Daniel Gilmore: Once again, its worth having a conversation about the fact that theres a growing trend online of people framing pretty bog standard anti-social behaviors & conservative beliefs within leftist/progressive language in order to argue that what they're doing is actually righteous and moral.

Once again, its worth having a conversation about the fact that theres a growing trend online of people framing pretty bog standard anti-social behaviors & conservative beliefs within leftist/progressive language in order to argue that what they're doing is actually righteous and moral.

this is the endpoint of "everything is political"

What’s Behind TikTok’s Beef With Chipotle?www.nytimes.com A series of popular videos on the platform encourage users to protest the restaurant chain’s portion sizes by walking out without paying or filming workers.

Stunning to me how social media is increasingly becoming an outlet for antisocial behaviors.

Its such a clear and noticable trend

What's shocking to me is not that using the internet deranges people, but that people are doing it with their own face and name without the glove of anonymity that our anime-avatar betters here use to run naked and screaming towards the Poasting Horizon.

And it's encouraged by the algorithm because it still generates engagement.

Weren’t we calling women Karens for this type of behavior just a few years ago? Harassing workers is somehow fighting corporate greed now?

Yes! I guess a lot of ppl decided that the only problem they actually had with "Karens" is that they werent the ones doing the Karening

And that it was a woman doing it instead of the right sort of person (a man)

I mean obviously these guys are using logic and facts and not emotion /s

saying anything about how tiktok is clearly brain poisoning people gets met with "oh wow scared of China much are ya Joe biden" and its like I dont give a fuck about China, the stuff people post and share on there is absolutely *corrosive* to a working brain

even china thinks tiktok is bad for kids so they get a different version

Is that TikTok, or the short form vertical video scrolling format? Because the latter has versions on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, probably others too. I agree it's brain melting, but the format itself isn't going away no matter what happens with TikTok

it's specifically tiktok, its algorithm and the things people have done to game it

I've never used TikTok so I can't speak to its algorithm, but Youtube Shorts is clearly evil and brain destroying in similar ways

no. tiktok buried the videos of anyone overweight or disabled, buries anything using specific language (which is why zoomers now say shit like "unalive") and has no other means of reaching an audience. vine wasn't this way, youtube shorts aren't this way, meta's reels aren't this way.

oh I mean they're surely all bad in their own ways

i mean fair and i dont spend a lot of time scrolling through the other ones but tiktok definitely always gave me worse vibes overall than scrolling thru instagram vids ever does. idk i stopped using tiktok altogether bc i find it really off-putting

this is based on no research and nothing besides me giving tiktok a shot for 6 months bc ppl kept telling me they wanted to send me things on it and me rly hating Specifically TikTok

I think it matters that TikTok is *just* that. You can use Facebook without watching the videos, but you can't do anything else on TikTok

I would pay to remove Youtube shorts from my feed.

Shock/Cringe is the easiest content to produce, and content creators need to constantly provide content, so...

I think there's something to the idea that the GOP has gone so insane that people who would normally just be Republicans feel compelled to express the same thing through leftist language.

except that, bluntly, they sound like insane leftists when they say it!

Yeah I think many of these ppl genuinely see themselves as "on the left" but have worked backwards into regressive spaces. I saw a dude ystrdy say "as a NY transplant, I'm not allowed to claim this as home" & ppl pointed out that was indistinguishable from con "immigrants arent real USians" rhetoric

Activist moments, especially radical ones, across the political spectrum through human history have attracted angry, anti-social people eager to find a way to feel that their anti-social behavior is in fact virtuous because they're "doing it for the right reasons."

Inside one out of every four radical, direct action activists is a Robespierre.

There's a very successful political magazine called Jacobin for glob's sake!

*movements not moments

Just an expansion of the whole “therapy speak” thing to disguise regular abusive behavior. People clearly recognize how appropriate framing can activate the online mob

Feels like repackaged "The customer is always right," which anyone who has worked in the service industry can tell you isn't true and just bullies workers.

I used to work in the service industry & generally didnt have a lot of love for the owner of the restaurant I worked at, except for this one time where a customer posted this review on Yelp trashing one of our servers & the owner responded back basically w "actually, youre wrong & also an asshole."

lololol god I did 15 years and never again. I’d rather live on the streets (maybe)

10 year veteran of the service industry. Had some good times & met some good ppl, but yeah generally not a job I feel a lot of nostalgia for lol

I did Red Lobster for five years and I feel nothing about the bankruptcy. Just kind of 🫡

Americans believe that saying "the customer is always right" is an act of righteous defiance against business owners.

seeing a lot of ostensible leftwing activists confuse posting their arms akimbo and saying "do what I say"; with an actual actionable vision of a more equitable society.

Yup. Kinda like fever brained shitheads co-opting the "My Body My Choice" slogan to protest vaccines.

I agree but not really in this case. If you are provided a product at a restaurant that was not up to the standards you expect, you have every right, morally and ethically, to refuse to buy that meal. Now harassing or abusing workers is a different matter. And the videoing at best borders on that.

On the other hand, verbally/written abuse of people who agree with 95% of your politics but do not 100% agree on some details is both anti-social, narcissistic and counterproductive.

For me it’s the “repeatedly returning to a restaurant that you know will not meet your standards in order to pull this stunt for your followers” that enrages me so much about this. If they think Chipotle is a bad value they can go literally anywhere else!

Jesus, this is the mortifying shit grandpa does, as you make a mental note that maybe you eat at home from now on. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Gcgff

I waged a campaign at my local Qdoba about their tip options being set too low (you can choose 10% or 15%) and finally a corporate guy was there who said they did a lot of testing and found that having the lower %s means people tip more frequently so that's why they're set like that. It is so sad.

That kinda makes sense at a counter service restaurant, though? There isn’t nearly as much expectation of a tip at that kinda place as there is at a table service restaurant.

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