Are People Too Fragile These Days?

During this year’s Blaugust event, someone wrote a post on comments, which in turn sparked a lot of discussion surrounding whether or not a blog participating in the event should have comments enabled (it shouldn’t, btw). That discussion spiralled quickly, and honestly, I don’t think I could add anything new to it.

Someone said that there are valid reasons for not enabling comments, like not wanting to deal with hateful individuals, to which someone else responded with “people are so fragile these days”,… which is a sentiment I’ve seen echoed in a lot of different bubbles.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that this is the reason for all people with no comments on their blogs. It was just something that was mentioned as a valid reason if it was the actual reason.

Hence, rather than talk about the whole comment situation and possibly start up yet another discussion, I wanted to write about thick-skinnedness and “snowflakes” as well as whether or not “being soft/fragile” is a bad thing.

1. On Snowflakes
2. On Cancel Culture
3. On an individual level…
4. To sum it up…

On Snowflakes

So, let’s talk about snowflakes.

Snowflake is a derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. - Wikipedia

The term usually refers to people seen as overly sensitive — ‘fragile’ or ‘too soft’. You see that a lot in conservative and alt-right reactionary circles when they talk about today’s youth or the “SJWs” and “the (online) left”. People just seem to take offence so easily.

In Germany, in particular, some say our current youth could never win a war with all these twinks in our ranks. Given Germany’s track record, however, I doubt queers could do any worse than the previous generations.

All that being said, I find the term’s usage quite silly since a lot of the time, the people who call others snowflakes are the biggest snowflakes themselves.

The very same circles that get upset at folks being “too soft” these days are quite possibly part of the same crowd that got upset at Life of Brian, prompting localised bans and restrictions by individual local councils in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The film was effectively banned in Glasgow until 2009, and a ban in Truro was still in effect as of 2014.

When people these days boycott companies, refuse to watch certain movies or play certain games, shop at certain malls, and support certain actors, writers, musicians, and the like… that’s mostly an individual thing, and I haven’t really seen it manifest itself in localised bans in the same capacity that Christian conservatives have managed to achieve in the past.

Speaking of cancelling something…

On Cancel Culture

Many (mostly right-wing) voices complain about “cancel culture”, but I rarely see anyone actually cancelled.

Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling are still making bank — and any time they mention cancel culture or similar topics, their relevance and income increase. If “cancel culture” were actually as scary as people make it out to be, we wouldn’t see people complaining about it as much since those would get “cancelled” themselves, right? It doesn’t really make sense.

This reminds me a fair bit of the folks who complain that you can’t say anything these days… “Freedom of Speech doesn’t exist!”, they exclaim, utilising their freedom of speech. If it truly didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to voice those concerns and opinions.

Now, I must say here that I’m very obviously making a lot of generalisations. I only am talking about big actors and writers and big examples like the unjust treatment of Monty Python’s Life of Brian in the late 70s to early 80s.

There are people of public, for instance, who do actually get “cancelled”, like Kevin Spacey who Netflix cut ties with and whose acting career effectively collapsed after a lot of allegations of sexual misconduct by multiple men, including underage claims. Harvey Weinstein was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 23 years in prison, too, but I wouldn’t really call that “cancel culture” but rather “the legal system actually working how it’s supposed to work”.

Generally, though, I’m not sure if one can truly speak about a so-called “cancel culture” and mean it in the literal sense that a “woke mob” is out there, trying to get people deplatformed and literally destroy their careers.

I mean, yes, there are extreme examples of people uttering those beliefs and attempting to do that, but how often do they actually succeed with that, and should we really tar the whole group with the same brush?

Speaking of individuals…

On an individual level…

…I do think that society as a whole has been “softer” in that our understanding of toxic constructs in society as well as our understanding of our own emotions, has improved. People know more these days about internalised misogyny and racism (just to name two examples) than they did before, so they actively work on educating themselves on these matters and they work out these issues.

