cross-posted, via Microblogs Community.
Stop trying to make simple things sound complex – either because you like hearing the sound of your own voice or because of whatever insecurities drive you. If I’m kicking a puppy in the street, it’s because I’m an asshole. You don’t need to know my motivations. You just need to know I’m an asshole. And stop me.
Yes, this is about Israel.
I used the example of the puppy getting kicked as I’m painfully aware that, at least for some people, the thought of a puppy in distress is unbearable whereas tens of thousands of murdered Brown kids is just another Wednesday. (You’d have a hard time getting a politician who regularly kicks puppies to death elected but folks who consider themselves otherwise decent have not, so far at least, had an issue with voting for people who fund and arm Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.)
Aral is one of the first people I followed on the fediverse and I have a love-hate relationship with him. On one hand, he works on fantastic projects and his opinions are based (see above). On the other hand, he is one of the most negative and hateful online personalities I’ve seen
He comes up a lot on my instance. The only times I remember seeing really negative stuff was in response to abhorrent events going unchallenged elsewhere. So I see it as a normal human reaction.
That said, I don’t see all his posts.
Aral sucks. It doesn’t matter if you agree with 99% of the things he says, if you so much as even question that 1% that he says which doesn’t quite line up to you, he quote-replies you to insult you in front of his audience and then blocks you before you can defend yourself. If he doesn’t have a proper response to your question, he’ll reply with “Oh so you believe [XYZ terrible things], huh?” which you never said and just leave that post hanging so you can’t reply to it, to make it look like you’ve given up on the argument and that he “won” it. Immature, pseudo-intellectual Twitter-user behavior, IMO.
I don’t get why people still follow him. His opinions are far from unique; you can find his exact same opinions from plenty of other Fediverse users, ones who won’t fall back on gradeschool bullying if you have a different opinion.