I just wanna remind people of something they probably never even thought of.
I want everyone to consider that the few do not speak for the all.
We’re blinded, constantly, with tunnel-visioning that makes us think the world is so much worse than it actually is. Our marginalized labeling and segregating with tags and buzzwords turns individuals into mere parts of larger groups and we consider the actions of the individual indicative of said group as a whole.
We see a crazy Christian church, we assume all Christians are nutjobs.
We see a racist redneck, we assume all rednecks are racist.
We see a black guy steal a TV, we assume all black people are thieves.
Do those sound like stereotypes? Good, they should.
We need to step back and consider the total population and realize that an outlier does not speak for the whole.
Sit back, stop typing an angry comment because you only read the first couple words and assumed I’m gonna say something transphobic, and allow me to explain what I mean here.
When you drive to the store, you get cut off by some dipshit and you yell “EVERYONE IN THIS FUCKING STATE DRIVES LIKE A FUCKING LUNATIC”
When you’re at the store, someone rams their cart into yours and yells at you like it’s your fault, and you go “WHY IS EVERYONE SUCH A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT”
When you get home, your cat bites you and you yell “WHY ARE CATS SUCH BAD FUCKING PETS???”
Allow me to answer all three of those: They’re not. Except cats.
One person cut you off. The other 150 drivers you drove past were driving just fine. Less than 1% of the drivers you encountered were dicks.
One person yelled at you and slammed your cart. The other 300 people in the Walmart were minding their own business. Less than 1% of the shoppers you encountered were dicks.
The most casualties in any war in history, WW2, resulted in about 3% of the population of the earth being killed. 97% of the planet lived, and 99% of the planet weren’t even participating in the war. That’s not to say WW2 wasn’t a big deal, or that a huge number of people dying isn’t a big deal, but just that we’ve focused so much on the tragedy that we didn’t take time to consider how thankful we are for the people who didn’t partake in that.
The point I’m getting at is that we’ve become so used to people being palatable that the people who act like fucking ass holes stand out significantly more while the palatable folks have become like NPCs. We’re so focused on “The 6 heroes vs the 6 villains” that we don’t realize there’s 8 billion other characters in the fucking story.
Look at a disaster movie, like say Day After Tomorrow. Millions of people die. How many do we cry about? None.
Now look at a tragedy. Like idk, uh.. I don’t watch many of those. Bambi. How many people die in it? One, two maybe. Do we cry about them? Usually, yeah!
Because when we give attention and investment to the characters, they become important to us. When they’re nameless background humans getting crushed by falling buildings, we don’t even notice them, they’re part of the scenery. Consider how unbelievably gruesome a Roland Emmerich movie would be if it was Rated R. It’d be hard to watch from how much blood and gore there was.
So lemmie nail this home one more time with one more analogy. Bear with me.
If you met 1,000,000 nutjob crazy gay-bashing Christians, that’s 0.47% of the number of Christians in the US alone vs the 99.53% of them who are not nutjob crazy gay-bashers and are minding their own fucking business and respecting the peaceful tenants of their religion.
1,000,000 seems like a huge number though, dunnit?
Well guess what, it is. You haven’t even met 1,000,000 people in your entire life and you absolutely never will. (Let’s be realistic here, you’re probably only going to meet and interact with a few thousand people in your life). You’ve probably only met, at most, 80-ish to 200-ish Christians in your entire life, and probably won’t meet more than 1,000 for the rest of it. That’s 0.0005% (And that’s rounded up!) of the total number of Christians in the US alone, let alone the entire world.
So with all due respect: If you judge the entirety of them on that small of an example, you aught to reconsider your actions, because you just might be a stereotyping bigot.
Imagine doing a blind taste test and taking a single little tiny dried flake of green bean off the side of the casserole and placing it on your tongue and going “Yeah no I’m not eating that that’s disgusting. Honestly, I’m considering this a good enough reason to believe that all casseroles are disgusting.”
This goes for anything and everything.
Gay, straight, bi, cis, trans, republican, democrat, conservative, liberal, Christian, Atheist, male, female, black, white, Asian, Jewish, pan, poly, ace, profession, social status, number of blue checkmarks being less than 16, fandom, kinks, furry or not furry, autistic, clown, ghost, frankenstein, draculer, doesn’t fucking matter.
You have not and will not ever meet more than maybe 0.01% of all of them on this planet, so stop judging all of them based on the actions of that few.
Even if you haven’t MET them and you’ve just HEARD ABOUT their actions. Let’s pretend every hairbrain bullshit thing you read on Twitter is true: Even then, you’ve probably read (or will read in your life) about 10,000 individual examples of a specific group of people being insane, which will, realistically, remain less than a thousandth of a percent of the total makeup of that community, sexuality, race, etc. that you’re judging.
Remember folks: Labels don’t make shit-takes, individual people do.
Unless of course you’re in fact talking about Frankenstein, there’s only one of him and that means you met 100% of them so if he’s an ass hole you can very safely say all Frankensteins are ass holes. But even then, that’s TO YOU. He might be nice to someone else!
Love people. Judge the individual based on their actions and do not consider the actions of the individual indicative of the value of the whole of an individual group label that they are part of.
Thanks for reading I love you.
