Dismissing Opposing Views

The cluster centers on criticisms of commenters who broadly label or dismiss large groups of people with differing opinions—often political—as idiots, disturbed, malicious, or inferior, advocating instead for empathy and understanding motives.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Politics & Society
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#962
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Keywords

US OP HN McCarthyism FP TV generalizations wrong people brush idiot group people ironic unhinged smug hateful people disagree

Sample Comments

refurb Nov 1, 2019 View on HN

People who have different views than you are “shitty”?

zmgsabst Jan 2, 2024 View on HN

That sounds like a stereotype — “people who disagree with me are just dumb and emotional!”

matthewmacleod Dec 28, 2025 View on HN

Holding an opinion like “everyone apart from me is a shill or an idiot” is not an attractive quality in a human.

jcims Dec 4, 2020 View on HN

This would be a good conversation in person, this format just is going to take too long to resolve.I just want to gently suggest one thing:>Instead, it's used by these people because their real opinion just cannot be openly stated in polite company any longer.This accusation (X because Y) also tends to be generally unproven. I do it at times but I think it's a trick we play on ourselves to neatly package a person up into a 'they' who's who's opinion or

lopmotr Mar 13, 2020 View on HN

Before you write off 50 million people as "seriously disturbed", you should find out their motives. Not the cherry-picked mockery of them you see on social media, but their more common motives. To make such a crude judgement as you did, you have to be ignoring some huge factor. If you conclude that factor is "they're stupid" or "they're evil", then you haven't found it. This applies generally to many controversial ideas. Being unable to see it from an

sgtnoodle Mar 17, 2021 View on HN

The point I'm attempting to make is that stating blanket negative over-generalizations about any group of people isn't productive, and in this case it's seemingly ironic to me. If you think I'm a hateful person because of pointing that out, then by your definition I am hateful and I'm okay with you thinking that. I obviously disagree, though, and I'm happy to attempt to civilly discuss that with you if you'd like.

lowbloodsugar Aug 4, 2024 View on HN

It’s the usual “people not like me are wrong”.

folkhack Oct 10, 2021 View on HN

> It's a horrible look only according to incurious, oversensitive, ideological and closed-minded people.Oof - shots fired. I think you're including me in this group of "people" so I'm going to bow out as this is going nowhere productive.

Ari_Ugwu Nov 10, 2018 View on HN

This comment wasn't substantive and really just attempts to hijack a sound discussion with a form of divisive reasoning I thought was contained solely within the comments of Fox News.Arguing that the general groups of faceless people you've marked as the problem do not present evidence when you yourself have provided none is....ironic?Who are these people you despise so much? Let's find them and make them wear something that will allow us to see them for the enemy they are.

ytrytr Jul 10, 2020 View on HN

The sheer arrogance of thinking the people that disagree with your controversial topic are the "malicious, ignorant mobs". Hahaha, the irony here is funny.