Seriously, I found my sister (who's nearly 30) watching a silly video about "feminists doing men's work", basically just a hate compilation of tiktoks and a chud yelling at the camera about evil leftists and stuff like that.

How the fuck do you stay happy watching this slop? It's just constant hateful bullshit, I'm surprised we don't see more terrorism from this stuff being consumed by millions of people everyday.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    That's the neat part. They're not happy. think-mark

    They're utterly fucking miserable and addicted to the little neurochemical rushes that being angry all the time give to them. Hate can be addictive.

    I have relatives that are full blown fascists. I'm talking the type that get mad at Indiana Jones movies for being Jew-created anti-nazi propaganda (just about a direct quote there too). They're utterly fucking miserable and contagiously so to the point that I admit it helped contribute to my decision to move to the opposite coast and start over there with my family just to be physically out of reach of their radiation emissions. hitler-detector

    • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      The worst fucking part is they play fucking coy about it too. When they go on a rant about pronouns or trans people, and I point out that they're being angry at people for no reason, they go "Uhm akshully I'm not angry, you are! smuglord "

      I fucking haaate it monke-rage

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        They also like to do bait-drops, like suddenly typing out of nowhere "MY PRONOUNS ARE..." or the old moldly groyper favorite "DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY GENDER" and by playing the part of a straw "woke" for only a few seconds they can get hours of reactionary circlejerking started in online spaces. debord-tired

        • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
          hexagon
          ·
          3 months ago

          The worse one is them bringing up how "Muslims are all rapists" but dressed up as concern-trolling for victims of crime. I call them out on it but then it's me that is the bad person? Like fuuuuuck you lenin-rage

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            For me, the worst typical chuddery are "(LGBTQIA+) are mentally ill" posts from extremely well adjusted and very normal people that post (CW: suicide references, bullying)

            spoiler

            unprompted statistics about suicide and then state their desire to watch such people die over and over again because they are concerned.

            Cowardly nazi fucks should drop the concern trolling, but if they did, they might also stop being nazis and be something very slightly less horrible instead.

            • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]
              ·
              3 months ago

              A guy I know, nicest guy generally, but boy, don't get him talking about white male suicide rates. Known him for 20+ years, but over time he's become more and more reactionary. He's a smart guy, could easily be a leftist since our views usually align, but he's so entrenched in his world view that it would take an act of god to get him out of it.

              I don't know what you call it. Sunk Cost Fallacy? To even begin to admit hes wrong would mean his been wrong about so many other things. I think that's what keeps them in this cage.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]
                ·
                3 months ago

                I don't know what you call it. Sunk Cost Fallacy? To even begin to admit hes wrong would mean his been wrong about so many other things.

                I think that's exactly what it is. It's the "STILL LOVE THE TRUCKKK" of political ideology.

            • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
              hexagon
              ·
              3 months ago

              Like you said, the suicide one makes me so mad, because they simultaneously concern troll over trans suicide, then celebrate said suicides, make jokes about it etc.

              Fuck these sick freaks.

          • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Every time I hear the 'muslims are all rapists' bit, I just kinda grin because it's one of the few places where my infinitely-regretted time as an Amerikan uniform actually comes in handy. I just ask them to say that again to every single white man who caught an SA charge on a military base. I ask them how high they think SA rates get on state-side bases. (It's even worse at overseas bases; it's just over here that anything actually seems to happen to perpetrators.) And then I guffaw, heartily, from the belly-up whenever they either fail to give me a percentage, or low-ball it so hard that you can smell the exceptionalism on the opinion.

            Like, nah, peckerwood; it's white men who are perpetrating the majority of it.

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      mad at Indiana Jones movies for being Jew-created anti-nazi propaganda

      erm-this-you

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        They had some glowing white-hot takes that were at least as bad as that but knowing them for decades makes it hard to narrow down and just pick one at a time, you know?

        Fine, here's another: being told by a woman, especially a black woman, to sit down and wait their damn turn while in a government office is such a deep psychic wound that the woman's voice should be said in screeching falsetto, with dehumanizing descriptions of her appearance, her supposed body odor, and her sexual proclivities, decades after that incident happened.

        How dare a less-successful off-brand trump-anguish have to go through such a traumatic experience! grill-broke

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I don't think they do. I think (maybe like us) the stress and cortisol and need to be "informed" becomes a habit. I forget the science but it's much easier to create a bad vibe than make someone feel good, and playing on fear and anxiety keeps people glued to the news.

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Exactly this. I like to say that they are stuck on the lowest rung of the dopamine reward ladder (is cortisol what I should be saying).

      They get their jollies from hitting the hate button, and they are addicted to it. They don't know how to be properly happy.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I admit that the first few months of my planting and house renovation project felt a lot like a detox from being mad at the kind of bazinga assholes I had to deal with every day at work (and at home) in CA. Being that far away from them in a very different (and admittedly hard to adapt to) environment made me less irritable overall and I still feel more mellow on average than I used to now.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Berries, mostly. I would have liked more apples but those take time and it's often best to get orchards that are already going. Work in progress.

