Everyone is Freakin’ Triggered These Days
“I had been teaching an MBA class when this student — a Kurd from Turkey — received an emergency phone call from home. In his village, police had responded to one neighbor’s complaint that the chickens of another neighbor were running loose in the street. The patriarch of the family whose chickens were loose was incensed when he came home to learn that the “honor” of his family had been insulted by the police visit.
In rage, he shot to death the members of the family that had called the police.”
― Barry Brownstein, professor emeritus of economics at Baltimore University.
In ideal world, I would love to tell you that the first thing that came to my mind while reading this is: “What is the world turning to?”
But the comedic side of my brain was wondering what happened if that dude lived next to Permit Patty or BBQ Becky.
For those who are not familiar with the story, a few weeks ago there was a video that went viral about a woman who took offense at an 8 year old girl who for selling a few bottles of water in the street.
The grown up adult figured that the child might not have the proper ‘permit’ which inexplicably caused her to feel ‘triggered’.
She called the cops but nobody came, which is a no-brainer given the ridiculous nature of the situation.
However, the video of her calling the cops went viral which cost her her job but earned her a new nickname: Permit Patty.
Her biggest clients immediately cut ties with her for “calling the police on an 8-year-old entrepreneur selling water on a hot day” among other reasons.
And this isn’t an isolated incident, BBQ Becky was walking along the park when she saw a group of men and women keeping to themselves while enjoying some food and drinks on a sunny day… For some reason, that caused her to feel ‘triggered’.
I guess that minding one’s own business is a luxury that triggered people cannot afford.
She called the cops alleging that those ladies and gentlemen didn’t have a permit to have a barbecue in the park. The police tried to patiently explain that no permit was actually needed in that area, but to no avail.
Unfortunately in these types of situations, no amount of reasoning will suffice because these people just want to be right no matter what. They have already made up their minds and concluded that the other party is wrong and therefore should be treated as the enemy.
Otherwise, which sane person in their right mind would spend the whole day harassing people they’ve never met?
The situation finally ended in the only way it could have ended. With the police getting her psychiatric help and sending her to mental evaluation.
And naturally, she too has opened the floodgates to a new wave of internet memes.
This phenomenon is getting more common and going more global by the day. The opening quote of this post shows a similar story - though significantly more dramatic - taking place in a totally different part of the globe.
A neighbour gets triggered by seeing some chickens roaming free in the streets and so he calls the cops. The other one gets triggered because someone has got triggered by his chickens… Where does this end?
The more important question is how come these tiny insignificant things are now putting people on a fight or flight mode and activating their reptilian brain?
… To be continued.
The one who is getting tiggered isn't the one you think.
This story is fake.
Just think about it: the video of a woman appears on Youtube. The woman doesn't seem disturbed in the slightest that she is being filmed. She pretends to hide a few seconds, then stand up and goes on to tell her line with a clear and firm voice tone while looking straight into the camera. Some more footage comes showing a likeable little black girl straight out of a Nintendo Switch or Benetton advertizement selling bottles to a bystander with an angelic smile in an utterly unlikely timing. She doesn't seem any more disturbed to be on camera. For some unexplained reason the thing goes viral, in the sense that it's suddenly in the top trending video on Youtube (something Steemians are well placed to know is very hard to achieve without "help") and seems to have a lot of views which by mere snowball effect and herding behavior gets it to get even more views. Media outlets pickup the story and add some political spin to it "black girl, white woman, blah blah". And there you go, then entire blogosphere and vlogosphere goes nut and starts bitching about it and making that a political statement without questionning in the slightest the very unnatural way this whole "scene" came to be filmed and uploaded, and the very unnatural way people are acting given the circumstances.
As if that wasn't enough, some journalists later claim having located a record of the 911 call that is published and becomes immediately viral. Surely, everybody goes nut again without questionning in the slightest how on earth this came to be.
