It’s so exhaustively smug and condescending and tiresome and it’s been that way for years but it keeps coming. How are they not sick of doing it themselves yet?
I think it’s an offshoot of reddit civility fetishism where outright calling someone a dipshit gets you purged, but finding insufferable ways to call them a dipshit using polite language is tolerated. There’s a whole host of little language things like that that revolve around not being direct with one’s scorn for someone, all based on the nonsensical context-free “no you can’t be rude to specifically the one person you are directly talking to, you can only be offensively smug or go on a vitriolic rant against people who aren’t present, that’s what civil discourse means!” shit.
I think it’s an offshoot of reddit civility fetishism where outright calling someone a dipshit gets you purged, but finding insufferable ways to call them a dipshit using polite language is tolerated.
“Are you all right, little buddy? Who hurt you? There’s help if you need it. Hang in there!”
It’s especially awful when people start using therapy language or send mental health resources. Those are supposed to be there for people in crisis and it’s used as a convoluted insult to get around banning.
And that reality is that those people are not only apathetic to mental health. Some are actively telling people to hurt themselves.
It also further stigmatizes mental health issues. I’ve lost all hope for anyone “coming to save” the millennial generation. We are no longer in the hot seat, so nobody cares about helping us access therapy or some new way to exist. We are old now and are expected to suck it up.
This is why I get sent a “reddit cares” message once a week. The funny thing is, I don’t comment a ton over there, I never swear, and I never call names. I dont know why, but along with everything else we are talking about in this thread, I’m also annoyed with the over use of the word “fucking”. I’m not a prude, a well placed swear word can really enhance a conversation :patrick_starr_pinky_out:
But it irks me when I see people comment something like “holy fuck! These hot pockets are so fucking delicious! Right in the childhood!”
Reporting people to reddit cares is the new “who hurt you?” Because in the liberal mind, not agreeing with DNC talking points is tantamount to wanting to do self harm.
I’m also annoyed with the over use of the word “fucking”.
I get shit about this here too. I don’t really “self censor” my posts, but sometimes some tryhard Very Mature Adult tells me “um, you can fucking cuss, you know. Adults do it all the time”
and clearly haven’t noticed that I cuss fairly regularly but not all the time because I have no need to prove my performative adulthood the way they do.That’s just it. Not in a prude way, but there’s a time and a place. Personally, I try to help curate the vibe in any space I am in. I was always uncomfortable when my dad would go off on some Yosemite Sam rant after making a mistake in the garage, and I don’t like the way negative swearing sounds. There is no situation where negative swearing makes people more comfortable
There is no situation where negative swearing makes people more comfortable
There might be a situation where your audience is the performative Very Mature Adults that demand cussing constantly or they complain about how it isn’t Very Mature Adult enough. Clearly they’re uncomfortable with anything short of that frequency.
True. That’s why stand up comedians have been so popular for decades.
and clearly haven’t noticed
imagine not stalking someone.
Being on the same message board and seeing me post a few times is enough to notice that I don’t exactly “self-censor” but I don’t feel compelled to cuss myself up a swear just to please Very Mature Adults.
Absolutely, It’s a way to be condescending and call someone an idiot without actually doing it.
GOOD post
HonestlyI have a bad habit of doing both of these, Ulysses. I’ve recently taken to rehabilitating this awful habit and backspacing over it every time I catch myself doing it, and I find it almost always improves my post if I don’t lead into it with smugness or sarcasm.EDIT: Just saw your other post
I used to have a language habit of saying “honestly” as an opener until I actively stopped doing that because the more I thought about it the more empty and even potentially deceitful it was, especially in the “let’s be honest” format which tries to forcibly make others see whatever was said as the truth.
PLEASE MISS JUST ONCEPLEASE MISS JUST ONCE
One of my most blatant Ls was when I said I didn’t know or care who Jerma was and I was using :sus: emojis all the while.
I’m also guilty on both counts. I’ve even had somebody IRL call me out on my “Honestly” tic.
