Who are your friends?

[Tracer]

If you treat someone poorly because of your political opinion, yes, that is shitty.  But if you can maintain civility (in this case, silence instead of combativeness) regardless of the disagreement, there is no shame in that.  If you choose to only fraternize with a certain type of people, that is your prerogative and nobody should condemn anybody (in this case, dethtoll) for choosing to do so.  

[wallabra]

I have almost no permanent friends in real life, and a few ones in IRC.

 

 

 

 

...oh, hello darkness my friend.

[mrthejoshmon]

I'm the "funny guy", a lotta people like me...

 

Almost none of em like me enough to be my friend.

[YukiHerz]

IRL, my close friends would be...

 

"1" Is currently a lazy man in his early 20s just like me, we crack up jokes constantly.

"2" Is also around our age but he actually has life success, we crack up jokes constantly with him and his gf who is also part of the group.

"3" Is the laziest one who keeps failing the same year of school, we crack up jokes constantly.

 

There's other people in this group but it'd be redundant to list them all, we're just friends who laughed through school for years, we're all one big bunch of unhindered hilarity.

 

In the Internet, my group of friends consists of members of a certain old chatroom that's no longer used so we moved to Skype and then to Discord.

 

"V" Is probably my closest friend in the group, he's a cool dude that's currently in highschool.

"P" Is V's BF, he's always joining me in my meme ventures.

"E" Is a bit of an overly white knight at times, but he just tries to do his best, he's currently trying to become a voice actor.

 

Similarly, there's other people that I consider friends in that group, but it'd be redundant to list them all, we all share a love for Monster Hunter and also share common interests such as certain animes or music genres.

[june gloom]

On 8/17/2017 at 0:27 PM, 40oz said:

How do you describe your friends on the basis of their political stance? Did you meet in a model united nations club?

I realize you're not asking that question in good faith but I'll engage with you anyway.

 

Most of us met through gaming many years ago and grew up and bonded that way, so no. We tend to think similarly politically largely due to having similar backgrounds and similar frustrations with the way the world is going. My one conservative friend is also a gaming buddy and a big Doom fan and his views have evolved over time as he matured, same as the rest of us. While we've all gone our separate ways in terms of interests and generally having our own lives, it's our politics that remains our one major uniting factor.

 

On 8/17/2017 at 0:55 PM, Tracer said:

Some people let their political views prohibit them from forming civilized relationships or engaging in civilized conversations with people that aren't of their ilk.  There's no shame in that.  Some peoples' minds are simply wired that way and there is not much they can do about that.  I find it best (for me, anyway) to just ignore rudeness and continue being courteous to those who are unable or unwilling to do the same.

Some of us just don't wanna be friends with racists or homophobes -- and that includes crypto-fashies who hide behind politeness and feigned rationality to conceal their raving subway vagrant politics. I'd say that's a pretty fair criteria for who to associate with.

[Tracer]

8 hours ago, dethtoll said:

Some of us just don't wanna be friends with racists or homophobes -- and that includes crypto-fashies who hide behind politeness and feigned rationality to conceal their raving subway vagrant politics. I'd say that's a pretty fair criteria for who to associate with.

I agree.  Racists and people who hate people based on sexual preference are scum.  I wouldn't welcome such hatred in my inner circle either.

[40oz]

On ‎8‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 9:03 AM, dethtoll said:

Some of us just don't wanna be friends with racists or homophobes -- and that includes crypto-fashies who hide behind politeness and feigned rationality to conceal their raving subway vagrant politics. I'd say that's a pretty fair criteria for who to associate with.

re: cryoto-fashies

 

Maybe I'm just fortunate, but homophobia and racism doesn't come often where I'm from. I have a lot of friends but many of them get pretty quiet when it comes to politics. I dont know the political alignment of very many of my friends. It seems... I dont know, crass, I guess, to discuss politics with most people. Its a type of conversation that seems to only seek discrepancies in gut feelings and perspectives.

 

Imagine a fun, charismatic, energetic, hilarious person, who has a lot of hobbies in common with you. However, the person has had nothing but stressful/painful/generallynegative experiences with gay or different races of people and doesn't like to talk about it. Its not their fault; they didn't control it. Maybe they've just been harassed by someone or a group of people that falls into that category and that shaped their perspective.

 

Is this particular person off-limits to you?

[june gloom]

If you're letting a negative experience with an individual color your viewpoint on the entirety of that person's race or orientation -- things that they cannot control -- that sounds like a personal problem that needs working on.

