I think a lot of the cruelty is performative. Have you ever seen a video of one of those schoolyard fights, where two people are egged on mercilessly until they start whaling on each other, much to the glee of those surrounding them? I feel social media is basically one giant schoolyard of “look at me!”
The worst thing about this rampant cruelty is how it affects individuals who are not necessarily cruel by nature but who are encouraged to be brutal by the cruelty of others.
What about the schadenfreude against those who wanted to impose and enforce the vaccine mandates against the hesitant and the skeptical and who then took the vax and the boosters? I mean the folks who wanted to deprive anyone who wouldn't take the vaccine of any healthcare or social services and even of their very freedom of movement and speech? Folks who found support in the highest quarters (think: Biden's extremist remarks about the "pandemic of the unvaxxed" and Macron's statements about making their lives "as miserable as he could possibly make it")? And these skeptical people were just minding their own business; they just didn't want to go along with a collectivist Covidian superstition that could threaten their well being. If these people experienced a backlash against their tormentors, after having hidden for months during 2021/22 in far off places to escape the vaccinator fundamentalists, would you feel any different if they said to their tormentors who had taken the vaxx and all the boosters and suffered the dreadful side effects (ruining their lives forever)...."I knew this all along and I told you so, you dumb schmucks, now sleep in the bed you made"? In my view the cruelty was always on the side of the collectivist coercive conformists, not on the side of the individualists who finally got to point out the comeuppance of the cruel. Assuming of course that they don't take any joy from the dreadful fate facing their tormentors......
I think a lot of the cruelty is performative. Have you ever seen a video of one of those schoolyard fights, where two people are egged on mercilessly until they start whaling on each other, much to the glee of those surrounding them? I feel social media is basically one giant schoolyard of “look at me!”
The worst thing about this rampant cruelty is how it affects individuals who are not necessarily cruel by nature but who are encouraged to be brutal by the cruelty of others.
What about the schadenfreude against those who wanted to impose and enforce the vaccine mandates against the hesitant and the skeptical and who then took the vax and the boosters? I mean the folks who wanted to deprive anyone who wouldn't take the vaccine of any healthcare or social services and even of their very freedom of movement and speech? Folks who found support in the highest quarters (think: Biden's extremist remarks about the "pandemic of the unvaxxed" and Macron's statements about making their lives "as miserable as he could possibly make it")? And these skeptical people were just minding their own business; they just didn't want to go along with a collectivist Covidian superstition that could threaten their well being. If these people experienced a backlash against their tormentors, after having hidden for months during 2021/22 in far off places to escape the vaccinator fundamentalists, would you feel any different if they said to their tormentors who had taken the vaxx and all the boosters and suffered the dreadful side effects (ruining their lives forever)...."I knew this all along and I told you so, you dumb schmucks, now sleep in the bed you made"? In my view the cruelty was always on the side of the collectivist coercive conformists, not on the side of the individualists who finally got to point out the comeuppance of the cruel. Assuming of course that they don't take any joy from the dreadful fate facing their tormentors......