every time I see that post about the 4chan incel dude turning his life around bc he started raising shrimp or whatever im like yeah okay man but do you still hate women? you still hate women bro?
Like “I had an easier time developing empathy for shrimp than for women” is not a success story.
to expect exemplary behaviour from someone who was in the rock bottom of a system designed to radicalize these disillusioned young men and turn them into white supremacists and by himself found a way to get out of it and realize he can do better, and then treat him as unsalvageable and permanently damaged because he used bad words, is why this same system keeps being so successful at catching and ruining these men. the shame they are made to feel becomes anger.
i understand not having the patience to educate everyone you ever meet (i don’t do that), but you all on this hellsite need some nuance and realize people can be in different points of enlightenment and recovery. that dude was reaching out, don’t throw him back in the pit.
If you’re just going to decide people are irredeemable trash because they fucked up, that just isn’t terribly useful.
Like, forget moral purity or whatever. If you’re writing off people who are trying, who may choose to do good in the world in some way, that’s wasteful. It’s stupid.
There’ve been articles upon articles, about the path this stuff takes, nudging guys - some of them actual children - further and further right. (And how it takes a similar path in other circles, like with TERFs preying on young women here on Tumblr.)
You don’t get to just throw people in the Permanently Bad Forever bin and exile them from society. That’s not how that … that’s not how anything works, and honestly you should be pretty suspicious of anybody advocating it.
Consciously, or not, Everyone, every day, is making choices about who they are and what kind of person they want to be - and refusing to make a choice is still a choice. And you can always make a different choice. It’s not too late. You can decide “I don’t like the kind of person I am, I would like to be better”.
You know that headline “I don’t know how to explain that you should care
about other people”? The thin. People don’t go from apathetic nihilists to caring about strangers with
no intermediary steps.
They’re just not wired that way. Empathy is learned.
Honestly, unironically caring about something is a pretty good step. That’s something that can be built on.
“Perfect” is the enemy of “Good”.
Nobody’s going to make you be his BFF, but it’s a start. And, quite frankly, the more of them that climb out of that pit, the better off the rest of us, as a society, are.
On this topic, there was a really good post I read once about incels and the like having the “crabs in a bucket mentality” where if one tries to break out and make something of their life, the others will pull them back in. That, to me, is enough reason to encourage even seemingly meaningless personal growth like deciding to turn your life around because you have pet shrimp.
Like no, you don’t have to give people medals for being Not A Complete Asshole, but thinking that people are Permanently Bad or expecting a complete and total 180 degree turnaround leading to perfection are pretty toxic mindsets in and of themselves and absolutely contribute to people throwing themselves back into these circles and mindsets.
