Modern Problems: Attacking People for Their Emotions

When I was a child we spent a lot of our time being reprimanded for many different reasons, but rarely for bullying people. Granted, many of us didn't understand we were being bullied, but that is because bullying is being refined at the societal level. Performative cruelty is the best way to define this sort of bullying, and it boils down to attacking people for their emotions.

People have refined the art of getting a rise out of others, then attacking them further for letting them get the rise they sought!

In the digital age we have begun to see performative cruelty refined to a point where it is causing social breakdown on a societal level. With the introduction of social media like MySpace and Facebook, cyber-bullying quickly rushed to the forefront of the list for social justice and so did people get the opportunity to gang-bully others. Thus an age old concept blared at the head of these heinous actions, allowing commoners and kings alike to use performative cruelty as a tool for crushing others.

Performative cruelty, most often used by those who spend most of their time browsing internet forums and social media, is the act of bullying someone in such a manner that seeks to create a crowd to laud you for it. Essentially, you play on someone's emotions and once they become emotional you attack them for doing so, and because of societal standard you can get away with calling them weak and dismissing your bullying as humorous jesting. It is sick, it is twisted, and unlucky for society it is widely accepted as the norm.

Now for those of you who disagree with the idea of performative cruelty being a new social norm, I'll be blunt with you and say that you are most likely part of the problem. The most common argument I get for supporting performative cruelty is that, "you need to toughen up, get thicker skin," and I wholly agree with that sentiment as it concerns minor occurrences on an infrequent basis. However, being a realist, anyone who is bullied tends to suffer long-term negative effects and that argument used in this case proves your sadistic tendencies, and/or your ignorance.

Let us say that we could all just, "toughen up," or even walk away from the performative cruelty online, well that would be giving into the performative cruelty and tacitly supporting it. Repression is damaging not only to the self, but to everyone around an individual; if that is what you desire then you have further proven your sadistic tendencies. My question for you is why you would even want to hurt other people and why it brings you pleasure at all?

Sadistic tendencies are very common in abuse victims, especially those who were bullied for much of their life or witnessed and experienced some form of emotional and/or physical abuse. We all have sadistic tendencies, but it's those individuals that are traumatized by repression who tend to project their sadism onto the world around them. Perhaps less callousness, and more acceptance of emotion are the solutions to sadistic tendencies for the majority?

I'd say compassion and kindness, less bullying using performative cruelty, is the exact answer to our problems.

We can sit here all day, like we have since the dawn of time, telling people to toughen up and pull themselves up by their boot straps. However, that is avoidance of underlying issues and equivalent to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. You wouldn't treat a tumor with an off-the-shelf cold/flu pill; no, the tumor needs to be attacked at the source and excised.

Kindness, compassion, acceptance, and understanding are our medical tools necessary for removing the tumor of performative cruelty from society. I'm tired of living in a world where sadistic cruelty, stabbing people with blades made of words, can be covered up by calling the victim weak and masking your cruelty with humor. It is time we as a human race, we as a symbiotic organism on the same planet, come together for the good of the entire world.

Then again, as has been said so many times before, this has been going on since the dawn of time and revolutionaries only come about every once in a blue moon. In lieu of kindness, I'll gladly pick up my weapons and try to bring cruelty into submission through force.

You can be a part of the solution, or a contributor to the problem; the power of choice is in your hands, don't abuse it!