Are NTs/humans becoming more easily offended as time passes?

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Oh it's fine, don't worry! I found it in the end!

^^^YES! THIS! *round of applause for you* I think I know a lot of 'offence archivists' in real life, let alone online! This has happened to me in real life- I've said or done one thing 'wrong' and been cancelled e.g. my daughter fell out with a friend and didn't invite her to her birthday party. The other mums assumed it was me not inviting the girl, so I was 'cancelled'. Another time I interrupted someone (apparently, I can't remember) so I was 'cancelled.'

It's so childish. If those people had said at the time 'why didn't you invite my daughter to the party?' 'please don't interrupt me.' then I'd have known about it and discussed it



I am super-overcautious and try very hard not to offend people, but I STILL get cancelled. It has got worse as time goes by and I just can't be any more cautious unless I just stop talking. So I've given up trying. I just expect to have short-lived friendships which suddenly end.

The other thing is:

Usually when people say or write extreme things, they are under stress e.g. angry/ scared/ hungry/ exhausted/ their boyfriend just dumped them/ they had an awful day at work/ their child is ill, or something.

People need to make allowances in case the other person is under stress. They might not say the extreme thing when not under stress.

Perhaps people could say 'that's a bit extreme. Everything alright?'

I just have to say I've noticed that behavior from plenty of nd people as well! mostly younger, mid teens to mid 20s.
sometimes older. there have been a few around my age. it is what it is. I don't worry too hard, I'm super introverted and have never had any issues with people lashing out at me or dropping me for anything I've said. it's an extreme sort of behavior, for sure. an ex-friend was teetering in that direction(she's nd). my refusal to interact with minors or anyone below the age of maybe 24 has helped a lot lol I also absolutely avoid discussing topics that can lead to confrontation. no politics, etc.
I think, pretty simply, this behavior is just something that's been spread pretty widely. the internet does that. I don't feel like it started exactly in 2010 tho. I feel it was a fair bit later... maybe 2015?

What surprises me is, I'm 54 and people my age are STILL behaving like this. They haven't grown out of it. I think humans are generally getting more immature and childish, actually. There used to be interests for young people and interests for older people, but now everyone seems to have the same interests, whatever their age.

I can't spend my life not discussing difficult topics. I am not going to be the quiet, good little woman who only talks about clothes, fluffy kittens, make up and jewellery. We need to talk about difficult topics or we will end up in trouble due to avoiding them.

Yes, I don't know the exact year it all got worse and you're right, it is caused by the internet and everyone having the world's opinions thrown at them 24/7.

I was temp-banned from Valorant for saying the word midget. I did not say the word in a derogatory way or as an insult. If someone has a friend or relative who happens to be a midget they are not allowed to discuss them ig.

I was also temp-banned for saying that Valorant's surrender system was ret*d. A surrender vote failed, then someone quit out of the game, so we had to waste a half hour playing a game we knew we would lose at. I thought it was unfair to players that they have to suffer through a broken system like that. My comment was censored so I wasn't able to speak up on how to improve the Valorant surrender system.

I dislike social media due to spyware, but I don't think its just because of social media. I have defriended people even though I have hardly any close friends or immediate replacements.

I have the feeling that when communicating with someone and you exhibit an out of the ordinary behaviour, then you disrupt a sense of comfortable familiarity (being in the same page) that people expect when socialising with friends. This kickstarts a chain of paranoid thoughts to the other person. Sadenly you are not the familiar friend, you could be dangerous. I feel that some autistic traits resemble narcissism. That's why people are quick to get defensive. Everybody, including NT's had their fair share of experiencing toxicity in life and everybody tries to avoid it.

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

Not only social media but the internet in general has created an expectation of instant simplistic answers.

People here have asked things like, "When NTs make a joke, other NTs laugh. When I make the same exact joke, I get reprimanded. Why?"

I think what you're saying is similar. It's not so much what an Aspie says or does, it's who they are while saying/doing it. NTs may have already noticed something "off" about us that they can't quite explain. We ourselves may be oblivious to how they're already feeling (preconception) about us and think everything is fine.

Our "offensive" comments are merely the straw that broke the camel's back and give the NTs a social excuse (validation) to finally, openly attack/condemn the already disliked Aspie.

That reminded me of when I was about 6 years old and we went to a big funfair. As we approached the place I saw a guy who had dwarfism. Thinking he must be part of the entertainment, I yelled "Look, Dad, a midget!" Dad quickly shut me up and quietly explained my mistake. So I guess that's kind of similar to your experience - innocently saying something that turns out to be rude.

I don't see it as a particularly left-wing thing to have fastidious standards of politeness, though some on the right say it is. I think it's more that as people grow they notice certain remarks can be upsetting, so they take more care with their comments if they want to avoid hurting people's feelings. Politeness can be taken too far though, and can get cumbersome and repressive. When I was at school we'd all call each other the most horrendous things and nobody seemed to mind much, though I don't say we never did any harm with it. There would probably have been a few sensitive kids who took it to heart. I wasn't one of them so it took me a long time to realise that, and my Aspie bluntness and mind-blindness didn't help.

