You wanna know why I despise The Herd so much, dear reader?  There are myriad reasons, of course, but up near the top is their intentional ignorance.  Critical thinking is far too taxing to their atrophied minds, and they’re not all that interested in reality, fact, truth, or knowledge anyway.  They couldn’t care less.  They only want an Echo.  They need other people to tell them that they are right.  That they are victims.  That they are oppressed.  That they are innocent.
Their minds, personalities, and psyches are unbelievably weak.  Paper thin…shamefully delicate.  These are people who played soccer or little league and score wasn’t kept because the concept of winners and losers was too harsh for their delicate little world views.  And then they spent their adolescence on social media getting serotonin shots from likes.  And thus social approval is something that they simply cannot even imagine existing without.  And they were taught that the most instantly devastating thing for social approval is to be at all offensive on absolutely any level.  And so desperately do they need the continued stream of likes that they soon realize that anybody can get offended at anything, so it’s best to not say anything.  But you have to post everyday, because no posts = no likes.  So it’s pictures of puppies, pictures of dinner, pictures of “my girlz” making the duck face.  And that’s it.  For years.  But likes are like any other drug…one develops a tolerance.  One must get more likes just to maintain.  The pictures of dinner just aren’t cutting it.  So one of those cool frames is deployed.  A cute little colorful frame to go around one’s profile picture with the hastag du jour on the bottom to show You Really Care.  And one gets a like spike, because of course all one’s friends are going to smash that like button…if they don’t, that means their anti- whatever the hashtag was, and that is patently offensive, and one wouldn’t want that, would one?
And this continues to feed the fragile ego.  But it is also clear that as soon as the flow of likes stops, the result is catastrophic depression.  Keep the flow going at all costs.
But then one day, somebody who doesn’t post much ever, someone with whom you haven’t had any contact with in several years, someone who does not need likes at all, comments on one of your posts, and dares to challenge or even question it.  That is not why you posted it…you posted it to get likes, not have a fucking debate.  Who the hell is this person to disagree with me…with “us” (because you’re only saying what all your friends have already said).  Surely anybody who would even think to question the hive mind is a sexist, racist, misogynist, et cetera.  Which you say in a reply and holy shit the likes!
And so in goes.  On and on.  Someone recently asked me for advice on dealing with being yelled/threatened online because of something she’d said.  She thought I must have to deal with a lot of negative feedback from things I say on this site.  I told her there is exactly no negative feedback…none.  The reason is that comments aren’t allowed on this site.  That’s it.  The only reason members of The Herd will yell at you, threaten you, call you racist or whatever, is because other people can see them doing it.  And nothing scores likes like calling someone a racist, misogynist, blah blah blah.  But if no one sees them doing it, they completely lose interest.  Anyone will hit a “like” button to express their “outrage.”  No one will take the time to actually compose an original email expressing their views on topic.  Fuck that…takes way too long, and if nobody sees it, then there’s no point.
The problem today is not Cancel Culture…it’s Conformist Culture.  And we free thinkers find it pathetic.

N.P.: “Strange People Doing Strange Things” – Powerman 5000