Follow

Is it just a meme that people need talking points memos to have Thanksgiving conversations with their relatives, or do people really have that much anxiety about interactions with people outside their filter bubble? Or was it always this way and it was just less public?

@pganssle No, it wasn't always this way. The extreme polarization and acceptance of boorish behavoius à la POTUS is a new phenomenon.

People do get nasty and best not to even start an argument with them. There's no win there.

So, smile and have a sip of wine, juice or what is on your cup. Get a refill. Smile and repeat.

It will be over soon, I promise. 😉

@design_RG Increased polarization seems to be the common wisdom, but I don't know if it's so straightforward. Consider that rates of terrorist-related killing were much higher in the 70s than today because of violent left-wing bombings and such, so there was a time in the US where some subset of the politically-active were literally killing people over their ideology.

There are probably ways in which we are more polarized now, but it's easy to forget the details of the past.

@design_RG In any case, I definitely am not worried about interacting with people with a different ideology or background than me. What's shocking to me is that anyone sees it as something you need to worry about, or prepare for.

@pganssle It's true that there were militant actions in the 70s, but what I think is new today is the belligerency of some average person you might meet at a social event. People are adamant about their opinions, and not inclined to listen, consider or change theirs.

If conflict is the likely result of such encounters, it ends up more productive to avoid them, imo.

@pganssle I have a variety of personal hypotheses here and one of them is that the subset of English-speaking US residents with at-least-mild social anxiety overlaps a lot with certain other sets of people in a way that leads to, among other things, certain internet usage patterns and certain kinds of articles getting shared a lot on social media

@brainwane It would be somewhat interesting to see numbers, and whether this is restricted to a specific subset.

If there weren't similar "cheat sheets" distributed among the politically active in the past, it's possible that there was an analogue among religious circles (e.g. "How to talk to your D&D playing nephew about Satan").

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.