My example was from around college with a Disney adult (I know) who was adamant that Pocahontas shouldn't be counted in the Disney princess line up.
That fixation set an alarm bell in my liberal brain, but I didn't want to think it was racism at the time. But the fixation on using technicalities (not technically a princess in the western monarchy sense) like in this case was just reaching to exclude a category of people in a way that was socially acceptable.
I can see that unbending view of rules and technicalities to be a red flag. The lack of willingness to take a personal stake in a topic and couching your real thoughts in arbitrary rules has been a clear sign for me to watch out. I see it with boardgames too. The excessive rule-following clues me in to a lot of reactionary behavior.
What about the rest of you? What things turned out to be red flags like that?
Edit - Fast forward to present day and this person is no longer a friend and is big into Q, Trump, and covid denialism.
Yeah, in California there are a large number of people who are literally trying to like enslave the entire planet. Gotta respect their ambition even if they're a bunch of shitheads. Where I live the people with big ideas are either selling essential oils out of their living rooms or obsessing over buying houses to rent out. If you put two m*iners together you are guaranteed to hear one of these subjects come up within one or two minutes. If I had a nickle for every time I've heard people say the word "drywall"...
lolol for real. Been living in CA for 11 years but lived in MN for 18 years prior and love hearing even some of my leftist friends shit on CA as some uniquely neoliberal hellhole in our godforsaken neoliberal hellscape of a country. As if Minneapolis isn't essentially a more racist San Francisco without the diversity, weather, architecture, proximity to world class nature, and ocean views.
I’ve heard people call Boston “San Francisco, but colder and more racist.”