What’s a thought pattern that’s way too common and damaging to society?
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When people assume anything they don’t personally understand is bullshit
They don’t know how the spread of viruses works, so they conclude it’s a conspiracy. Not only do they conclude this, they refuse to change the conclusion when presented with new information. You explain as simply as possible why pandemic precautions are taken and they just won’t accept new information.
They don’t understand how a person can be a gender different from what their genitals imply and so they assume such people are simply delusional. Look, I understand how one hearing about it for the first time might think that but even when new information about the topic is given to them, they just refuse to accept it. They can’t get past “man penis woman vagina” no matter how much information is given, they assume if they didn’t know it before it must be bullshit
I guess part of the reason they think this way is a need to defend their original position even if it’s refuted with new information. To them, the goal of conversation and debate isn’t to learn, it’s to win. No matter what new information is given, they still need to come up with a way their original position is still correct. They see it a personal failure to have ever been wrong, not realizing it’s a bigger personal failure to remain wrong when they have been informed and now know better
This rant got off my original point a bit. Sorry for the ramble. I guess what I’ve really identified is a bunch of interconnected unhealthy thought patterns
Anti-intellectualism
Making fun of people for reading or learning or knowing “too much” about a thing
As an autistic person, I kind of get self-conscious when people point out that I know a lot about a subject. Even when they mean it as a compliment it still kind of bothers me and I’m not sure why. For me, the amount I know about most topics doesn’t feel impressive to me at all. People around me think I have encyclopediac knowledge of movies when I actually know very little about it compared to how much there is to know, I just know more about it than most of the people around me and am better at remembering facts than most people around me
i don’t see anyone making fun of it, but i do seem people characterizing intellectuals as either disconnected and stuck up; or depressed and childless; or godless and doomed to hell for it and all of it is done with the vaguely hidden intention of warning everyone else against intellectual pursuits or else they’ll end up like disconnected, depressed, and/or godless.
Believing that poverty is a moral failure. Though that’s been an issue for millenia.
It’s really frustrating that so many people assume poor people are lazy and don’t want to work when a lot of poor people are working multiple jobs and that’s still not enough to “earn” the right to have their basic needs met
I guess it is more a thing of Western countries. Max Weber suggested that the Protestant Reformation, led to the belief that economic success was a sign of divine favor, legitimizing wealth inequality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
In the case of the Soviet Union, Marxist-Leninist doctrine treated poverty as a product of class exploitation under capitalism rather than personal failure. Official discourse emphasized that unemployment, homelessness, and destitution were systemic features of bourgeois economies. Within Soviet society, this translated into a strong normative expectation that the state bore responsibility for guaranteeing employment, housing, and basic welfare. While in practice shortages and inequalities persisted, the cultural script did not legitimize blaming the poor; instead, marginalization was often interpreted as a failure of planning, bureaucracy, or remnants of pre-socialist class structures.
A comparable ideological orientation can be found in the People’s Republic of China, particularly during the Maoist period. Under Mao Zedong, poverty was framed as the legacy of feudalism and imperialism. Campaigns such as land reform and collectivization were justified precisely on the premise that peasants were victims of structural oppression rather than agents of their own deprivation. Even in the post-1978 reform era, although market mechanisms reintroduced inequality, official rhetoric continues to stress “poverty alleviation” as a state-led responsibility, culminating in large-scale programs aimed at eradicating extreme poverty without moralizing the poor as individually culpable.
Transphobia, racism, misogyny…
“I don’t like it so it must be bad” in relation to all kinds of media. So many people can’t accept that something just isn’t meant for them. There are literally thousands of games, movies and albums getting released every year so if you don’t like something, just don’t buy it and move on instead of complaining to (and sometimes about) those of us who are looking forward to it.
Edit: this might not strictly be the most toxic behavior but it makes social interactions super annoying, even in small groups and it seems to coincide with people who are overall fond of forcing their personal views and beliefs on others.
Yes, I quite agree. I get so irritated when people complain that a movie is coming out that they don’t personally want to see. Why is it so hard to just not watch it? Thousands of other movies are coming out that you aren’t watching. It’s easier to not watch than to watch. Watching it takes effort.
