Losing a friend to politics

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enz
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05 Jun 2021, 10:37 pm

I met this girl on a chat site. Been talking for a few months. She’s black american and I’m white kiwi

Today she sent me a 40 minute video of a “straight white male” on white male privilege. Can’t she tell from talking to me for a few months that I’m not a racist or sexist? Is the default position of being white straight male being unconsciously bigoted and part of the problem? She blocked me while I was watching the video because I grumbled it was 40 minutes long



techstepgenr8tion
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05 Jun 2021, 11:05 pm

I'd say it's not you. Certain parts of the US are getting a bit culty with this. I feel for anyone trying to date in that age range, it's complicated.


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BeaArthur
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05 Jun 2021, 11:53 pm

You think that's sad. Today I had a post-pandemic breakfast with an old friend I havent seen in 2 years... we updated how everyone's kids are doing. He has a daughter several states away that he only speaks to about twice a year ... and she spouts conspiracy theories until he has to ask her to stop.

Actually I had a parallel to that. After 9/11, my dad got sucked into some conspiracy theory and kept sending me updates to his blog about it. I had to ask him twice to take me off that mailing list. I didn't want to block him entirely, but I sure didn't want to read the crazy stuff he was sending me.


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badRobot
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06 Jun 2021, 3:01 am

enz wrote:
I met this girl on a chat site. Been talking for a few months. She’s black american and I’m white kiwi

Today she sent me a 40 minute video of a “straight white male” on white male privilege. Can’t she tell from talking to me for a few months that I’m not a racist or sexist? Is the default position of being white straight male being unconsciously bigoted and part of the problem? She blocked me while I was watching the video because I grumbled it was 40 minutes long


Might be 100% her issue, but it is possible you don't realize you said something racist or sexist. It is counterintuitive, but many people who say or do something racist or sexist don't really mean to, especially people on the spectrum. For a lot of people "women can't drive" still is not something sexist, just common sense. There are a lot of things that were considered common sense just recently, but now are offensive, especially if you are living in a different culture where some issues are not as sensitive.



enz
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06 Jun 2021, 5:26 am

That’s true text is pretty ambiguous compared to face to face



lostproperty
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06 Jun 2021, 6:48 am

enz wrote:
That’s true text is pretty ambiguous compared to face to face



That it's taken all of this time for her to bring this subject up, suggests to me one of two things. Either she's been surreptitiously trying to indoctrinate you into this cult, has become frustrated that you're not buying into it and has resorted to sending you the video out of desperation at not being able to persuade you herself. Or she isn't convinced by it and is subconsciously now looking to you, as somebody who is based in reality and not under a delusion (unlike some of her family and friends perhaps) to talk her out of it. If it's the former, I would quickly move on, if it's the latter then it might be worth perusing but you're going to have to draw a line and be strong, assertive and quite definitive about not encouraging her in her psychosis.

I've been in the latter position myself with somebody who had fallen into the half-grip of a religious movement that distracted her from her real issues related to guilt. Once I got her talking through that and she began to come to terms with it, she didn't need the religion anymore and left it behind.



techstepgenr8tion
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06 Jun 2021, 10:09 am

lostproperty wrote:
I've been in the latter position myself with somebody who had fallen into the half-grip of a religious movement that distracted her from her real issues related to guilt. Once I got her talking through that and she began to come to terms with it, she didn't need the religion anymore and left it behind.

I think what our culture needs to surface more of is really robust alternatives, such as organizations and vloggers who are deeply serious and committed regarding the resolution of resource distribution and opportunity gaps between ethnic groups in the US and doing so by backing education, entrepreneurial activities, etc. and shooting down rules or laws that are there for no other reason than to enforce what I'd think of as 'actuarial racism', ie. the bottlenecks in the workplace and economy which deny people access based on 'risk' and tie that risk to race or ethnicity.

One of the things these sorts of mass movements absolutely hate though is sane alternatives, ie. if they can't be coopted they generally have to be destroyed - because given a sane alternative people would go there rather than embrace a protection racket or some new imperial religion.


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enz
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06 Jun 2021, 11:42 pm

When I said women have advantages over men her response was “no your a product and a status symbol” followed by ladies night as an example. I’ll also add that I’m a human too



techstepgenr8tion
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06 Jun 2021, 11:57 pm

enz wrote:
When I said women have advantages over men her response was “no your a product and a status symbol” followed by ladies night as an example. I’ll also add that I’m a human too

Gucci and DKNY should start selling designer boyfriends.

These are the sorts of things that make life dreadfully...horribly... boring.


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Fireblossom
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07 Jun 2021, 2:17 am

enz wrote:
I met this girl on a chat site. Been talking for a few months. She’s black american and I’m white kiwi

Today she sent me a 40 minute video of a “straight white male” on white male privilege. Can’t she tell from talking to me for a few months that I’m not a racist or sexist? Is the default position of being white straight male being unconsciously bigoted and part of the problem? She blocked me while I was watching the video because I grumbled it was 40 minutes long


Hard to say what the problem was without more context. It could be that the impression she had gotten from you was that you're sexist or racist. Or maybe she sent that video to you to test how you'd react? As in, if you don't feel called out with it, you won't complain? Note that I'm not saying that you'd be racist or sexist, just that it might be the impression she got.

Of course, it's also possible that she was just looking for a "reason" to block you because she no longer wanted to talk to you, or that she had a bad day, or that she's had so many bad experiences with straight white men that even one little warning sign, in this case you grumbling about the video's length, makes her back out for safety reasons. Who knows.

In any case, if you'd only talked for a few months, it probably isn't all that big of a loss. You can run in to all kinds of people in the internet, and sometimes you run in to the kind that you first seem to click with and then things fall apart without you having any idea why. Been there, done that.



kraftiekortie
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07 Jun 2021, 6:41 am

Sounds like she was trying to indoctrinate Enz.

Very few people I know would do this sort of thing…even if they were rabid black nationalists or whatever.



enz
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07 Jun 2021, 4:21 pm

[sarcasm] she wont be friends with me unless I'm properly de fanged[/sarcasm]



techstepgenr8tion
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07 Jun 2021, 5:09 pm

enz wrote:
[sarcasm] she wont be friends with me unless I'm properly de fanged[/sarcasm]

She needs to fall in love with a Hotep.


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enz
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07 Jun 2021, 5:37 pm

got that out of my system

edit: still pissed