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

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I might as well start a series: Are NTs_______?

When I was younger, all through the 1970s/80s/90s/2000s, I lived a fairly normal life. I had friends, a social life, I was fairly well liked, even popular sometimes.

But I noticed in the 2010s that people started taking offence at things I said (generally off-the-cuff comments I wasn't particularly attached to). Every year it's got worse and worse, and now I can rarely open my mouth without offending someone.

I am generally a kind, thoughtful person who tries to help others. But these traits are increasingly unacceptable and offensive, it seems.

So what is happening to people/the world? I can't believe I suddenly turned nasty in the 2010s and I'm getting nastier each year.

It was hard to spot your answer in there, ASPartOfMe but I found it.

I think you're right. It must be a trend. I hope it swings the other way soon and people become more tolerant.

I've even met people I used to know years ago and they've changed.

e.g. I got in contact with my best school friend again via email and told her about my daughter's progress at school and how proud I was of her.

Instead of the school friend saying 'oh that's nice, well done her' as most people say about each other's children, she went into a rant about Greta Thunberg and how much better she is as a school child and doing so much better than any other school child. (this was when Greta was younger)

It was bizarre.

I remember the 2000's and things have changed for sure. I don't know what it is. Is it the zeitgeist of this time, is it woke culture? Something has changed. Especially on the left,
I used to feel comfortable with liberal circles because that's where the misfits were. But now I have to consider what I say because I could offend somebody. Like you can't call somebody "attention-whore" even jokingly with your own friends because the "w" word is a symbol of how patriarchy uses language to discriminate against women. Back in the day people would simply laugh and keep going with conversation.

I don't think its so much that they get offended more easily, but rather to expect other people to care/do something about their feelings. Society seems to have forgotten 2 things: the first being I can disagree about an issue without hating the person who has it, and the second being just because you find something offensive doesn't automatically entitle you some form of compensation from another person.

If i inadvertently hurt someone's feelings, I'll apologize, but if someone's feelings are hurt because they disagree with me, that's their problem not mine.

Beautifully said.

I am on the left of politics but I know what you mean about considering every word I say.

It seems to me that now days, even though I'm a thoughtful and sensitive person, if I make one careless comment or snap because I'm tired or hungry or whatever, that's it. I'm cancelled immediately.

People don't seem to consider a person's general character anymore. They don't think 'oh, Mary is usually calm and helpful, if she has one difficult day and snaps, that just shows she is human.' They seem to be waiting for the one difficult day, then saying 'aha! We knew Mary was a bad person underneath! Now we have proof!' When all along it was just a difficult day for Mary.

I think you are right there.

I also think reputation counts for nothing these days. If a person is considerate, kind, helpful for 90% of the time, surely they are allowed to have bad moods the other 10% of the time?

I suppose it's because in these days of shallow, fleeting, social media friendships, one disagreement means that someone can just move on to the next friend, then the next friend, then the next friend.

In the past when communities were smaller, people had to learn to get on with their 'tribe' members because they couldn't just move onto the next friend or relative.

We live in an era of disposable friendships.

I've come across this firsthand with relationships with NT's. Most of the time we get along fine. The one time I make a mistake though and its as if I've suddenly done something unforgivable. Its really hard to recover from that, even though we should all be given the benefit of the doubt, it doesn't work out that way.

Yes Daniel, you hit the nail right on the head! I generally get along fine with people then suddenly out of the blue, BOOM! I have no idea what I said, and even if I find out, it's something pretty minor, or they've misunderstood or misheard.

Like this friend who got into a huge argument with me because I said the NHS was falling apart and the government was going to bring in US style insurance healthcare instead. To me that is blindingly obvious but the friend accused me of passing on gossip and stamping out her hopefulness and butting into a private conversation between her and another friend (which was being held on social media in public...erm..?) I don't get it at all.

There is another friend, we were close for about 3 years, or so I thought, then suddenly she started cancelling our coffee dates and saying 'I'll check my work rota for when I'm next free' and that was the last I heard of her.

And another one who completely out of the blue sent me a nasty message online full of 'you're a shltty person to say that, how dare you say that, you deserve the worst' etc. etc. then blocked me. I literally had NO IDEA what she was talking about and what I had said. And 5 years later I still have no idea.

It's the Cancel Culture it seems. Maybe it's a case of riding out the storm til it passes and people become more tolerant?

Thanks Daniel for listening and explaining!

Yep…..just way too much “offense” and, especially, searching for “offense” in every Nook and Cranny.

When useful purpose fails there's grifting, and these days that comes in the form of getting virtue points for minor infractions or even made-up infractions.

The other thing I've noticed, which is something of a separate dynamic from the all-too-well-known college culture of safe space, microaggression, Twitter-pile-ons, etc., is the more blue collar and conservative version of this. That version goes something like this - there's no such thing as a 'good' person, just wimps and bullies, and you can't look at both bully and wimp, say 'No thank you', and define yourself, rather if you're neither nor people will try to shoe-horn you into either or or, if you're right in the middle then you're a weak bully and kinda-sorta wimp.

To that last point it's like people have gotten so cynical about each other that you're simply not allowed too think of yourself as a decent person, go out in public, and have that fly.

Mind you I don't see this dynamic all the time (big public places or big box stores I see it less), but local staples are where I tend to see that kind of behavior. A few of them I actually stopped going to because I just couldn't stand their customers even if their food or whatever else was good, it's like they'd come up and invade your space as a matter of testing your boundaries if they didn't know you.

The way Eric Weinstein describes the overall situation of what happens to NT's when financial growth either decreases or stops is people start seeing each other as a protein source (social and economic cannibalism).

We'll pretty much be watching them get crazier until more people in different places start kicking off and you won't have to be watching national or international news to see things like public space shootings, fatal road rage incidents, and the like.

I am sorry about that.

More often these days a person is judged as evil if they have said one wrong or outdated word or had one really bad opinion. There is a type of person known as an "offense archivist" They go around social media and google trying to find something offensive a person wrote or said with the objective of making it go viral and getting the person canceled. It could have been and often is some racist thing a person tweeted when they were a teenager.

Nobody is perfect. We have all said and done stupid stuff.

When we are always on the defensive fearing offending someone or getting canceled we are more likely to say something stupid and that is how the offense archivists and other people who want to harm you get you.

Those of us on the spectrum, are more likely to say things that offend people and thus are overcautious.

There are things that are actually offensive. Because so many complain about being offended complaints are real offenses get ignored or mocked as woke or SJW.

I think you've summed it up exactly there. Everyone is looking for some kind of hidden offence in what we say, suspicious we are scamming or mocking them, looking for the cynical angle and trying not to appear innocent or naïve.

People are so suspicious of each other now days...They didn't used to be until about...2010? I reckon.