patrick.net

You can learn a lot about a person by how they react to bad news, whether it's a natural disaster, a neo-Nazi rally, someone important denying climate change, or whatever else happens to be the day's headline. Some people get outraged, some try to organize a response, some get out their soapbox. You'll get your whatabouters, and a few people who comment "This sucks, thoughts and prayers" before firing off 50 posts about vaping and Overwatch. Then you have the Internet Nihilists, who take any opportunity they can get to snark about how humanity is doomed because we're all too stupid to live.





Plug search terms like "humanity doomed" into Twitter the next time there's big news, and you can watch the comments roll in like a sweaty tide. One politician advocates for war? Humanity is doomed. One prominent commentator denies evolution? We're collectively too dumb to survive. A corporation tries to profit from a natural disaster? Better make your peace, because we're about to go extinct. Sometimes people feel the need to declare doom and gloom just for the hell of it, like the adult version of locking yourself in your bedroom and blasting Papa Roach because you had a bad day.

Almost everyone who likes to posit that we're doomed, in reaction to everything from a shooting to the transgender military ban, tries to present themselves as dispassionate observers who are above the fray of daily life, like Dr. Manhattan with hash tags.

Remember that kid at school who always bragged about how smart he was, but never did any work? They're that kid. They want to acknowledge the problem without doing anything about it, to appear intelligent without being intelligent, because they equate dispassionate cynicism with genius. But what they truly are, almost invariably, are people who are unaffected by whatever news story they're declaring to be proof that Rome has fallen. They are above everyone else, but only in the sense that after pronouncing our species doomed, they can head to Starbucks instead of having to deal with the floodwaters rising around them, not worrying that they're going to face violence because of their race.

Downsides need intelligent discussion, not dipshit baby's first counterculture statement. They're calling humanity dumb and doomed on a communications platform that can reach around the world in an instant, which would have been inconceivable to the average person as recent as 25 years ago. And again, the people making these statements aren't affected by the reality they're decrying. When, for example, neo-Nazis rally, people whose lives are affected use social media to organize counter-protests, call on their representatives to speak and act, make fun of the neo-Nazis' stupid hair, etc. Meanwhile, people whose lives will go on as normal post vapid nonsense like this:





What all these posts have in common is that they come from people who get dismissive, or even angry, when other people care. To a certain subsection of the internet, nothing is more criminal than caring. About politics, gender, class, representation in video games, anything. They dismiss racists and people trying to stop racism as equally stupid for trying to change the world -- which is ironic, because that attitude is changing the world by making it dumber. They're like people saying "Fire is a natural phenomenon!" while your house burns down around you. They're using these "profound" observations to absolve themselves from the need to challenge their comfort zone and actually contribute to society, and then they continue to live easy lives while other people suffer. It's an attitude of "This doesn't affect me personally, therefore it's not a problem, and anyone who cares about it is hysterical and ludicrous," with an added dose of insufferable smugness.

Full Article: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-single-most-entitled-reaction-to-modern-problems/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark


NOTE: Interesting article despite where it originated. The comments section is worth a read, there are some very decent and thoughtful responses to this piece.

#Internet #Nihilism #Entitlement