Why do people associate the two inherently. It’s like some sort of rationalization fallacy that insight leads to benevolence. There are people who use empathy with malice.

I see people saying bigots just don’t understand others enough so that’s why they hate. So if they just understand then the hate will go away. Some of them know very well. They use that knowledge to be more hateful.

There’s a dark side to social media and the internet in general. People have been using it to get insight into different facets of humanity. Some have been using it to study how to be more effective bigots. I noticed this after lurking subreddits for so many years.

This is sort of tangential but I’ve found these types of sociopathic people on mental health subreddits. They prey on the vulnerable. Those individuals will dump on anyone who will listen. Quite frankly there are malicious who are stalking around subs like that. They prey on and nudge those individuals further down into darkness.

Those predators have evoked empathy on an individual which is mistaken for kindness. So they think that person is on their side. How can you tell an individual they might want to reconsider the things this person or people have been whispering in their ear.

I suspect this happens on other places too like LGBT+ and racial minority subreddits. Though it’s more difficult to understand from the outside. The subreddits for mental health / personal issues is more universally relatable.

I saw that kind of thing too. I figured those girls were probably dating the popular guys our age. A while later I found out that not even those guys were dating them. It was the 20 to 30 somethings.