Is Society Being Destroyed By Woke or Are You Just Losing Perspective and/or Empathy?

“Oh the bloody wokeristas with their gender fluids and statues-of-assholes hating ways!” *seeth bloviate simmer*

Any of these phrases strike a note with you?

“Everyone is so sensitive now!”

Nope, social media and connectivity have just made it a lot easier for people who disagree with you to say so. Remember back in the day when Mary Whitehouse or whomever had to organise letter-writing campaigns and boycotts? Hearing about it is just a lot easier now and you’re rose-tinting the past.

Pictured: the world’s most loathsome toddler ranting about “snowflakes” just after throwing a tantrum because someone said he “had small hands”. Irony content: 0.

“What about my freedom of speech?”

It’s alive and well, as is the right-of-reply to everyone. Freedom of speech for you isn’t freedom from response. There’s no obligation that we must all shut up and agree with you. You just miss the days when everyone down the pub looked like you and shared whatever dopey opinions you had because you were all essentially the same person. Move on.

“This ‘Hair Bear Bunch’ are reprehensible hippies! This would never happen in my day back in the 1970s!”

“Young people today need a dose of REALITY!”

Variations on a phrase that usually imply you think young people should be sent to war / hit with sticks / made to live down a well or whatever until they’ve been so abused that they agree with you about how horrid everything is and how Something Must Be Done. Why on Earth would you want to do that to anyone? Show some compassion, you dick.

Old man: “Back in my day this stuff built CHARACTER! It teaches you about real life!” Young person: “You were born in 1962 and work in a company that makes mittens for hipsters!”

“I wouldn’t be allowed to do [stuff I did in the past] now!”

There’s two ways to interpret this: either it’s a rehash of Point 2, or you managed to do some seriously messed up stuff and somehow got away with it. If it’s the latter… er… good for you, I guess? Seriously though, I’m probably VERY glad that there are some social and/or legal consequences to whatever the hell it was you were doing.

Hey! Animal cruelty was measured differently then! We didn’t know any better!

“I’m under attack!”

Yeah… but are you though? Do people actually physically intimidate you or make serious threats against your life and limb? Or was it just someone calling you a buttmunch on Twitter? If you’re legitimately being threatened that is terrible and must be dealt with. If it’s the buttmunch thing, either ignore it or ask yourself “is it possible that I am, indeed, a buttmunch?”

Have Butt, Will Munch.

The reality is…

• The kids are alright.
• Older generations have been saying younger generations are the worst/most degenerate/blah blah since Roman Times.
• Your elders said the same shit about you once.
• Media tries to rile you up with every contortion of clickbait/crime/anti-common sense story it can find or fabricate because they’re funded by ads and they want you to see them.
• There are very real problems (homelessness, poverty, discrimination, climate change and the rise of fascism) which are only made worse when you close your heart and stop feeling for other people. Other people are your siblings, not your enemies. Didn’t Jesus have some opinions on that? Isn’t there a whole book about him honking on about it?

Now roll up your sleeves, stop carping on about bollocks and help us fix this mess.