After reading the comments in the previous thread, I thought about what has changed in the two years since. My impression is that kind of escalating purity ratchet peaked in the fall and early part of this year, or at least it hit a ratchet point where the next lift is going to be exponentially harder than the previous ones because there is real popular reaction and revolt against it.

Personally I have become much less agreeable, and as a result, people in my own networks who might have participated in the ratcheting don't do it when I am around, because the purity ratcheting was essentially a way to abuse and exploit peoples agreeableness. Given it was such a tiny minority to begin with, if only a small fraction of the majority become disagreeable, it can halt the spiral of hysteria it requires.

What I/many can articulate more simply now that we didn't have the words for then is that this is a very old redemption hustle, and they're offering a kind of redemption I don't need. Just because someone is uncharitable doesn't mean I have to mollify them, and demanding a denial or denunciation from me is just their way of making a conversation about themselves. It's a disease of politeness, and the reason we got here is because we forgot sometimes in this world it is appropriate and necessary to say, please, fuck off, because we are being taken advantage of by people betting very heavily that we won't.