When Cruelty Becomes Casual

Cruelty doesn’t feel like a rare event anymore, it feels like background noise. We start with a personal turning point: after a simple family meal, someone wrote racial and gendered slurs on a car, followed by strangers yelling “go home.” That moment opens a bigger question we can’t ignore: what happens to our humanity when hate becomes casual and public.

We trace how online cruelty becomes real-world behavior. When anonymity removes social restraint, people rehearse dehumanizing talking points in digital spaces, get rewarded with likes, and then carry that same script into everyday life. We also talk about the moral cost of platforms that manufacture inflammatory “dialogue” for clicks, and how algorithms and confirmation bias can harden people into certainty without empathy.

From there, we zoom out to belonging and public space. Who feels entitled to police a neighbor, question someone’s presence, or decide who “fits” in a park, a school, or a community. We connect racism, immigration, and religious identity to collective trauma, institutional betrayal, and the exhaustion of living under constant invalidation. We end with grounded ways to protect your mental health, parent honestly in the age of social media, and heal through community, because trauma healing works best when your pain is witnessed.

If this conversation hits home, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review so more people can find it. Where are you seeing casual cruelty show up, and what does resisting it look like for you?

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Transcript

Why Cruelty Feels Louder Now

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hi everyone. Welcome back. In our last episode, we talked about belonging and authenticity, how people try to be themselves while still staying connected to others. But today we want to shift the conversation because lately it feels like something has changed in the culture. People are not just disagreeing, people are becoming cruel. People are saying things out loud that years ago, I imagine years ago they might not have, they might have been ashamed to say publicly. And we see this online every day, right? People insult strangers, they dehumanize entire groups, they mark suffering. That really is offensive to me, but I'll say more about that. And they say things behind a screen that they would never say face to face. But here is the part we want to sit with today. What happens when that online cruelty leaves the screen, right? What happens when the internet walks into the parking lot? Recently, I experienced something that forced me to think about this more deeply. After going into a restaurant with my children, someone wrote racial and gendered slurred on my car. In the same two-week period, I have people yell, go home at me twice. And I want to be clear, this is not just about my personal hurt, right? This is about what it means to live in a moment where people feel increasingly permitted to be openly hateful. So today we're asking what happens to our humanity when cruelty becomes casual? To explore that question, we want to focus on three big things. First, let's start off the foot with the first, the loss of social restraint and the normalization of cruelty. What do you say, sir?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Thank you, Khadija, for kind of sharing your experience. This is a really important topic for me just because of you know context and

A Real-Life Act Of Hate

SPEAKER_00 1:55

recent attacks on the Muslim community, and so this has been on my mind for a while. But kind of talking to the point about the normalization of cruelty, right? What has changed in our culture as society that has made people comfortable expressing hatred in public? And this is really important because this isn't like an isolated political movement, right? We're not just talking about politics here, it's really a like cultural and social shift in society, right? Of kind of the normalization of the dehumanization of people, right? That people don't deserve the same respect, the same concern, the same level of empathy as maybe people that like their own people, right? And just wondering, like I'm not wondering, I know where it's coming from, but we we want to ask ourselves, how is it getting so prevalent, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Yeah. I mean, I think about right, there are theories around what happens in like online space, right? Because there's this disinhibition effect of when you're online, you're anonymous and you don't get the backlash or like the swift reaction quickly. So there is that happening, but at the same time, right, researchers have found that what online discourse manages to find a way into public life, right? Like in normal everyday interactions.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Right. So thinking go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah, I was gonna say, like things that people would say privately or not even like say out loud, now they'll find pockets of groups of people that share that alignment that are maybe halfway across the country or the world where they can kind of be more confident and validated in their thoughts, whereas maybe they would have kept to themselves in the past.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Or it would have required a lot of legwork to try to find community, right? Around hate, to try to rally around hate. Whereas now there are a lot, I mean, public figures that are proponents

