I’m not a believer in toxic empathy, I pretty much agree with your assessment here - just going to play devil’s advocate for a sec. If a bad actor purposefully pretended to feel a certain way to elicit empathy to influence a group, that could conceivably lead to toxic empathy.
Thinking about it, essentially what the author of the article is attempting. Projection the whole way down.
Toxic masculinity has always appeared to be a typical in group/out group thing to me.
Scammers take advantage of our empathy. If the response to the scam is empathy, that doesn’t make it toxic, it makes the attempt to take advantage of it toxic, and that isn’t empathy, but a lack of it.
I’m not a believer in toxic empathy, I pretty much agree with your assessment here - just going to play devil’s advocate for a sec. If a bad actor purposefully pretended to feel a certain way to elicit empathy to influence a group, that could conceivably lead to toxic empathy.
Thinking about it, essentially what the author of the article is attempting. Projection the whole way down.
Toxic masculinity has always appeared to be a typical in group/out group thing to me.
Scammers take advantage of our empathy. If the response to the scam is empathy, that doesn’t make it toxic, it makes the attempt to take advantage of it toxic, and that isn’t empathy, but a lack of it.