> In posts on Instagram and Twitter, Shiffrin listed a variety of insults she apparently has received online during the Beijing Games: “Choker, arrogant, narcissist, loseritis, fake nice, got what you deserved, dumb b—h, dumb blonde, disgrace, unacceptable.”

Humans are awful.

edit:

--- reply to the below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30381879

(can't reply because the main post OP has been flagged, I thought this may happen):

---

Agree...many aren't (not sure how to assess most...)....and no one is awful all the time.

> and people seem more wired to care about the awful ones than they should...The lesson from 7th grade is that you need to look for the few decent people out of the roomful of assholes and indifferents. Tune the latter out.

Agree but it also makes sense to focus on the awful ones I think. Like we focus on fears. Got to keep it in balance tho. Like someone walking home at night will pay attention to the stranger on the street behind them (in the common trope, a woman), even if it's just a fellow commuter.

But also I think it makes sense for another reason: because we want to try to make things better. Like BLM and anti-fa will focus on the awful things they see happening...and online SJW will focus on the awful stuff they see happening. To some extent focusing on it makes sense, because you want to push back against it...because you home to leave a better world. But again...sometimes engaging in that ends up creating worse stuff.

Everyone is gonna come down on this issue in their own place, and that's fine. But I think we got to understand that not everyone is going to share the "tune out" strength that some people can do. It might be sometimes the right tactic, but again it might sometimes not be.

If the legal system or politicians just "tuned out" to people being awful, we'd accuse them of neglecting their duties. But as individuals we unfortunately can't always appeal to authority to come save us...sometimes, often even, we got to stick up for ourselves. Maybe sometimes that's tuning out, but maybe other times, often I think, that's sticking it to the people who try to do us wrong. Even if doing so makes us "do something wrong" ourselves: not talking about breaking the law revenge, just about morality. Say you get bullied, then you bully back and hurt the bullies feelings, isn't that a wrong thing to do, on its face, because it's amoral to hurt someone else? Yes...but isn't it a wrong thing to also to do to nothing in the face of evil and let more evil happen? Say you can stand your ground and protect your family from a lethal force home robbery, is it evil to kill the assailant? Or Evil to allow them to kill your family by your inaction? I think it's tricky...but basically a moral framework has to someone resolve that and provide guidance for people. Jesus' turn the other cheek, while noble, actually requires and presupposes a position of incredible strength. The Hulk can "turn the other cheek" to a barrage of small arms fire...but obviously a regular human cannot. People have different sensitivities, so there's no universal "should" that can apply to saying people "should" feel a certain way. I'm not saying you were bad intentioned suggesting that, and I'm obviously applying your comment to a much larger context than that in which it was given, but these contexts are connected, and it can be abusive to pretend you can say that a person "should" feel a certain way, particular in response to an abuse. Because that can incorrectly try to deflect responsibility onto someone's feelings being the problem, and away from whatever the abuse was being the problem. Which is not to say that how someone chooses to respond has zero responsibility, either. This is definitely a nuanced topic and trying to dela with it I'm already writing too much here. At the same time, it's not as simple as saying, there never being a case for tuning out. I definitely think there is, and tuning out can be really effective as well.

And another reason to focus on the awful ones, say someone is being awful to you at work. Do you just tune them out? Doesn't that just enable their abuse, or encourage them to do more, to you and others next time? The prison movie trope is you can't do nothing because people will just rape you then. So in the work scenario: Do you push back? Do you try to set boundaries with them? Do you just tune them out? I think there's a case for both responses depending on situation.

And it's definitely different random strangers on social media to people who are ... in close proximity somehow to you...but at the same time, there are overlaps in the dynamics and effects of that for people.

Like the many teens (even pre-teens, so tragic) that kill themselves because of online bullying. So I'm not sure if "more wired...than they should" is correct. Because for many people they don't (yet?) have the self-mastery to just "tune out" evil people or evil things: tho that is a self-preservation response we also have wired in: survivors of abuse, torture and trauma often experience disassociation or deliberately disconnect from their feelings. But that response in itself is crippling if it is not reversed to live again in the normal world. So in fact I think we humans are both wired to care about evil or scary things, to the extent that we "should" be, and also wired to "tune them out" to the extent we "should be". Taking as a basis for the "should" the wisdom of evolution. At the same time, I don't think that means as individuals we can't do better in how we evaluate and respond to these things, because whatever our natural inherent responses and emotions, we still get a choice on how we act and express that.

I don't think there's a one sized fits all solution, but I definitely think there should be more discussion, more clarity and certainly far more education about these moral, and response-based issues...and outside of the "ivory tower" ethics type of university education. Education for this sort of practical, self-management and EQ stuff ought to begin in primary school--when, as you say--there's plenty of daily opportunities to put it into practice. :)

Comment is WIP. Should be edited. Just busy now