Ngl, I kinda hate when people say “online is not real life.” I mean, technically that’s correct, but liberals said that to argue against Bernie’s popularity in 2016/2020 while conveniently ignoring that the reasons for his non-election stemmed from an electoral system designed to protect against the will of the people.
But am I incorrect in assuming that since the ubiquitous internet is fairly new, we don’t have enough information to determine whether normalizing bigotry and the most horrific shit imaginable under the guise of free speech, we probably shouldn’t run that risk? Obviously people don’t say this shit irl because they’d get clapped (and they do).
But what do y’all think? Is this like a super niche field of sociology? It’s fascinating to me, I’m curious if the medium changes that in any noticeable way
They argue this when they wanna say bigoted shit, or maybe if the bigoted shit simply doesn't affect them.
Normalising bigoted shit like this online under the guise of
absolutely causes harm. There's a pyramid chart somewhere, where the bottom is "joking bigotry", and the top is "active legal persecution", because normalising bigotry is the first step.