Honesty ought be modulated with other virtues, such as tact & kindness, not to mention prudence. Your instinct to keep watch on yourself is, imo, totally civilized.
Its quite normal to have 'mean' thoughts, because we're often faced with comments that will tend to illicit scorn -such as when people come here bloviating about the world, people, film, etc. meanly. The whole woke vs its alternative pissing match is a tedious example that comes to mind, especially as I tend to go both ways on it, myself.
Moderation is not nearly as commonplace as it should be. Our culture of the age is geared to the promotion of extremism, self-righteousness, an aversion to seeing the other side of complex issues of the day, of life.
And so, folks pop off. Then we face the decision of how to respond, if at all. Generally, things have gotten nicer here lately, imo - the trolls usually don't get a lot of play.
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HarveyManFredSin (4877)
2 years ago
Good answer.
To be honest though, I was mainly thinking of saying stuff that was mean about celebrities/the people with IMDb pages. I wasn't thinking of being mean to any other posters (well, there was one, and I did restrain myself from joining in with any nastiness). Obviously, the likelihood of a celeb versus a member seeing something rude is much smaller, but it still seems wrong to say mean stuff, even about people who are highly unlikely to see it. It feels like one is giving the 'okay' to contribute to a general atmosphere of cruelty.
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jriley555 (8547)
2 years ago
agreed. I don't think its so unlikely a celeb, or their staff, would encounter commentary about them. But even that aside, as you say, adding bile to the social community is a poxy thing to do. Anonymity brings out a lot of human darkness. Sunshine is the best, though not foolproof, disinfectant. We should, at least generally as a moral guideline, be willing to say publicly what we choose to say anonymously.
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