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Comment by passwordoops | Hacker News Reader

I had a thought the other day if the current intolerance is due to the growing infantilism that's been occurring since the 90s. This whole notion that interactions must be positive, pursue good feelings, people need protection from "harmful" content, etc. is the root of the current climate. If everything you've been told up to now is "be positive, be happy!" then it follows that unpleasant emotions are to be avoided.

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As someone who grew up watching the media of that era, I have trouble agreeing with that characterization.

Most of what I saw wasn’t encouraging Stepford/Disney saccharine positivity nearly as much as it was encouraging basic decency and politeness in day to day interactions, including those with groups that traditionally hadn’t enjoyed that. It didn’t even discourage arguments but rather emphasized being productive with them — in other words, argue to find solutions, not to stoke each others’ emotional bonfires.

If anything based on the steep decline in basic decency in the past couple of decades, I think it could be argued that the messaging of the 90s was unfortunately a failure.

I seem to find the opposite, that people appear to be admired and build audiences based on how much they can troll or generally how nasty they can be to whichever rival group. People aren’t avoiding each other to stay in safe, happy and positive bubbles, it’s more like rival football club ultras out to kill each other.

Those views can go together, can't they? If you've never learned to accept the existence of things you don't like, and feel entitled to have everything done your way, you'll love people who are fighting for your side. If you also believe that "the others" aren't doing it because they are different from you but because they are evil and know better but hate you and all things that are good, then you'll especially enjoy the vicious and nasty attacks on them.

I don't think they could avoid each other, given that they're trapped within the same reality. If anyone manages to fork the simulation into multiple branches strictly divided by tribe, will they be happy places? Or will new factions form, and the process repeat?

> I had a thought the other day if the current intolerance is due to the growing infantilism that's been occurring since the 90s. This whole notion that interactions must be positive, pursue good feelings, people need protection from "harmful" content, etc. is the root of the current climate

This is one of the core ideas behind prof. Jonathan Haidt's book "Coddling of the American Mind". There's probably something to it.

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