would basically epitomize the “progressive” stereotype in the minds of most right-wingers. A purple haired, fat, obnoxious feminist posted about the retail store Target having “boy” and “girl” toy sets and isles.
It took no time at all for fellow brian-rotted and like-minded unstable people to latch on to this low-hanging-fruit issue. An issue that, if we lived in a perfect world, would deserve the address and time it got. But that’s not the world we live in, not then and certainly not now, and yet the Media gave further credence to another lunatic yelling in the wind, and it soon took off, making headlines.
I call this low-hanging-fruit because it really was. Target went to the airwaves and sent out their PR team in force, both explaining why they did things they way they did and what they would plan to do. Realizing the easy PR victory, Target would make a change in their stores and remove gender-labeled toy isles. The Progressives cheered and danced! Target, the great ally! They won! they made REAL change!
Except, all they did was make a corporation adjust some signage and celebrated it with outstanding credit for “hearing” people and “caring”. Target, a corporation that, much like its competitor Walmart, had strangled out small businesses, drove wages for retail workers down, busted unions, contributed to pollution, waste, and fast fashion – was celebrated as a hero. All it took was changing a simple label on a sign.
Not one workers rights were improved by this movement. Not one meaningful change came from this campaign to address Target’s waste practices, nor its use of Chinese goods – some imported from slave labor or damn near close to it. Not one right was won over for the non-Union workforce that makes up its workers. Not a penny was spent improving the economic conditions of communities that the mega-retailer had disrupted and negatively impacted over the years.
And yet, the Progressives celebrated. A victory. A toy isle sign was changed! Rejoice! Girls can be strong now!
This was the first time I started to really watch and listen to this section of society. I found it fascinating that someone could think they made meaningful change and pat themselves on the back for such a worthless issue. An issue that truly, if you want to cut through the bullshit and read between the lines, addressed none of the real problems impacting young girls and women in American society. A toy isle label doesn’t destroy a girl. But a society that puts lower value on women’s freedoms does. A society that doesn’t have equal wages and disclosures does. A society where Christian ideology promotes a notion of specific religious family values does.
Abi Bechtel did nothing for any of these real issues. She screeched at a non-issue (relative to America’s real problems), a corporation threw her a bone, and she chewed it up and patted herself on the back for it. She changed nothing of substance. She was a hero in the eyes of the other Mentally Ill Left.
This became a huge trend in the “Progressive” circles. People picking up issues no one asked them to, defending people who had voices to speak if they wanted to, and then running with it on social media, proverbially vomiting in each others mouths until the media took interest. It would culminate in everything from sports teams names being protested to the names of food items being changed (remember when Trader Joe’s got rid of Trader Jose’s marketing on their Mexican foods?), to apparel, to even individual people and harassment campaigns to ruin their jobs or lives.
The movement would gain lots of traction, and companies began reacting to this behavior, and social censorship started taking hold. It wouldn’t be long before every platform that was popular on the internet, from Twitch to Youtube to Twitter to Instagram, was creating an environment that walked on eggshells around a group of people whose vitriol and outbursts could trigger over anything. Language began taking Orwellian turns, with “allowed” and “disallowed” words. Accounts could be taken away in an instant for sharing a view out of alignment. Civil discourse was removed, and those that disagreed were “bigots”.
Mentally ill people had taken over the core parts of the internet, hijacked progressivism, and were attempting to create social controls on others at an alarming rate. The term “woke” was born out of it, originally defined as people aware of social issues and problems, but would later become a typically right-wing slur to define what I have come to identify as easily excitable, unreasonable, hypocritical, and reactive people.
The movement pushed harder on these matters. There was no room for someone to dislike anyone else or feel uncomfortable. In fact, anything outside of the approved narrative was hatred. Radical feminism took traction, and suddenly women’s rights took a back seat to blatant man-hating. Women who didn’t support it were labeled “pickme’s” and men who talked of their struggles were mocked and, in some cases, even encouraged to continue trends of young male suicide in America.
The mentally ill people received protections for this behavior. Anyone pushing back could get banned, but anyone pushing the narrative was safe. It created a hostile environment, fermenting a toxic, stupid, and brain-dead echo chamber. In it, a bacteria festered. A growing welt of disease slowly turned on the host. And not long after, Trumpism took full swing.
See, the Progressive’s of America are not actually people looking to solve real issues. They don’t take on the medical industry, they don’t advocate seriously for wages, they do not form unions or promote workers rights. They don’t push for equality among men and women, and among races. They don’t address social ill practices like redlining in housing markets, or purposeful under-appraising of minority-owned properties. They didn’t address declining vaccination rates, nor any other meaningful subject in America.