      • take_five_seconds [he/him, any]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Like using Hexbear as a source of slop?

        yup. there's a wildly different culture but it's still stressful and toxic to the brain

        • MaoTheLawn [any, any]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, although I think this place can be a nice place to feel sane and understood in a world SURROUNDED by neolib shit. I feel like this place used to be more informational though. I haven't found it so good for keeping up with the machinations of the world as of late.

          Also, I am probably addicted to the upbears.

          • Moss [they/them]
            ·
            3 months ago

            Most of the important world events are discussed in the news mega. I do agree that this place is less informative to some degree though, people very rarely make big posts about theory anymore like they did on chapotraphouse or chapo.chat. I think that's because most users have been around for a while and we've all been through the basic discussions of Marx and Lenin.

            • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
              ·
              3 months ago

              It would be a bit like strolling into the Vatican and saying "y'all heard about my man JC?" at this point.

              • UlyssesT [he/him]
                ·
                3 months ago

                "y'all heard about my man JC?

                turns chair around and sits on it backwards fellow-kids

      • citrussy_capybara [ze/hir]
        ·
        3 months ago

        there’s hate-slop here but with legitimate reasons for hate due to seeing the evils in the world for what they are glasses-on unlike chuds angry for manufactured agenda reasons

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, it's not that the "is your hatred pure" legitimate or unwarranted, but being in the state of arousal, of being under threat and distressed that it creates, can become "normal" enough that it feels weird when it is absent.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Both parties can be very driven to seek out information that is distressing. Idk about them, but I do it bc i feel a constant need to be aware, to know what's happening, both bc i feel it might some day help me to change things, and because remaining ignorant feels like abandoning some duty. Whereas they're seeking out bs about "illegals" doing crimes. But they think they're being informed about threats they face, and that they need to keep seeking that "information" (fash propaganda) out to be "informed" and protect themselves.

        The reasons and goals are quite different, but both groups are exposed to a great deal of stress.

  • TemutheeChallahmet [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    They are addicted to the feeling of power they get when sneering at something/someone. Whenever they say "clown world" they feel like Jim from the Office staring directly at the camera--as if they are in the know, the most informed ones, the superior ones. That plus the comment sections of these videos give them a rush from both them posting and getting likes, and seeing their existing views get articulated by others--that rush of validation is hard to come by IRL.

    They aren't necessarily miserable in the traditional sense, in the first person, as long as they are not directly doing introspection or evaluating how far detached from everyday people they have made themselves. Usually the craving for these feelings of superiority/validation comes from them trying to mute some deeper insecurity and inadequacy they are avoiding facing up to at all costs.

    For instance a lot of judgmental puritanical people are also frightened of the possibility that they can't hang with the cool crowd and cannot make themselves likable in social settings, so adopting the worldview that those who can are actually just "mainstream," sheep or forbearers of civilizational collapse enables them to cast themselves as righteous/principled for not participating in the worlds that they'd felt excluded by in the first place.

    The harm these people are ultimately doing though is what is known as "self esteem debt," mentally placing themselves on pedestals they did not earn through any real-world action, and having to retreat to ever more demented circles and echo chambers to sustain the feeling of being on the right side of something--leaving their own self development stagnating, letting their insecurities compound rather than be unpacked.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Whenever they say "clown world" they feel like Jim from the Office staring directly at the camera--as if they are in the know, the most informed ones, the superior ones.

      They are living the webcomic format of "cool calm collected and incredulous guy looking at the audience on one side while the unhinged person that cares too much about something is on the other side." improve-society very-intelligent

    • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      I don't know if I agree with the linked article, specifically the part where they talk about how people complaining about the lack of black women in the Dove ad were duped because they accepted it had authority over beauty. I would assume most people who say that are just... pointing out how the ad is superficial and faking feminism like all ads do; not trying to insinuate they actually give it any sort of weight. The point isn't to point out hypocrisy but to point out the fact that all ads do not care about people.

      Also the anti-psychiatry stuff is super fucking weird. Fuck people who have ADHD I guess, says the "last psychiatrist".

      One of the great insights of psychoanalysis is that you never really want an object, you only want the wanting, which means the solution is to set your sights on an impossible ideal and work hard to reach it. You won't. That's not just okay, that's the point. It's ok if you fantasize about knowing kung fu if you then try to actually learn kung fu, eventually you will understand you can never really know kung fu, and then you will die. And it will have been worth it.

      Bitch I know from experience that I want chocolate cake and the best part about wanting chocolate cake is eating chocolate cake. Eat my baaaaalls you privileged piece of shit.

      I know I'm probably doing a defense mechanism of narcissism or something according to this person's website but I think people formulating identities and having conceptions of self is normal, not narcissism. And psychiatry is essential for many people to function. "Just be good and do good things instead of trying to process trauma" (which they think isn't a real condition) is garbage advice for most people.

