“R U TRIGGERED” and all its subvariants were radioactive toxic waste and turned a valid and important psychological concept into bullying vector that for a time had nearly universal acceptance.
I still see vestiges of “le epic bacon” out there but it’s mostly confined to aging :grillman: types and some :up-yours-woke-moralists: cultists and a few contrarian carninist edgelords that want to “trigger the vegans.” Yes I know all of the above have a lot of overlap.
The reddit variety maybe was bad, but considering the resurgence in religious conservatism, at least on the internet, vocal atheism may need some kind of comeback.
I will literally commit mass crimes if vocal atheism comes back, I can not handle it again. I am not even religious.
I’m not religious either and :reddit-logo: New Atheists weren’t just insufferable but a lot of them found religion over time, either through techbro culty grifts, :up-yours-woke-moralists: grifters guiding them into “cultural Christianity,” or sometimes full blown “TradCaths” that want to LARP Warhammer 40k. :scared-fash:
The problem is that brand of atheism was deeply liberal and reactionary, focusing way too hard on “factually incorrect thing is bad and dumb, stop being silly and weird by believing factually incorrect thing!” arguments and hinging too much on “religion say I can’t have my treats, how dare you tell me no for such a stupid reason!” motivations. Like it was more “theocrats are cringey because they believe silly wrong things, ew!” and “they’re telling me no, how fucking dare they!?!” than “theocrats are deranged monsters who hurt people, and that’s bad.”
The only thing that stops me from saying it was a psyop was because those same reactionary tendencies have always been a problem with American counter-culture and the broader left, where there’s all these chauvinist libertines who are full of themselves and want their treats and end up arrayed against the American mainstream because it’s a different brand of chauvinist and doesn’t approve of all their treats, but they’re still reactionary and just as aggressively oppose the left when that threatens or is perceived as threatening their status or treats in some way. I do think the pro-religious anti-atheist backlash against it was astroturfed, though, even as the neoreactionary movement sucked up a bunch of the chauvinist libertine atheists and turned them into nazi weebs who cosplay as tradcaths while wallowing in hentai.
I’m the opposite. American conservatism looooves to be the martyr. If you meet them with atheism, they’ll calcify in their beliefs because you’re proving their world view correct.
In my opinion, the only way to counter American religious conservatism is to explain to them how far divorcd their beliefs are from the actual words of Christ. There is plenty of revalutionary text in there, you just have to know where to look and how to frame it. I quote Acts to these heathens every single opportunity I get. I attribute quotes from Marx to Jesus, and I explain communism through the lens of Christ vison of his church. Just don’t say the word communism.