Saccharine Offensiveness

Say someone called you a Cute, Ultimately Nice and Terrific person. You may not be initially offended until you took all those initials and put them together. It's putting a sugar-coated veil over a nasty insult. Just like kids spelling out Sugar, Honey, Icing Tea instead of using the Anglo-Saxon four-letter word for excrement.

Just like little kids saying "sugar", they know they'll get in trouble for saying the actual word they want to. Just like little kids saying "sugar", the adults in earshot know darn well what they're playing at and are WELL aware of what they really want to say.

Some let those kids get away with it.

And some grown-body children wish to conceal their racism by coming up with a compliment-esque collection of words that, when reduced to their initials, spell out the N-word. They pretend ignorance. They pretend they're trying to be nice to "those people" [side-eyeing the camera at this point] and claim that they're using it "that way" because they're "being nice" against the "real bad people."

I think my eyes just rolled so hard that I hurt myself.

What I can't figure out is how they can pretend so much innocence about it. They protest too much, and probably do that for engagement and some variety of payoff from ad revenue. It's a grift. They're earning some kind of income from the attention.

There's only one thing to do when people are doing something strictly for attention.

Ignore all their efforts.

Turn off, block them, don't engage with their "content", and tell your friends and family why you're avoiding them now. When all they have is their bubble, they won't really notice and you will have a better day without them in it.

And if they are friends or family - ghost them.

Those of us who do not like that behaviour are having a tough enough time with the world being the way it is. We don't need this childish level of dog-whistling adding sand to our bedsheets.

So focus on the positive. Seek the good news. Look for the helpers. And if you can, join the helpers.

We're all building the world we want to be in. The world that succeeds is the one that has the most people doing the most work.