Here’s how I see it: imagine you like going to a restaurant for dinner fairly often. Recently, a group of rowdy patrons has started coming in, getting drunk, and making all kinds of noise. Strangely, the restaurant seems to encourage their behavior. You don’t love this—you’re just trying to enjoy a nice dinner and some casual conversation. So, you leave and don’t come back.
You can’t force the restaurant to calm down or kick out the rowdy patrons. They should be allowed to serve whomever they want. Luckily, you’re also not forced to endure their actions.
I disagree. I think the definition of hate and extremism has been warped to encompass things that aren't either of those things. And that's part of the problem. The rhetoric has become so hyperbolic that we're having a hard time coexisting.
The answer is for us to walk that back, and encourage actual dialogue, not run into our own safe bunkers.
You can talk to the people at your table in a restaurant, and it doesn't matter if the table beside you is talking about something you disagree with. The food tastes the same.
The definitions of hate and extremism are inherently tied to personal values. Many people perceive much of the speech on X as hateful and extremist because it directly contradicts their core values, not because they're arbitrarily expanding those definitions.
> You can talk to the people at your table in a restaurant, and it doesn't matter if the table beside you is talking about something you disagree with. The food tastes the same.
This analogy only works if everyone abides by a social contract. that’s often not the case on X. It’s like if the people at the next table overheard you, didn’t like what you said, and decided to come over and spit in your food. That’s the experience many people have on X.