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I personally noticed this trend starting in 2013, and it reached its apex in the aftermath of the 2016 election.
On some level, I think there's a personality that craves power and control, but is also loathe to admit it through crass displays of naked force.
That internal conflict seems to result in escalating and increasingly nonsensical demands for "common decency" from everyone around them. It's a win for the person making the demands because they can bend weak people to their will, and also because they aren't the ones making the demands; they're just being the better person. They didn't do it, and the target deserved it.
The most interesting thing to me is that there are very similar behaviors in domestic abusers. Seeing DARVO fully generalized as a cultural norm is peculiar, to say the least.
"If you x then unfriend me" style posts, I believe, are one of the best pieces of evidence for the argument that social media broke our brains.
This is because people can react to that post. And the only people (well, not only, but the majority) of people who would post a reaction to that post are going to highly validate it. "You tell 'em, girl!" that kind of thing.
The original poster is getting a source of approval and affirmation that is orthogonal to the original subject-object construction. By blasting "people who x", the poster gets thumbs up and smiley faces from group y who was never in the original "conversation".
The physical world equivalent of this would be something like saying "I told off my (ex)friend Tom because he likes Trump" and immediately having several people applaud you. This doesn't happen because, in the physical world, people are far less like to constantly re-count negative interactions publicly. Yes, of course, you do it with close friends or your drinking buddies or whatever, but, generally speaking, you're not walking around shouting about how you got into a fight with your drunk uncle at thanksgiving.
Social-media opened up this entire new vector of indirect praise related to fundamentally negative emotions and interactions. Which creates this really fucked up feedback loop of "the more negative emotions that I have in public the more I can count on public affirmation." How else can you explain people posting crying/screaming video selfies after Trump wins (or after x thing happens).
Negative emotions are a part of life. Prior to social media, I actually think the default pop-culture responses to them (talk to a friend, go for a run, journal about it, etc.) were good enough. They created a process of negative emotion --> sublimation of some sort --> return to normal emotional equlibrium. Now, with social media, the cycle reminds me of someone saying "Time to get good and drunk so that I can do some coke to get back on top of things."
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FYI, it's "loath". "Loathe" is the verb, not the adjective.
I once read a JM Coetzee book (Disgrace) that spelled the adjective "Loth" and I still haven't gotten over it.
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Auto correct is a hell of a drug
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