      Anyways confidence debt seems to be a real thing but I'm seriously skeptical of the rest of the website. It gives me the same vibes as people who tell chronically fatigued or depressed people to just get better somehow and how they don't need medicine because it's bad and artificial (alternatively, that they don't need medicine because success doesn't matter! But it does matter because we live under a fucking material based economy and not "succeeding" means you die).

      Edit: he seems to think most things that take a "it's not your fault" approach to people's problems (aka most things that acknowledge the existence of mental disorders" are making shit up to feed a generational illness of "TLP narcissism" which is actually the root cause of society's ills.

      Fuck this guy, seriously

      Edit: On a clarifying redditor fan of this "psychiatrist":

      Why isn't it grandiosity (i have lots of grandiose fantasies)? What all narcissists long for is to be taken for high status individuals, whatever that may involve in their environments. It often involves grandiosity, but not always. It might involve victim status in "woke SJW" circles. It might involve being the most "empathic" in new-age circles. Narcissism is too adaptive to characterize it with just grandiosity.

      groooan it's just ted kacyzyansydmfkkg 2

      A lot of his advice seems good (having an internalized sense of morality rather than relying on others for it) but it's coming to it from a seriously wrong and ableist direction

    • iie [they/them, he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      self esteem debt

      if I google "self esteem debt" I get "...self esteem. Debt..."

      • TemutheeChallahmet [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/05/dove.html

        "You can't see it, but since this is America, the problem here is debt.  Not credit card debt, though I suspect that's substantial too, but self-esteem debt.  They're borrowing against their future accomplishments to feel good about themselves today, hoping they'll be able to pay it back."

  • HarryLime [any]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I have a weird personal theory about this. Have you ever gotten angry at an imaginary argument? If you stop to analyze your own emotions in that moment, you might find that it surprisingly feels good. There's a rush to anger, a feeling of power and excitement, and I think some people like to feel that rush, so they consume stuff that makes them angry. Conservative media appeals to this feeling.

    • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Yeah this is 10000-com% a factor. Their media even supplies them with an arsenal of nice little workshopped catchphrases they can throw at most common arguments, and that shit fucking works because siding with centuries of deeply-rooted propaganda gives them the veneer of stating obvious truths. They get to win all those arguments more often than not.

  • tamagotchicowboy [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Spoiler, they don't, they're the least happy people you can imagine, while most people keep their sad and angry weirdness to themselves chuds and other reactionaries are leaking it all over the place so they can be seen, so at first glance it looks like a strongman act and a better way of handling irony poisoning, especially to Murikkkans and others that love humor outrage at the cost of others, when really its not much healthier than bottling, if not worse since they harm others aside from harming themselves. They just lack social awareness to see how fool they're acting and it doesn't look badass, its like a baby having a tantrum because they were told no. The baby feels no shame for their tantrum.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      if not worse since they harm others aside from harming themselves

      I think it's worse than bottling because it doesn't resolve or even healthily manage the hurt inside and it pollutes everyone else within range. It's the second-hand smoking of emotional coping. That, and I'm just really fucking tired of "ironic" assholery and performative apathy.

    • niph [she/her]
      ·
      3 months ago

      Some people just need to be bullied more tbh. Stop validating or kid gloving their bs opinions from an early age. One of the worst effects of hyper individualism imo, this pervasive idea that every feeling is valid. People interpret that to mean every feeling is justified

  • Azzu@lemm.ee
    ·
    3 months ago

    They're not happy. But so aren't most people not consuming this crap either. Humans/animals aren't meant to be happy constantly, otherwise we wouldn't strive for more and thus proliferate the species.

  • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I'm going to take a more positive view on anger here, but it's far more negative of conservatives tbh

    Anger is a genuinely helpful driving force, especially when struggling through inflation, various traumas, the constant death of people due to Covid, etc. "When hope abandons you and joy fades, anger will keep you warm".

    The problem is that these people are cowards. They know deep in their gut who they should be angry at (those with immense power over the conditions they're in) but they're afraid of getting on their bad side punished for it, because they've internalized that being angry at authority is wrong.

    So they have to constantly dope up on hate-cope to keep their main drive to keep going, going. While it is absolutely not a good idea for us to hate scroll (constant adrenaline and cortisol leads to huge health issues) we generally don't need to do this. Just walking down the street or glancing at Facebook can give us dozens of things to be genuinely angry about. So we have kind of a natural, functional anger generation loop while conservatives have to basically supplement it with unhealthy amounts of hate inducing media.

    • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 months ago

      They know deep in their gut who they should be angry at

      I'm not so sure about that. I mean sure, you hear them talk about "elites" but it's always something like, Hollywood actors or something.

      • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
        ·
        3 months ago

        Well, it also makes sense if it never occurs to them to be angry at those who are more powerful than them, because as mentioned they basically believe since childhood that authority is always good