I do this one too. For me, I have a really strong tendency to over explain and over emphasize things I’m saying. It’s like I see a dialogue tree but can also see all the ways each fork could be misinterpreted or that it needs more context or something and so I go overboard
I use cliches and shibboleths and things deliberately to add extra layers or nuance to a comment, signal to a particular group, or just for my own amusement. I have no idea why other people do it. A lot of it is probably in-group signaling “yes i belong here i know the in-jokes”
I do use some cliches myself, consciously, such as “X do Y challenge. Difficulty level: Z.”
Subjectively, I hate the “it’s almost as if” cliche because even if it was brand new, it’s still insufferably smug.
I don’t think I’ve ever used that with a Z other than Impossible
I tend to find a silly way to work in a difficulty level customized for the post, like “liberals state their opinions with sincerity challenge. Difficulty level: it’s almost as if”
I do use phrases like that, and “it’s funny how…”, but it’s partially
a) I find it difficult to start a comment sometimes without that couching, like:
“It’s funny how liberals complain about features of capitalism as if they’re actually features of communism”
vs
“I find it annoying when liberals complain about features of capitalism as if they’re actually features of communism”
which leads onto b) because sometimes I don’t have a great idea of precisely where I want my sentence to end up, I just have a vague sense of “Oh, I’ve observed this and have something to say about it, let’s see where my brain takes me when I write the comment” and starting with “it’s funny how…” is usually widely applicable to a whole bunch of situations because it doesn’t often mean that you literally find it hilarious or amusing that a certain thing is true
and then finally, c), sometimes I use it if I am deliberately trying to be annoying and smug in conversations with liberals. Should I stoop to their level? No, probably not, but in the moment I’m just like “Alright jackass, two can play at this game”.
I do recognize (and hopefully most people do) that “it’s almost as if” is a very passive-aggressive way of starting a sentence and guaranteed to cause annoyance if not used in a strictly joking setting, it’s basically calling somebody a moron for not understanding a situation, which is the kind of thing that people must LOVE if they’re civility-brained and unwilling to just start cracking skulls at a moment’s notice like with the chapo style of posting.
That’s understandable. I used to have a language habit of saying “honestly” as an opener until I actively stopped doing that because the more I thought about it the more empty and even potentially deceitful it was, especially in the “let’s be honest” format which tries to forcibly make others see whatever was said as the truth.
and then finally, c), sometimes I use it if I am deliberately trying to be annoying and smug in conversations with liberals. Should I stoop to their level? No, probably not, but in the moment I’m just like “Alright jackass, two can play at this game”
When our time comes, it’s almost as if we will make no excuses for the smugness.
I think phrasing like that has become popular half because it’s quippy/sounds casual, and half a safe way to couch one’s opinion as fact. I see there’s a plausible deniability inherent in irony that makes controversial opinions age better. If you’re serious and stand by your own opinions, you might have to own up to it later.
But if you sound smug and snarky, you can get away with saying you weren’t that serious or attached to those opinions.
It’s not just intellectual dishonesty. It’s intellectual cowardice.
It’s definitely a lot of this. If you use big words, you’re automatically right. At the very least, you’ll get other smug liberals to dogpile on and downvote the interloper.
When we got rid of downvotes, I didn’t understand it. I liked downvoting shitheads. Now I fully get it. You should have the guts to back up your distaste for someones post.
I think a lot of that sort of phrasing boils down to the kind of interactions that are common on the internet but rare in real life so there’s only so many ways to express them and thus get really tired and cliched really goddamned fast. “Actually” at the start of a sentence, in the real world there’s very few times you’d need to do that and you can use inflection to do it respectfully but on the internet where interactions mostly fall into people treating the comments section as a personal megaphone, it becomes overkill quickly.
Language develops mimetically. It’s just a mannerism you pick up if you’re on Reddit a lot. People here do it too, sometimes. It’s kinda like asking why boomers end random sentences in ellipses… It’s kinda random and it tends to group with people based on shared social settings.
It’s too bad that the average Facebook boomer doesn’t respond to feedback from lessers and undesirables (such as the offspring that disowned them already) so they think it’s the height of “totally not mad” cool guy behavior to post lots of 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 to show how cool, calm, and collected they are.
People here do it too, sometimes.
I do the “almost as if” thing.
