https://programming.dev/post/47697514

Minimizing small acts enables manipulative behaviour.

Since 2020 I’ve spent a lot of my personal time learning about manipulation and learning how to identity and handle manipulators. I’ve also spent a lot of my personal time teaching others how to identity and deal with manipulators in their personal lives.

After learning so much about manipulation, it’s hard not to see how much manipulation has been normalized in our everyday lives.

Ignoring the small acts means letting a new boundary be normalized. Minimizing those small acts is attempting to ignore them. It is important not to enable and normalize the boundaries that are being pushed.

Authoritarian power and manipulators will not stop pushing boundaries. To them, enough is never enough.

I’m less concerned if it’s age verification or if it’s an optional field. The issue I feel is that it’s pushing boundaries and normalizing new boundaries.

I’m viewing this with a focus on authoritarian power and manipulation. There seems to be far less resistance to change if it’s not immediate. That’s why small acts such as “making a joke,” creating optional fields or reversing laws can be so dangerous. It normalizes a new boundary that can be pushed further. At the very least, it’s enabling the behaviour to push new boundaries.

Focusing on the definition of what it’s called seems to distract from what’s happened, the response to what has happened and what that could mean in the future for large groups of people’s personal identity, safety and freedom.

Authoritarian power and manipulation should not be enabled or normalized.

I use Linux Mint DE for steam games which I barely play anymore so this whole Systemd/age-verification mess has next to no effect on me. It’s still really interesting to see everything play out in real time.

Speaking strictly as an outsider looking in, I still can’t help but feel uncomfortable and slightly worried about what has happened already. People who seek authoritarian powers over others will always start small, even if it’s “just a joke.” Always pushing boundaries and normalizing new boundaries that are further away from freedom. It’s never ending.

Fighting back against people who’s only source of creativity or identity is labeling and categorizing other people is fucking exhausting. And they don’t even make an effort for their one creative outlet either…