 

And anyway that's not what I mean by crypto-fashies and you know it.

[dew]

6 hours ago, 40oz said:

Imagine a fun, charismatic, energetic, hilarious person, who has a lot of hobbies in common with you. However, the person has had nothing but stressful/painful/generallynegative experiences with gay or different races of people and doesn't like to talk about it. Its not their fault; they didn't control it. Maybe they've just been harassed by someone or a group of people that falls into that category and that shaped their perspective.

"Look, you'd be racist too if you lived next to black people." And the same person also got harassed by the evil gays, I guess, because the dislikes tend to go hand in hand? But yeah, he's a swell guy otherwise, just talk about this select list of topics around him...

[Battle_Korbi]

I really doubt people become racists out of nowhere. Unless they were raised to believe so, a lot of people easily become racists and 'phobes once they see a member of a particular race/society behaving like a absolute total asshole, if they had never seen someone like that before. Like, in my country, people discriminate gypsies because a lot of them were thieves and con-artists way back, and despite having many of them finishing tough colleges and proving themselves to be just as good as "normal" people, a lot of these "normal" people hold grudges. I imagine the situation in USA is eerily similar.

 

Its just a humanity thing, and no, it won't be fixed by just talking or "behaving properly", and not even "educating" people (this can, no, this WILL provoke and increase grudges), this problem cannot be fixed with radical changes to the society, because most, if not all these issues with racism stems from (inter)personal issues, and most of these racists become un-racists once they can track down the first "asshole" they saw and become friends with them. This is a really tough thing, because a) assholes often remain assholes (small chance of becoming friends this way), and b) once a grudge passes down through generations, only select individuals might be unaffected by the grudge and find no issue whatsoever.

 

It is like with kids. When one kid sees a diffrent kid, depending on level of innocence and personality, many reactions can be seen and recorded. Some kids befriend them, some develop a grudge over something (smart or stupid).

 

I don't have to talk much longer about this, but I am just saying, not all racists are chaotic evil people who exist to wash down other races. Most of them hold grudges, and it takes sidequests-worth of work to unclot these grudges. Is it worth un-clotting? Probably not. Some people really don't like having their viewpoints changed and would mostly hate these people even more.

[Tracer]

So...anyone else want to talk about who their closest friends are since that's the topic?  

[40oz]

6 hours ago, dethtoll said:

And anyway that's not what I mean by crypto-fashies and you know it.

No I really dont know, that's why I raised that hypothetical. I've literally never heard that term before.

 

I certainly agree that any bias that leans on anger towards any type of person based on prejudice and insufficient personal experience is a problem that needs working on. Ask any casual doomer why they hate slaughter maps and they struggle to come up with a good reason, for example. It doesn't make sense that they hate it, but they do and its annoying.

 

I once knew a guy one of my girl friends was dating whom was legitimately racist. He got in fist fights a lot, used racial slurs in a demonstrably derogatory manner, and would become angry just by being in the presence of black or latino people.

 

The guy was fucking broken. We had to have talks with the girl who was dating him and eventually eject the guy from our friend group because he was just too uncomfortable to be around.

 

What your describing to me as a crypto-fascist doesn't sound like the person I described above. If they're being polite and friendly and are a generally ok person despite some deeply rooted political/social bias, I doubt they are disguising it as an attempt to persuade you to defect to the dark side.

 

If that's not what you mean, you'll have to forgive me, because I dont know who your friends are or how you met them. But on the basis of choosing your friends, ive never met someone that uses political alignment to hold it together.

[june gloom]

I mean, you can kind of put two and two together here. Crypto-fascism is the deliberate concealing of fascist ideology and propaganda to make it seem more reasonable. The term in /pol/ is "hiding your power level." Being an open Nazi or a fascist can get you in trouble, as we've seen; so crypto-fashies change the language. They don't talk about ethnostates or genocide; instead they heavily rely on dogwhistles, they focus on topics like immigration, multiculturalism and globalism, they put well-dressed, well-spoken mouthpieces at the front of their movement to seem more reasonable (this is what Richard Spencer was trying to do before he went off the rails and showed his power level and got punched for it.)

 

It's effective because dogwhistles are effective. But if you know what the dogwhistles are, you can see right through their bullshit.

 

Anyway, ain't nothing crypto about that dude you described. He's just plain racist and made it obvious.

 

(And, again, I met my friends through gaming. We just stick together because we're very like-minded on politics. But you knew that, 'cuz you read my earlier post.)