I don’t play video games at all. I don’t go around whining “they should stop making video games, nobody wants to play them”
I think you nailed it when you wrote " forcing their personal views and beliefs on others". That is what we see happening now with people trying to control others. We see it in government and with religion. It is trickling down to where the common person feels it is not only okay to do, but that they must do it to compete with others and get ahead.
I think a lot about how “good” and “fun” are two different things.
You can have a game that’s a fascinating exploration of a theme that really unifies mechanics and story, but is an absolute downer of misery to play.
You can also have a game that’s a glorified slot machine with bugs, no real player input, and abusive monetization, but people’s brains light up playing it.
There’s some subjectivity of course, but sometimes I see games that are good at what they’re trying to be, but I don’t have any fun with them. Some people seem to demand those overlap all the time.
I would say that‘s an entirely different point. If someone likes to literally watch paint dry, who am I to invade their discussions tell them they shouldn’t? Let people like what they like even if you personally think it’s neither good nor fun.
What I was trying to get at is something can be worthwhile even if you don’t personally enjoy it.
It does also sometimes stem from people’s inability to elaborate. Like if you dislike something, there’s a reason you hate it. That’s why I especially hate reviews like “it’s mid” or “it’s goated”/“it’s peak” like they barely help.
I think those people lack understanding that whether something is good or bad is an opinion. They don’t think they need to elaborate on why it’s bad because they believe it’s a universal fact that it’s bad
That a life has to be made worth something instead of it being intrinsically valuable.
I don’t owe you anything.
Well, that’s the social contract that define’s society. It’s literally damaging to society.
Anyone I’ve heard say this IRL is usually mid act of going out of their way to antagonize everyone around them for absolutely no reason.
on the flipside, ime this can look like drawing necessary boundaries too.
That with hard work, grit, and determination you can become wealthy in the USA too.
Probably not the worst, but my personal worst that comes to mind is manosphere bullshit that spreads like wildfire among men who aren’t happy with their life. I can sadly even see it with some friends, they don’t fully buy into it but most men are vulnerable to it because it’s an easy “solution”.
Conservatism, probably. The whole in-group supremacy thing is pretty bad.
In-group suoremacy isn’t restricted to conservatism though, sadly.
Feminism
“Most toxic” depends on who’s annoyed this week, but there are a few recurring mental habits that reliably rot discourse without even trying.
My biggest pet peeve is probably moral absolutism, often disguised as clarity. That’s the mindset where everything gets forced into clean categories of pure good vs pure evil, with zero tolerance for the rainbow of nuance.
Next up is identity-as-proof. If someone is in Group X, then they must believe Y, and any counterexample is treated as an anomaly or betrayal. It saves effort because you don’t have to think, just sort people into bins and react accordingly.
Then there’s algorithmic certainty syndrome, which is more modern and a bit more subtle. People get used to feeds that reinforce their priors so efficiently that disagreement starts to feel like statistical noise. So instead of updating beliefs, they just escalate confidence. Nothing says “epistemic humility” like being completely wrong with confidence.
Another one is transactional morality: “If I’m right, I’m allowed to be as harsh as I want.” Which turns every disagreement into a license for cruelty, as if correctness automatically comes with behavioral immunity.
And underneath a lot of it is something simpler and more disconcerting: comfort with not understanding things before judging them. People are so eager to tell others what they are by labeling them and defining them rather than simply talking about themselves (you… vs. I…)
I’d say nihilism and apathy. Of course life has no objective meaning, it has the meaning we assign to it. I remember someone telling me “humans are selfish, we can’t change things for the better” or something to that effect. It really pissed me off. With that attitude, you sure as shit can’t. If we all came together, we absolutely could force positive change.
The fact that life has no inherent meaning is my primary motivator to give it meaning. No one decides what I mean except me, and I say I mean something.
That’s now how the internet rules go. WE, “the comment section®”, decide what you mean and you know it!
Incuriousity
I will never understand people who think they already know everything they need to know.
Thing is, sometimes it takes more effort to know something than you have the energy to put.
That they’re player 1 and everyone else is an NPC.
Yes, main character syndrome. They have no awareness of their actions from another person’s perspective. They play by different rules than they expect others to play by because they’re the main character
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