RE: https://oldbytes.space/@gloriouscow/116224004520766154

There's a larger issue here here, and that is that it's trendy in certain spaces to be extreme and opinionated about your beliefs, and angry at anyone who doesn't share them. I see this a lot on Bluesky and Mastodon.

The problem is, this is a slippery slope towards ending up in a tiny bubble and losing many of your friends. And that doesn't lead to happiness or to good mental health. Not for you, and not for the people around you.

The two biggest topics I see this with lately is AI and trans discourse. The simple fact is, morality isn't absolute. Words don't have absolute meanings. Tools aren't absolutely evil or absolutely moral.

It's okay to be sad at the state of the world. I'm sad too! And it's okay to be angry at problem people (think, the billionaire class). But when you direct that anger at your peers, just because they don't share the exact moral compass you have, you're just hurting them and hurting yourself.

It's impossible to live in a world where your social circle is fully aligned with you on beliefs and morals. It just isn't. It's okay to be disappointed. But if you start cutting people off for it, you aren't making anything better.

(cont'd)

In the extreme, you misfire, and misfire so badly you just end up isolating yourself. I've seen this happen multiple times recently, with people who saw what they perceived to be a moral slight or failing by someone they knew, and came out with knives swinging. Those never end well. At best you get blocked by one person. At worst you get called out for being completely unreasonable, and end up losing badly.

For better or worse, we need to work together. You can prioritize those closer to your ideals. It's okay to modulate your relationships based on how aligned you are on values. But that's the key word, modulation. If you care about someone and they make a moral choice that you dislike, the two healthy things to do are to either have a conversation about it (in private!), or just do nothing, accept the disappointment, and move on.

At the end of the day, outrage and anger might get you clicks, boosts, and a feeling of satisfaction... but are you really helping? Are you really making your life better in the long term? Others'?

I'm going to use an older example on purpose. Some time back, a friend expressed that she wanted to play and stream the wizard game, and I DMed her. I tried to explain why that would be so hurtful. And I convinced her not to. And I think that was a lot more productive than piling onto people who play the wizard game on the internet.

@lina I think I actually post fewer AI critical takes here because it's too easy to get engagement with that kind of content. It feels slimy to do it too often.
@dvshkn @lina One of the epiphanies I had relatively recently was the thing that annoyed me most is that it was essentially just clout chasing, but the people who post it probably object to "clout chasing" in the abstract because they define it as "people posting about popular things that I don't care about"