Awful people are everywhere

To take a break from the 4000 client projects I’m coding all at once I just spent a few minutes reading through some good old internet drama that I’m not going to link here because it’s not worth sharing (even though I admit I had quite a blast going through it).

I try to stay away from hot topics on this site, primarily because I find them incredibly boring to write about, but also because I believe certain topics are worth discussing only privately, one-to-one, when the people involved have the time and the willingness to actually engage with each other in an honest way.

I do want to say something to you though. You are, an awful person. Yes, you are. I’m sorry to say this to you but you definitely are. Why? Because I am absolutely certain that you have, at some point, given money to some corporation that is run or has employed some despicable human being. And by abstraction, you now are, an awful individual.

I’m just messing with you, you are wonderful, and people probably don’t remind you about this enough. That said, you likely have spent money and contributed to the revenues of some psycho somewhere. Hell, just the other day I learned that the producer of the lovely anime “Your Name” has been arrested for some despicable stuff..

I enjoyed that movie, am I supposed to now feel bad about that? Does that make me a terrible person? Obviously not. Annie has a great post on this topic that you should read.

What I’m trying to hint at here is that the online world is turning everyone into extremists and I’m gonna blame social media for that. People are complicated. Making assumptions is easy. Jumping to conclusions is even easier especially when you have a mob ready to support you. But you know what’s a lot harder? Being kind to a stranger even when your first instinct is to be enraged. Because no person is black and white. I can guarantee you that you could take things I said to friends in private and you could assume I’m a terrible human being. But I can also guarantee you that you could email me and we could have a lengthy chat and you’d come out of that thinking the exact opposite.