this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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Many people who loudly pride themselves for tolerance, kindness, and openness toward difference drop those principles the moment someone expresses a preference or view they dislike. Disagreement itself is fine. What is not fine is the usual responses that follows: comments whose main purpose is to insult, shame, and make the other person feel small, delivered in front of an audience that can be counted on to approve.

It's status performance. The goal is not to show why the opinion is wrong or change minds; it is to hurt the speaker and fish for applause. Feeling morally justified does not change the nature of the act; when the sole intention is to hurt they're being evil and a bully.

The people who upvote or otherwise reward those insults are part of the same behavior. Standing by and cheering while someone is targeted is participation. It supplies the social payoff that makes the cruelty worthwhile.

This is one of the reasons large parts of the internet feel needlessly hostile. When perceived moral superiority is used as cover for meanness, and when an audience reliably encourages it, the result is environments where many people simply stop speaking. The claimed values of kindness and tolerance are revealed, in those moments, as conditional.

And no, this isn't about being tolerant towards people with extreme views. The idea for this post was sparked by my previous post about AI music and the vicious personal attacks I received for admitting to enjoying some of it.

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[–] PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

In another post here, you literally said:

"I have a very pragmatic view on music: all I care about is whether it sounds good or not. That’s it. That’s literally it. And from that standpoint the advent of AI music has been a major net positive for me. You can choose to ignore that and come tell me about the ethics of using AI or how you care about the story behind the song and so on and that’s all fine but just note that you’re no longer addressing what I’m actually saying here."

A user responded saying this:

"Hey, I get it, you just have zero respect for the effort, creativity, imagination, or sacrifice that an artist has to put in to create a work thats any good. To you, art is merely a product. Who cares who made it, how it was made, or what it even means, or if there was any meaning at all. I totally understand. I went to the store yesterday and they had this hand crafted chair made of high quality wood for sale for like $300. Fuck that! I’ll just go buy a cheap plastic piece of garbage chair pumped out by the thousands in a Chinese factory. I mean it’s just a chair, right? It has one job, who cares what it’s made of. “Quality, Shmality!” I say. I just wish more people would understand this, like I entered this fighting game tournament last month. But I’m really ass at Street Fighter, so instead I wrote this bot that would play the game for me so I’d win with double perfect every time. Can you belive they kicked me out for cheating? CHEATING! What kind of shit is that? I just used a helpful tool to totally do all the work for me as my only contribution was giving broad parameters while the computer program makes literally every other decision. The audacity of these people! Don’t they understand this makes me a champion gamer?"

To that, you replied like you mostly do:

"That’s an interesting cartoon caricature you crafted there. I just don’t have any clue what it has to do with the topic at hand. Or is it “BOOO!” that you’re just trying to say here?"

Every time someone says something more logical, convincing, and fair, you attack them with that. You act like a victim and say they just made up a caricature of yourself and whatnot. You share so many patterns of speech and behavior with types of people that suck, like MAGA. Reactionary, too emotional, too irrational.

You are petty. That's all there is to it. You are also morally inferior and abhorrent for supporting AI judging the state of the world. No matter what you reply with or say about it, it is indefensible. You are causing the deaths of so many artists who are committing suicide or giving up to a conformist boring mediocre life working for the Jeffrey Epstein Class because they cannot compete with a computer and a market filled with uneducated morons that prefer their plastic slop over organic real art. I already know your response to that is "that ain't my fault. I am just a customer, consuming what I like, having fun! The customer is always right" but no, it goes beyond that. You genuinely have blood in your hands and it is so easy to convince people of that now.

Just as the Jeffrey Class intended: replace the poor with robots. You are helping them cull creative talent, because they hate artists, they hate how influential they are. They know AI will always follow a set of rules they themselves wrote, so. You are helping them, because you probably want them to continue abusing children, or what? Why do you support AI this much?

[–] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Did you even read the comment you’re using as an example? It’s pure smug sarcastic ridicule with no substance whatsoever. They started with bad faith strawmanning and personal insults since the very beginning. When called out on it they just doubled down. I’ve engaged everyone in good faith in that thread who did so towards me. Everyone else I’m calling out for indecency and this is one of those people.

