I find you interesting. There truly is a split within your community, is there?
I thought there was a split pre-9/11, but at least despite the differences the community was united under a common goal. After marriage rights were given, most moved on while others splintered off to form smaller groups; the charitable sort who wanted to help gay kids. There was some riff raff protesting to the legalization like that chick in Texas who refused to issue marriage licenses. But other than that, the community went radio silent after that it is only recently that it's really started to go turbo autistic.
To me, a young man that grew up in the 2000's and 2010's, I'll give you my perspective.
There was a lot of social pressure in schools to be gay once gay marriage was legalized. I saw it from friends, many of them. This was facilitated by these Gay-Straight alliance clubs. It was a confusing time to grow up in to say the least, with many of people you thought you knew now changing and shunning you because you didn't agree with them. Note I didn't say hate. I said disagree. Those people ended up unhappy and also left wing. Proto SJWs/Tumblrites.
I mean this sounds about right, it doesn't really surprise me. I'm guessing here, you were raised in a developed city, ie not rural? I only ask because I've found the upbringing communities have a heavy influence later in life. I was born in a real rural area and I learned a lot from it. When I came to a large city and started working, many of my coworkers and classmates had no idea I'm gay. Which is how I prefer it to be. Because the town I grew up in was very small, everyone knew everyone's business. Our family was intensely private and that habit has rubbed off a little more than I want. I watched other gays get beat up, had a close call or two myself, but still made it out alright.
The interesting thing between yourself and my own experiences is the conservatives were bullies and now it is the leftists that are bullies. It is very interesting seeing the similarities between both extreme sides. The left's arguments are near a mirror of the arguments I heard in the 90s spouted from Christian conservatives. It boggles my mind that more people are unwilling or blind to the glaring similarities in today's life.
Now are some people just born gay? Yes. But few in my observations. I've met one that has met my strict criteria, a butch that honestly should have played football lol. The rest have seemed coerced, new gen, Neo-LGBT as you put it.
I'm curious to see what you think of my observations, I wish to have a dialog.
I think there are confused people who think they are gay but really just need to be treated for bi-polar disorder or insert other mental illness here. Q for questionable, the confused or curious. LGBQ, that's what I should classify myself in the modern era. Anyway, I touched on my thesis in earlier posts, I do think modern generations have been crippled with the access to the internet; specifically, the smartphone. These are just my thoughts, not backed up by any real data.
We honestly should have seen the red flags in the early myspace era. A time when a friend unfollowing you was a school wide fight in the making. Tumbr drama, forum bickering, etc. I didn't own a smart phone until around 2013, I had the same flip phone for years and only got the smartphone due to social pressure.
With Myspace, at least, you had to know how to code or copy paste other's to have a half-way decent page. That was a barrier to entry, a natural gate keeping. That went out the door with the invention of social media apps for your smartphone. "You mean, I don't need to know how to code anymore? Sweet!" A platform kitted out for all your personal page needs, no coding knowledge required. It allowed everyone to start competing with each other socially but at a Global scale.
Like it or not, humans are a species of competition. It is why I believe there will never be "world peace" and wars will be an inevitability; it is just a matter of when. We see it in interactions with our friends. Social dominance is passed around in conversations, sort of an unconscious war to one up or win the conversation. It is just an instinct, no doubt interconnected with reproduction.
Now, this prevalence for social dominance extends to the digital space and we see it on Twitter every day. So now we have people spouting opinions and naturally factions begin of like minded people. It was fine then, it was just people talking on the internet. Fast forward to Obama, the first president to leverage social media. Boom, it was like a light switch, the digital delusions got a bridge to be made into reality. Digital social credit and in person social credit became interconnected, because it was legitimized by a sitting president.
Companies started to poke their heads in and finding ways to leverage it as well. As any good business should. Tech companies started banning conservatives which signaled to the companies and advertisers that "oh no, we should be on the left's side", which is why we got woke companies and decisions being made. It's just been an ongoing feedback loop of nonsense, nonsense that unfortunately also is reality. We see these crossovers with consistency.
It was the same with the gays vs religion, we both spoke past each other and never bothered to actually hear each other. It still happens here on the forum. Those are just my observations of the current era. I gotta say, it definitely hasn't been a boring show!