Let that sink in. It was allegedly a 911 call. In a post GDPR world, do you think this is being recorded without the caller being warned about it (there was no warning in the extract that was published). And even if it was recorded, do you think it's being stored in a way that any rogue 911 staffer could possibly access to and leak without any oversight whatsoever? And even if this was the case which is pretty unbelievable, do you really think that some 911 staffer would take the risk to go rogue and leak the record and getting fired, just to add some more oil on the fire of a short lived Internet outrage?
This just doesn't make any sense at all. If that really happened, the real outrage should come from the blattant abusive surveillance and privacy breach that made this possible. But that is so unlikely to have actually happened that you can safely write this off as entirely fake. Yet, this is still being picked up and blown out of proportion in a ridiculous demonstration of large scale herding behavior and mass hysteria.
But here is where the apex of the ridiculous is reached: for some mysterious reason someone found how to contact that woman (just with her face) and she is interviewed, apologizies publicly and (wait for the irony) ... claims to be manipulated! And we learn that she has stepped down from her role of CEO at her own company that she most probably own entirely and that sells ... dog weed.
This is absurd upon unlikely upon ludicrous. This is like an April's Fool joke at the wrong time. And yet nobody questions any of that and everyone goes along with the story happily (or so it seems), using it as some outlet to express outrage and anger. You will be hard pressed to find anyone anywhere on the interwebs raising any objection to any of it. For all I know, I could be the first person to express scepticism.
The world has totally lost its ability to think critically. This is really appalling and worrisome.
I don't disagree with you on that regard at all, there was a witch-hunt type launched against her without hesitation, we have a lot of these events now occurring without trial or jury including in the #metoo movement.
I have some posts lined up about that, and the mob mentality even in colleges where they gang up on teachers, I'll post those soon after I post one or two more about tribalism so that everything comes within context.
What I mean to say by this that I absolutely see where you're coming from, people ganged up on this lady and there was some organized outrage against her. I tried not to focus on those points, and I didn't bring the racism card here because there is no evidence of it to be honest.
I was just touching on the fact that people are calling the cops these days for all kinds of reasons (even in turkey) and as in the criticisms she received I only mentioned the one that seemed relevant which is failing to see the entrepreneurial spirit of a child.
P.S: Just to give some context (and maybe this is where I failed) I used the term "triggered" because in the coming posts I will be posting about this mob mentality where people are getting "trigger-happy" to condemn without hesitation, it's a play of words to set up new stories.
Your comment would make a great post!
This story is some more zionist media bullshit
I'm an original thinker... That's very rare, in my opinion...
December 29, 2020... 2.3 Hollywood Time...
Absolutely crazy times! I don’t know where it ends but the way the world is going it seems everything is getting more crazy.. brainwashed nations everywhere
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Haha or maybe people are going to be too angry to brainwash :P
I've had a few encounters with these nutcases. The worst: Took my dirtbike out, unlicensed vehicle, but I'm usually on back roads and trails. I ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, no phone, so I started pushing the bike home, on the road. Not much traffic in the middle of nowhere, but a van did pull up. I thought this woman was going to offer help but instead she starts yelling at me about how "I'm not supposed to do that on the roads." I tried to explain. I'm not riding the damn thing, I'm pushing it. She throws a yelling fit saying I have an attitude problem. Starts freaking out about how bikes are always ripping up the roads and how she's sick of it. Said she's calling the cops, speeds away, spins rocks at me, rips up the road. Totally mental.
Oh man! It almost seems as she was driving on an empty road cursing the skies that there is no one around she can pick on and argue with. :P
The worst part is instead of helping, she adds grief... Jesus.
Some put their honor into the strangest of things.
On the other hand, such insignificant incidents can’t trigger anyone. They must had already been triggered, or their fight or flight mode was already activated. It is as simple as 15 minutes watching news or talk shows and you will get yourself triggered.