So these days I'm a lot more careful how I word things and I've adopted courtesy as an important standard of behaviour. I like to be polite and I don't find it too difficult as a rule. There are ways of holding one's ground without resorting to denigrating people.

Not that I support every instance of this PC thing I see. I don't bother to capitalise the word "black," for example. I've read stuff on the Web saying it's important to do so because not doing it "robs people of colour of a certain dignity." I doubt that it does, and AFAIK it's a standard that some white people made up without asking black folks how they felt about it. I think some people take such things too far like that, and it annoys me when people in power impose cumbersome and unnecessary rules on the rest of us. I don't say religionists are the worst offenders but I've noticed that some of them seem to have an exaggerated sensitivity towards anything that doesn't pay "proper" lip-service to their ideology. So they find it offensive when somebody talks in a way that deviates from their doctrines but they don't see anything offensive about publicly declaring their beliefs as if they were undisputed facts.

I get a bit annoyed at how politicians nearly always use extremely sanitised language. I think it's a measure of their dishonesty, that they're trying to be all things to all people. OTOH there are certain right-wing populist politicians who go to the other extreme, and I don't think they're being honest either.

Away from the extremes it's often hard to know whether the "offended" people are being more or less despotic than the "offensive" people. It's hard to measure the damage each side does. So I suppose the arguments will go on without end, because a lot of people seem to like promoting their own beliefs and attacking plausible alternatives instead of just accepting that for many questions, nobody knows the truth.

So to answer the original question, no I don't think people are getting more easily offended as time passes. I think it's just become easier for people to make public comments these days, on social media etc., and we get to read a lot more about these things on the Web than we used to be able to. I haven't noticed any change in the people in real life that I talk with, except when I was a lot younger.

Yes, if someone really hurts you, it's safer to defriend them whether you have other friends or not.

I think you are correct with your summary.

That's the eternal mystery isn't it. What is an 'out of the ordinary behaviour'? How do we know when we're doing those? How do we prove we aren't dangerous?

It's an impossible situation. As Daniel said, once we annoy/upset/shock someone, it's hard to get back to normal with them, if at all. So we end up isolated forever.

Hence why I've given up trying to make friends, it's too difficult.

Humans have always been easily offended, it's just in a different way now.

For example, not long ago I saw a video of these extreme Christians going on about how things that were popular with children and teens back when I was a kid were evil and would make your kids worship Satan, perform witchcraft, and choose to be gay.

For example when I watched The Smurfs as a kid all I saw was a cartoon about little blue people who had all kinds of adventures and relied on each other to survive in a very big, often dangerous world. I never saw it as being evil and demonic because the Smurfs supposedly are living versions of dead humans because they "have blue skin and black lips, like humans after they die". First of all the Smurfs' lips aren't black, that's just how the outline that most 2D western animated characters have. Dogs have black lips, so what about that?

And then there's Rainbow Brite. She's a girl with the ability to bring color to the world, color is often associated with joy, optimism, hope, while her arch enemy Murky Dismal wants to make the whole world grey, which is seen as gloomy and depressing. But no, she's really evil because she has a *star* on her belt, which she uses to create "star sprinkles". They're PENTAGRAMS IT'S THE NEW WORLD ORDER YOUR KIDS ARE GOING TO HELL!!

And then they said Disney movies like The Little Mermaid was evil because it had a witch, and The Princess and the Frog because it had a witch doctor and they both use (gasp) magic! But they were the villains, so you'd think they'd make an exception. But I guess not, because all magic is evil, even when used for good.

Seriously, it must have been really fun to have people like that for parents. Of course, the Smurfs are really evil because Gargamel is really a stereotype of Jewish people (hunched appearance, balding, beaky nose, obsession with gold), they're sexist because they're (mostly) a male race, and they're drug addicts because they live in mushroom houses. I even read that they're supposedly commies. The worst thing of all.

We'll have to agree to disagree then The people I meet in real life are far, far more touchy and easily offended now in the 2020s to those I met in the 1990s or even 2000s. It's very noticeable. And people I meet again who I used to know in the past have become more easily offended too (see the examples in my previous comments).

Is this an American point of view? I don't think we have those extreme Christians in Britain who think cartoons are evil. I don't remember hearing about them anyway.

I mean normal, everyday people are becoming more offended by things. In the past I remember people just got on with each other, I don't remember people dumping each other dramatically over one comment.

as someone in their 30s who is highly interested in things made for children, uhhhhhhh. well, that's awkward. I may not be an expert, but it could also be that people are just more comfortable with being open about their interests now. I think I'd rather it be like that, I felt shamed for my interests for years. seeing people becoming more accepting overall was a comfort. I'm not gonna get into a big discussion about this because it's not really part of the topic and I'm bad at words. but with all the perspective I have, I know that for myself and many others, stuff like that is a comfort thing that helps us get through life. I'm not out to change any minds, just throwing my personal perspective out there.

I'm not trying to say they should be avoided overall, I just can't deal with confrontation myself. I personally don't have much to say about such things, but people that do... do. and that's fine. my personal situation is obviously not a "one size fits all" sort of thing. apologies if I made it sound that way. I don't expect everyone to be like me, of course, because that'd be weird and selfish.