[–] PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

No, he did not insult you. He literally said this:

He is proving why your entire pro-AI mindset is problematic as hell. With sarcasm? Sure. You're a troll and a child after all, your entire profile is all about provoking people. You don't value art, therefor, you don't value Humanity. You are no different from a Jeffrey Epstein Class supporter. You are causing so much damage to people.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

what good comes out of the time you spend to write all these insults?

[–] PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Catharsis.

Nothing feels better than insulting evil. Supporting AI over people, valuing money over people, showing loyalty to a country more than Humanity, all that is evil. It's getting so many innocent people killed, innocent people you never hear anything about, because they are poor. They just become a number you never pay attention to.

Suicide rates vary by country but occurs in all regions of the world. In a 2024 WHO report, 73% of reported suicides were in low and middle-income countries. Mental illness and suicide are linked, though many suicides are impulsive and occur due to crisis. Groups subject to discrimination, including refugees, indigenous populations, and LGBTQ people, experience high suicide rates. Societal and cultural taboos around the discussion of topics of suicide and lack of quality suicide data are impeding factors in suicide prevention. Suicide prevention includes such measures as restricting access to methods, responsible media reporting, and treatment and assessment of suicidal people.

The suicide rate of the United States is currently 15.6. About 15 people commit suicide per every 100,000 people in the USA. All because they have to constantly witness injustice, racism, discrimination, xenophobia, greed, and assholes who want to replace them, their work and their art, the only purposes in life they have, their only way of expressing themselves, with AI and robots.

That was in 2021. It's probably much higher now, with Trump leaving so many people in poverty. Scamming them with crypto, the Epstein files, people like OP who doesn't mind replacing human artists with AI... All that easily depressed so many people to the point of suicide. It's just very easy for the government and media to cover all that up. They just don't talk about it, that's it.

The fact that you are not angry enough yet, not insulting the people building that environment that is causing so many suicides, is pretty gross. I don't ever want to be like that. That's what my family became, and they are insufferable and evil. They don't care about poor people dying, being paid the minimum wage, ending in crime, losing their children, even supporting Trump (and we are Mexicans living in Mexico) because he promised them money with crypto. Fuck that.

What good comes out of the time you tolerate or ignore all that evil? It keeps growing, unchecked.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

instead of alchemizing insults i work to bring that attention. you can be aware and care without yelling to the choir and scaring the curious away

[–] PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

I am not here for the curious or silent readers. I have already been shown that no matter what I say or do, over 30,000+ Mexicans, my people, will keep dying every year thanks to the USA arming the Mexican Cartels with guns. The number keeps increasing as well, since 2012. Let alone the number of Arabs and Muslims, also my people, my grandpa escaped Lebanon 100 years ago because of Israel and the USA attacking it.

To try and censor people's insults is evil. I have spoken to people from the Middle East whose parents and loved ones were killed with American bombs and bullets. Talked to Mexicans who suffer the worst consequences of the Cartels. They all insult the USA so heavily, I'd come across as a Disney character to you if you heard them. But of course, you want to silence them, right? You don't want people to see the anger they create? You want to protect the evil people who, with their taxes and votes, got those people killed, by not letting them see bad words and insults aimed to them? Why?

Same with someone who supports AI. I keep reading the headlines of how suicides are increasing, many artists and workers who can't find the joy they deserve anymore because AI replaced them, without creating more jobs.

And even then, my insults to OP were not even that bad. They were tame, for the type of person they really are.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

what do you think my argument is? for one thing, people shouting insults at someone else just to feel better is very scary to anyone considering joining the cause. the voice of what you wish to inspire dies within these artificial walls you make.

Talked to Mexicans who suffer the worst consequences of the Cartels. They all insult the USA so heavily, I'd come across as a Disney character to you if you heard them.

Surely you, in the much more fortunate position you have now, can afford to redirect that anger into tangible effects you can actually effect with your fortune, and save that energy for somewhere not actively hurtful—compared to those abject.