Haha yeah, 15 minutes watching the news, or even these cooking shows where people start to rage about the lack of mayonnaise in a sandwich. :P
You're probably right though, they could have been triggered before hand.. Let's hope it's not their default state. :P
Unfortunately, it is the default state for many.
Thanks for the post, the-alien.
I hope you don't mind if I test out some sentiment analysis on your post. This is an experimental bot running on posts that have exceptional positivity or negativity. The goal is to iterate towards a bot that gives content creators and curators actionable and useful information.
Your post was selected because it is in the 99th percentile for negativity.Your post had an average negative sentiment of -0.069, an average positive sentiment of 0.029, and an average normalized sentiment of -0.04
The most positive sentence in your post had a normalized positivity score of 0.184:
"With the police getting her psychiatric help and sending her to mental evaluation."
The most negative sentence in your post had a normalized negativity score of -0.242:
"The patriarch of the family whose chickens were loose was incensed when he came home to learn that the “honor” of his family had been insulted by the police visit."
Oh interesting... If you don't mind me saying, I checked the comments you made on other posts and every single one of them is among "the 99th percentile for negativity" :P
So either we're all negative on steemit haha, or maybe there's something that needs tweaking in the algorithm.
Thanks and best of luck!
Great. Now the bots are becoming triggered.
Hahaha well said!
It's ridiculous how easily people get triggered or hate on something. Get a life and do something productive with that time spent belittling those you disagree with or don't like doing something haha!
Permit Patty :D
Haha exactly, they take it way too personally while they could spend their time doing something productive.
People get outraged about everything. It's funny, but also sad. I'm trying very hard to keep my kids from going down that road, but it seems to be the way a lot of their peers act now. It's easier to be angry than patient and compassionate.
Oh that's a tough situation, I have no idea how I would do if I were in your shoes.
For kids and teenagers it's always easy to follow their peers.. Maybe we need a lot of trending visual content that speaks to the new generation in a funny or entertaining way and makes them see how anger and outrage is not worth it.
Most of the time, kids are great, far more understanding than most adults. My kids are better than my generation or the ones before in terms of accepting everyone for who they are, not caring at all about skin color, religion, background, etc. In that way, I think they have a built-in sensitivity and openness to learning from people with different backgrounds and opinions, which should serve them well in life. But then I see one of them totally flip out, blaming others, when someone interrupts them or they can't find something they need. Maybe it's just the age, but I sense that some of the impatience and entitlement in the culture rubs off on them.
You know, if you ever wrote some posts about parenting I would save that for sure, as I would need a lot of advice if I'm a parent some day.
Culture rubs off on everybody, and you certainly did a great job to get your kids to be open minded at a very young age. I don't know how you did it, maybe there's a lot of work involved, I don't know... But these things are stuff I would like to learn a lot about actually.
There have always been these people.
However, the govern-cement wasn't big enough to really have an impact, and the police were a little more understanding of the ramifications of showing up for nothing.
These type of people also love to get govern-cement jobs.
They believe that if everything can be controlled, their life will be perfect. There won't be any problems.
You're right, I'm with you there... It just seems that not only the want everything to be controlled, but they want to control the lives of everyone else as well :P
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A lot of people seem to be triggered by words sadly, so much so that there isa thing called "triggered-warning" nowadays. :P
It's sooo sad that we are on constant look for enemies. We've been led to this distorted paradigm that literally drives everyone crazy. Why treat someone as a foe if you can treat choose to treat the person as a friend? Why this ignorance? Is that because of a chase of money? Why are we so eager to hurt each other? Breathe IN, Close your eyes. Relax. You can always choose, don't go loose... If you're going mad, change the circumstance you're in and learn to observe your self, adapting to the situations. Just stay consistent. The Sun is always there even if you have gray clouds covering your sky...
Exactly, it seems like tribalism never went away, that it keeps coming up in new modern shapes and forms.
P.S: Breathe is a great advice that we often forget.
Thanks for the awesome comment btw
My pleasure. The more of us are aware of this situation the better. We still have a chance to change the flow of events!