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I think a major theme of my life’s work is going to be “how do we coordinate effectively to solve the asshole problem”.
Assholes come in all shapes and sizes everywhere - rich, poor, male, female, trans, disabled, white, black, straight, gay... assholes are perhaps the most truly diverse and intersectional demographic
Mainstream social justice in the early 2010s got contaminated by assholes who were semi-indifferent to justice and hijacked it to pursue their goals of vengeance
Some assholes are relatively more culpable than others
The cycle of trauma means abusers often turn victims into assholes too, which is something that’s difficult to acknowledge and talk about
The cycle of trauma means abusers often turn victims into assholes too, which is something that’s difficult to acknowledge and talk about
Anti-assholes can become even worse assholes than the perhaps-relatively-innocuous assholes who made them. They can be weaponized, vengeful asshole vigilantes. I hear about this so often in private, and/but almost never in public. Everyone has an AAA relative or acquaintance
The reason I think is that average people are scared of confronting assholes, scared of inviting the wrath of assholes. Assholes can harass and harangue you for hours, days, months, years. Causing you pain, misery and shame is what gets them off
Because we’re so bad and slow at coordinating action with one another (which is, as far as I can tell, a necessary prerequisite for calmly and firmly shutting assholes down), individual assholes are allowed to terrorize & dominate everything from house parties to the White House
Assholes make up about 1% of most groups, cause about 75% of the damage, and ruin everybody's experience. And we let them, because we still haven't learned to do better. http://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/
