Comment by prohobo

> The average person is well-meaning and reasonable up unto the this eerie point in their life where they feel existentially threatened and thrust on the stage of public opinion for the criticism of others.

This is how I feel for the past 8 years or so; like I've been forced to become more and more deranged, because it seems like everyone either fully supports or tacitly agrees with an insane narrative that one way or another paints me or people like me as an enemy.

I can't just take what anyone says at face value anymore, or give the benefit of the doubt. I know that as soon as they say a key word, or behave in a specific way, or even just dress in a specific way that I'm dealing with some kind of narrative that is openly hostile. It may not even be that I disagree, just that I don't want to signal myself that way. I just want to form my own opinions, but that's usually difficult and often insulting to other people. People flip like a switch as soon as they sense you're not going to fully agree with them.

The postmodern bent of our discourse is really hard to deal with because you get immediately deconstructed into one of maybe a dozen categories when you say/do anything: lib, grifter, shill, racist, snowflake, bootlicker, chud, commie, fascist, creep, etc.

I can't even cut my hair without someone categorizing me based off of it.

I mostly consume media through an RSS feed nowadays, and it hasn't helped at all, although I now don't have as much "content" to deal with emotionally.

With RSS I don't have to relitigate arguments and ideas in my own head in order to feel secure as much as before, but the way I interact with people is still deeply warped by the entire discourse.