Hate and Dismissal are Easy
They're also Selfish and Low-Risk
Charlie Kirk’s assassination dredged up basically all the garbage from the depths of humanity. Good, bad, ugly. All of it came bubbling to the surface like puke on the surface of afterparty toilet water. Lots of back-and-forth on this subject. Lots of shit takes, lots of cringe, lots of rage bate. Just a real fucking shit show.
The whole thing should be making you step back and think.
Most people won’t. They’ll go on believing whatever they believed before. They’ll share shit that matches what they already think and they won’t care if they’re mistaken. It’s the same thing we do every night, Pinky.
Take, for example, this:
https://x.com/StephenKing/status/1966484038648021264
Stephen King posted something about Charlie Kirk, which he admitted to reading on Twitter/X. He later deleted the tweet and apologized. Which I actually think he deserves a great deal of credit for. It isn’t often that people acknowledge when they’re wrong, admit to be wrong, or take accountability for things. He owned it.
But the point remains: he still propagated a mistruth based on…what? It affirmed a belief. It’s a cognitive bias. Combine cognitive bias with the need to constantly demonstrate which side you are on, now you have the poison that leads to what I mentioned above.
All the shit gets dredged up.
Because people aren’t thinking. We rarely do. But this whole situation opened my eyes to a few things. Mostly that people don’t even know who they are hating. How many people who hate [insert person here] are basing their entire opinion on hearsay?
It’s Less Risky to Hate
We hate people simply because we are told to. We see the herd moving in a particular direction and we just assume it’s correct. No bias. No misinformation. We just fucking roll with it. Like Stephen King did. Like everyone did for that kid in the MAGA hat. Nobody ever pauses to think, “Is this actually true?”
We allow others to recruit us into hating people we don’t know or who haven’t wronged us.
Why? Because if we don’t, those same people will think we support the villains du jour. And we will face the collective shame. How absolutely fucking insane is that? That if we don’t hate who we are told to hate, it means we support whatever it is those people were supposedly doing.
We railroad people into hatred and they go along with it to avoid our hatred. If we choose to defer hating somebody on the grounds that we “need to see for ourselves” or if we ask for evidence, this is somehow seen as immoral. But the whole reason we push these hateful narratives is to demonstrate our morality. To show that we’re good people.
“Look at me, everybody, I hate all the same people you do. You’re good, therefore you must only hate bad people. We hate the same people, therefore I must be good.”
Absolutely insane. It’s irrational. It’s not based in truth or critical thinking.
You Don’t Get to Tell Me Who to Hate
Well, I’m done with that shit. I’m not going to hate anybody just because it’s trendy. Half of you motherfuckers are talking out of your ass anyway. You don’t even know why you hate half the people you do, only that you heard you were supposed to. And you don’t even care if you’re right, only that you can fit in.
What if we stopped defaulting to dismissal and hatred? What if we embraced people? Even the ones we thought were monsters? I have spoken about this many times.
How many people hated Charlie Kirk without ever seeing him talk? This applies to anybody. How many people hate Joe Rogan who have never listened to a single show? How many people had the wrong idea about what Bernie Sanders was trying to promote? I’m telling you, nobody thinks for themselves. They dismiss people. How many people are swayed by a debate? Nobody! People go into it already having made up their minds.
And this is the problem.
We don’t think for ourselves. We pick a side before a word is even uttered. “I know I’m not supposed to support this person.”
I’m saying fuck that. Listen to everybody. Make your own opinion. Leave your team behind. Agree with someone about some things, disagree about the rest. And for fuck’s sake, it’s okay to say you’re not going to hate someone just because you were told to.
And in case you missed the point of this post, it's this: don't let people tell you who to hate. That's it. It isn't that controversial. I have always pushed back on people to see if they were being hypocritical. Someone says the word "socialist" or "communist" or "fascist" I want to know if they even know what that word means. I want to know if people are basing their judgments on shit they saw online (like Stephen King did). That's it. I'm not tell you not to think people are reprehensible. I'm telling you to come to your own conclusions and do your own research. People are ALL ABOUT this when it suits them. I'm saying do it even when it's not emotionally convenient to do so.