What they typically did, however, was try to infantilize anyone who wasn’t like them and make their problems “their” issues. Many Progressives took it upon themselves to speak for Black, Asian, or Native communities and groups. They took it upon themselves to speak for every member of the LGBTQ community, and they took it upon themselves to speak for the mentally disabled. They devalued the voices of groups they pretended to care about, so they could pat themselves on the back for the issues they caused and that no one else asked them to fix.
I am a firm believer that if people are not careful, society moves in pendulum swings.
I believe that any time society moves too far to one direction, and too forcefully in any direction against any sense of reasoning, acceptance of others, or logic, that they create a natural inertia that will swing back the other way. I believe that America has a ton of issues that would unite Left and Right people, and people of all races. I believe that many of our real underlying problems would also address life quality of anyone whether they are straight, gay, or anything in-between.
I also believe that when a group of mentally ill people who feel unfulfilled in their lives spend all their time attacking low-hanging-fruit around these real issues, they create obstacles to those of us who actually wish to address real problems. I started warning back in 2009, that if people kept trying to control the way others speak and talk, they ran a risk of creating a massive social fracture and they would accidentally empower hate and bigotry beyond their wildest dreams.
I warned that bigotry wasn’t necessarily conquered by screaming at it, shoving it in a vacuum, and attempting to starve it. Contrary, I believe bigotry is addressed through conversations, through experience, and through common ground. I am a firm believer that people often hate what they fear, and they fear what they don’t know. As a result, for a lot of people, exposure to people and groups they do not know, and a willingness to talk, is a very powerful tool.
You can move a person slowly, especially if you recognize humanity and attempt to build bridges. This isn’t some “everything can be fixed with a hug” belief. I am well aware that some people are pieces of shit and that nothing will ever change that they are, deep down, evil pieces of shit. But I am more of a 90/5/5 person in this belief. I think 90% of people just wish to live their lives and may only get entrenched in a belief due to exposure, while 5% are saints, and 5% are purely evil. Overly simplistic, but it works.
The progressives took it upon themselves to decide that, instead, most people who disagree with them are just wholesale evil. There was no misalignment of experiences, no education, only ridicule and removal. It worked for a little while – until it didn’t. And then they came back full-force, stronger, and more aggressive. The pendulum swung.
The internet let mentally ill people grab the reigns, use progressiveness as a platform, and made stupid, rash decisions to appease them. Online communities fractured, services decayed, and echo chambers were born. Now, one could say that this is all stupid as “it’s the internet” and not real life. I disagree with this. The internet, at least by way of social engagement, is functionally in the lives of every single American. This is real life, at least a part of it, whether we like it or not. Mentally ill people tried to make real-world modifications to peoples lives…. And people reacted back.
I often wonder if the Abi Bechtel’s of the world were ignored rather than platformed, could progressivism have made traction? I have wondered about it since i was on the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 and listened to people like her talk at events I worked. I wondered, genuinely, if we just rolled our eyes at these people and focused on real-world issues, if we could have avoided the likes of Trump all-together.
I have wondered if we didn’t give platforms to clearly vicious, clearly sick people, and let them be abusive, would the likes of Andrew Tate never existed? Would Trump and the Right-Wing appeal have not resonated so well with men, both in 2016 and 2020? Could we have seen a world where people found common ground on real issues, real problems, that face American’s every day?
I have spent a lot of time researching this and observing communities online, and over the last 3 years I could see no logical reason why people like Trump and Tate wouldn’t have moved men to the right. What conceivable reason would there be for young men to move left when vocal, large portions of their online presence were directly hateful toward men? Not just in disagreement with men, but actively celebrating their suicide, ridiculing them, and trying to reduce them to rapists and predators.
The media had a culpable hand in this, enabling this behavior by promoting every dramatic outburst. After all, drama sells. Covering every controversy that was knee-jerk reacted to by a band of mentally unwell people meant they appeared more valid than they were, and spiraled into reactive feedback loops. Voices and opinions got crushed, real issues were pushed aside, and hate festered in both directions.
What I feared came true. Fed up with walking on eggshells around people that were better kept from society, people swung back. The consequences are that years of progress and momentum get derailed. Truly evil, hateful bigots take the reins, and more average people, fed up with listening to some schizophrenics bathroom screams, stop caring. Hate rises, and innocent people suffer.
But hey, at least we got the toy isles de-genered.
And at least a few people we disagree with got fired.
Right?
….Right?