Okay, where do I sign up for gulag?
that elipsis use is the text equivalent of _/¯
it’s totally a reflex, I picked it up from them too
same
Asl
Shortened version of “as hell.” Unrelated to early internet slang “age/sex/location.”
I’m just turning into dust like that Nazi who drank from the wrong grail in Last Crusade
The fact that there are antiquated internet sayings makes me feel as old as Biden talking about roaches
You sure it’s Gen Z? I’ve been seeing “it’s almost as if” smugposting for so long that it seems millennial-standard if not older.
Gen X is certainly associated with sarcasm. And look at any episode of 90s staple Friends for examples of people who like one another constantly jokingly insulting one another. There’s definitely a condescension-is-the-height-of-wit thing going on there.
I sometimes read “It’s almost as if” as female-coded language, though. When being direct gets you accusations of bossiness, it can often easier to couch things in ways like this. I have my mother’s bluntness now but, when I was younger, I’d put a lot of setup into statements first.
I’ve used “It’s almost as if” myself when I’ve felt that a direct statement will simply be ignored on the basis of source, but a more hypothetical phrasing might permeate, and I probably picked that up seeing it used that way in film or TV. Yes, I thought whoever I was talking to was an idiot, but it was their bigotry that I was addressing with the phrasing, and this is how I’ve read it in other (obviously not all) cases, too. So I don’t have an unequivocal association with smuglords for it.
Has anyone noticed that all of a sudden everything is “bad faith” or “both sidesing”?
A single criticism, no matter how light is met with “how are you in here both sidesing X? Do you think republicans will be better on X? Tankies keep coming in here with bad faith posting so they can help trump win! I don’t care that Joe Biden was caught on camera running over 99 puppies. Trump ran over 100 just the other day! Why are you helping trump?”
All I said was running over puppies was bad.
Every single article about how bad bidens approval ratings are have tons of comments saying the media is “spinning a narrative that helps trump”. They’re almost to a full on “fake news” freak out. The funny thing is, they’re right for the wrong reasons.
I’m guilty of talking about “bad faith questioning” sometimes. I resort to it because it’s become controversial to even mention sea lioning tactics, no matter how glaringly blatant.
A generalized but not unseen example would be like “um, excuse me, but could you kindly point out any time that Joe Rogan was being ‘right wing’ as you put it? Having right wing guests on and signal boosting them doesn’t count for me. Your source must have no bias or agenda or narrative and by that I mean it must agree with me that Joe Rogan is a nonpolitical enlightened centrist that will open your fucking mind if you do DMT bro just do DMT bro don’t be a (slur) brooooooooo”
Oh sure, there are instances where there is legitimate bad faith questioning going on. It’s just impossible to “win” that argument with a lib unless it’s on here. You will get dog piled soooo hard anywhere else on the internet. It’s just not worth it.
But on the other hand, it was drive by, heavily downvoted comments that helped radicalize me. I always had it in me, but reading other, more articulate leftists like you, really got me where I should have been from the jump.
While we’re talking about reddit speak, why do the use the word “vitriol” so much? Nothing wrong with using the word, but it seems to have a special place in redditors vocabulary.
why do the use the word “vitriol” so much?
I think because it’s a way of complaining about what they see as “incivility” while also sounding sophisticated and using the big word that is cool and popular in corporate media.
“Disingenuous” in place of dishonesty/insincerity is another popular example.
Cultural affect that is useful enough within its own context to persist and then spread to other communities, like a disease
Reading this makes me realize that a lot of people on Lemmy are the equivalent of Wyatt the Redditor, with their smugalicious sanctimonious attitudes.
Who is Wyatt the Redditor? I’m kind of worried about peeking.
Actually check it out. This guy does videos dunking on how obnoxious and smug redditors are by channeling them through the character Average Redditor Wyatt
Oh, wait, I saw some of these before.
IT HURTS
IT IS A GOOD PAIN
Memes aren’t just pictures with sans-serif font. Why do Gen Zers call things “lit”?
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I stand by our idiosyncrasies being less insufferably obnoxious than theirs, fully embracing that as a subjective bias
Ours serve a purpose because they describe something otherwise not properly described by current language.
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