it feels like we’re talking past each other. I want everyone to be friends, so I don’t like ingroup/outgroup distinctions? being friendly to strangers good! doing it in a way that requires outgrouping other strangers bad. that’s all?
edit: coming back to this—like, I disagree with very little you’ve said here besides the “joking”
bad, like those icky people in outgroup who lack our special characteristics.
and maybe also ambient praise of
You’re just that smart.
having seen society seem to move in a direction where these jokes are consistently used as cover to mean such things literally, I’ve stopped playing along when people try to be dismissive of an outgroup even as a joke. the fact that things got worse is why I’ve come to distrust that people who make jokes of criticism don’t mean it—countersignaling doesn’t work when people often mean it literally. you could have said “I really appreciate the people on this website” without having to say “unlike everyone else, who are bad”. you can say that, of course, but I’ll reliably react negatively to it, because I’ve come to dislike countersignaling that produces cover for actually just meaning the bad thing. if you want to say “lots of people have problem x” then please be specific about what x is, rather than producing incentive to conformity by criticizing people who differ and passing it off as a joke.
if you want to say positive things, just … say the positive thing? I don’t want people to try to make me feel good by tearing others down.
it feels like we’re talking past each other. I want everyone to be friends, so I don’t like ingroup/outgroup distinctions? being friendly to strangers good! doing it in a way that requires outgrouping other strangers bad. that’s all?
edit: coming back to this—like, I disagree with very little you’ve said here besides the “joking”
and maybe also ambient praise of
having seen society seem to move in a direction where these jokes are consistently used as cover to mean such things literally, I’ve stopped playing along when people try to be dismissive of an outgroup even as a joke. the fact that things got worse is why I’ve come to distrust that people who make jokes of criticism don’t mean it—countersignaling doesn’t work when people often mean it literally. you could have said “I really appreciate the people on this website” without having to say “unlike everyone else, who are bad”. you can say that, of course, but I’ll reliably react negatively to it, because I’ve come to dislike countersignaling that produces cover for actually just meaning the bad thing. if you want to say “lots of people have problem x” then please be specific about what x is, rather than producing incentive to conformity by criticizing people who differ and passing it off as a joke.
if you want to say positive things, just … say the positive thing? I don’t want people to try to make me feel good by tearing others down.