Good job, Reddit!
Good job, Reddit!
So they’re cowards.
What you are describing is cowardice.
Not standing up for things you claim to believe in or care about makes you a hypocrite and/or a coward.
If your fear of group ostracization or abandonment outwreighs your other sense of values… you are either a coward, or, you don’t actually have the values you seem to think you do.
You said it yourself, in your hypothetical, that they want to leave, which implies they comprehend that being there is bad… but they’re afraid, so they don’t.
How is that not cowardice?
It takes bravery to stand against a group, to critique them, and still be involved with them.
Either they don’t really want to, thus they’re hypocrites, or they do but they’re afraid, thus they are cowards.
Perhaps a mix of both, but it has to be at least one.
Have you ever been in a cult?
An absuive relationship?
A toxic social circle?
It takes courage to get out of those things.
We’re not talking about a cult or an abusive situation, we’re talking about a community that is hosted on a platform which has problems that are growing over time (ownership that is gradually enshittifying it). But even if it were an abusive situation, people still find it hard to leave. Do you call women in abusive relationships hypocrites and/or cowards if they encourage others to leave their abusive relationships while struggling to leave their own?
Different people have different ties to a community as well. I think many people who left Reddit forever did not have very strong ties anyway, so they had less to lose by leaving. People with stronger ties are going to have a harder time leaving and they’re going to complain louder in the (possibly forlorn) hope they encourage everyone to leave along with them.