Mental Health

In recent years, people have used increasingly mixed metaphors to obfuscate partisan loyalty tests and characterize objections as suspiciously avoidant or condescendingly elitist so that they can make friends with bigots online and feel a part of something bigger than their lonesome, superficial lives.

For example, the list in the meme hardly makes any sense. It's true that some people consider some harsh words to be 'violent' but there is no reason to believe they are the same people who conflate 'stress' with 'trauma'. So the question "Do you agree?" is a poor question because any straight answer risks confirming the implication inherent to the list of metaphors in the meme: That there is a specific group who believes each of those statements and that group is being "increasingly extreme".

The meme itself is a political wedge device to make people feel bad and neg on the disaffected and vulnerable in our society so that people who feel tough right now, most of whom have not been through trauma or discrimination, can also feel correct and ethically justified by virtue of not being part of the vulnerable group being called out as "increasingly extreme".

What's sad, or funny depending on how you look at them, is that this kind of meme is so awkwardly transparent to both the political left and center that it makes the right seem pathetically ignorant. That's a shame, because stress is not trauma and only certain words actually lead to violence and disagreement isn't related to gaslighting at all and being irritated is a matter of opinion while harm is most often not a matter of opinion and people who are repeatedly difficult for the sake of being difficult really are toxic personalities and really do exist in the world.

Any one of these statements make for decent conversation, but this meme turns them all into one long and fruitless gish gallop so that nobody can really discuss any of it and all we're left with is a loyalty test and virtually zero substance.