Similarly, people know how to deal with feelings and mental health issues. A lot of these topics are being destigmatised. It’s not as “taboo” to talk about these matters, and therapy has become something that even “healthy” people can and should visit. Therapy is no longer seen as only for the “broken”, and that’s a great shift.

The reason why more people these days are depressed is that it gets recognised more and isn’t stigmatised as much. Rather than judge someone for having depression or other mental health problems, we help them. I think that’s a good thing.

I know people (even in my own family) who will think of folks like that as “soft”, but they simply don’t understand how depression works or what it does to you. You don’t “simply feel sad and then eventually feel better” – for some people, there is no “eventually”. Some people die. It’s not something you just walk off, in essence.

Note: The image used in this section features a bunch of negative comments I got, some of which contain slurs or ask me to go die or whatever. 

Some folks claim that queerness is a trend or that people are queer more these days because of some hidden agendas or vaccines or whatever… but I think it’s much more reasonable to believe that not getting imprisoned or killed for being queer helps with folks being queer. Oscar Wilde was one of us, after all, and then he got imprisoned for it. Being gay being a crime does mean that most folks do it in secrecy. Idk the math is mathing.

So, softness and acceptance are good things, I think, and rather than call it fragility, I’d rather want to call it a sense of preservation. Taking care of yourself, protecting yourself from harmful influences, and making sure that you survive as long as possible should be a good thing.

Online, one hate comment can outweigh ten compliments. I’m not even talking about people being sad after someone left a mean comment… Negative comments that aren’t constructive in nature can upset folks or irritate you or just kinda piss in your coffee. Personally, I don’t like getting upset at things and I rarely do.

If you’re someone who might face more hate or negativity due to marginalisation and if you’re someone who cannot really deal with, either due to low spoons or other reasons, then it’s totally fine to just shut off that whole part of the internet from your website or blog. It’s fine to privat your socials. It’s fine to switch platforms. It has nothing to do with being “fragile”. It just means not being stupid.

Because, quite honestly, I think the whole sentiment of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is overrated and overdone. I get very negative comments almost daily on here.

I simply delete or unapprove those because they…

1. set a bad example for other comments and might prompt discussions that are past the point of my actual posts, rather than ones about the topic of my writing,
2. create a bad precedent, encouraging bigotry and toxicity in my comment section or they might signal that I’m okay with such wording and sentiments,
3. are just incredibly unhelpful and stupid and don’t contribute anything to society.

There’s no reason to put up with them. Unless they slip into spam, I skim them, then delete… because they’re a waste of space online, just as they’d be a waste of air offline.

Also, the ones up there are just kinda funny because of how silly they are.

To sum it up…

Which brings me back to comments. Whether a blog has them or not isn’t about fragility or strength – it’s about choice.

Just like we choose how to respond to negativity, or whether to buy into the myth of ‘cancel culture,’ we also choose how to shape our own little corners of the internet. And I’d rather build a space that feels safe and sustainable than one that panders to the people who want to shout the loudest. That’s not weakness. That’s called intention.

Originally, I wrote this post kind of in response to that sentiment of people being too soft but I can see how my response to it can also be seen as fragility. I think the difference here is that I see value in my response here as it might help people understand the matter better or possibly observe another perspective on the same issue, namely that the perceived notions of softness and fragility have less to do with weakness and more with a choice: Do we put up with this shit or do we do literally anything else?

There are people who feel the need to respond to everything or to always voice their dislike of a stance, video, post, game, etc., but those people really need to touch grass. Reactionary content creators freak out about pronouns and the like in games when in reality, they could just do literally anything else.

If you don’t like a game, just play something else. You don’t have to fuck with every game out there. No need to play Starfield or Dragon Age when Hello Kitty Island Adventure exists after all.

Similarly, if you don’t like something, just block it or go somewhere else. You don’t have to interact with people you don’t want to interact with. Not choosing to engage with things that don’t do you any good is not “fragile”. It’s smart. There’s no need to turn on the hot plate and sear your hand when you know that it’s bad for your skin, right?

Anyway, what I’m getting at is: Take care of yourself. You deserve it.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.