How Cruelty Gets Normalized

SPEAKER_01 4:25

of some of those ideas, right? And and I think online engagement becomes rehearsal space for people to actually rehearse and they and you even notice that the talking points sound the same to you. You're just like, what does this sound like? I've heard it before, yeah, yeah, right. So you know what people are engaging with, what they are consuming online, and then that is really informing how they engage in person, right? And then those talking points, those things that you hear and they come up, and you're like, so really people are polarizing themselves and developing and rehearsing their point, and it's almost legitimizing, right? When you have that much support, and then of course, online it makes it easy. You post something ridiculous a person should not post, and then you get likes, yeah, right, you get support and you get support and you continue to be platformed, and there is no collective outrage, which I think is I mean, that's another topic for another day, because there are just some things. I oh my gosh, I don't even know. And the sad thing about the algorithm is that it just throws things at you even when you didn't ask for it. Right?

SPEAKER_00 5:49

And it's like good old confirmation bias, right? Like you will find what you're looking for, even if it's not really there, right? It's because honestly, it's all about your own perception, and so if you have these thoughts about a group and that's all you're looking for, that's all you're going to find. And it just kind of continues to confirm your biases and your thoughts, and you you develop more conviction and commitment to them. And it's harder for you for people to kind of reason with you or to give you alternative, you know, viewpoints because you're so deeply ingrained in that you've you know isolated yourself socially, psychologically, intellectually, and so nothing outside of kind of what you're you're seeped in is is real or true or factual. And I don't know if you've seen these, but like you know, these like debates of like one person versus like 20, I don't know, like another that's just unacceptable. That even them talking and other people cheering for like what they're saying. I'm like, you're not saying anything legitimate, but you're getting applauses because of like you're repeating the same talking points that they recognize, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Yeah, and and I think that is such an irresponsible thing to do. I mean, we should not be talking, I don't even want to get into that for first and foremost. If I was ever invited, I would decline that. Decline that invitation, never be that one person except for Mahdi Hassan. Don't do it. Anyone else should be like, no, thank you. I have no desire to engage with stupid, absolutely zero desire to engage with ignorance that has no factual backing. And also, like, who are you to be that one person? I think there has to be some criteria, yeah. No criteria, no vetting. I don't think I think it's Jubilee who does that. They should be sued for propagating hate speech.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

In a way, they are giving them that platform, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

In for inflammatory content that there has to be people, we really need to start thinking about morality and ethical engagement in these spaces. Something has to be governing this because you cannot just pick and they also pick minority groups and they pick, they curate these inflammatory conversations, right? And then they be like, oh, this versus that. And then I'm like, this one individual you got, they have no cred credibility or credential to be representative of a full group of people, and they're stupid. Now everybody looks stupid. I'm just like, how did you get that one person? What was their qualification? So, and then that makes you think they are disingenuous in trying to create this space of dialogue. There is no space of dialogue because you have to come at it from a place of honesty and integrity to do that. But I think they're just after clicks and likes and making money. And so, really, we have to also think about how do we engage with these things online ourselves, right? Because you can't help but see sometimes you do see those things. And I think the next thing we want to talk about is really racism, right? And belonging is who gets to claim public space, right? So when this social engagement or the discourse that's happening online comes into public spaces, then you have to think about, you know, like when that person told me to go home, what are they really saying, right? Right. These moments are not simply personal insults, right? They are statements about who's

When Online Talk Becomes Action

SPEAKER_01 9:55

perceived to belong and who's viewed as an outsider. Um, so really thinking about race, immigration, religion, and then identity and how those things intersect with the experiences of exclusion and hostility.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

I think this is a really important topic that doesn't get named that often, right? Of like public space, right? And who has the authority or quote unquote the audacity to really uh take ownership of who gets to be visible, right? Who gets to be kind of who gets to share this space and who does not, right? And I always think about these things when I see like you know, people play praying, Muslims praying in the park, or you know, like somebody sitting just visibly black, right? Just like sitting outside their apartment, and somebody saying, Well, we know who the somebody is, but like people claiming, like, do you live here, or you know, why are you praying here? Why are you doing things? Like, if it's a public space, what gives you the authority to try to police what people are doing, right? And so, and and where do you get that confidence and where do you get the idea, right? I would never walk up to somebody in the park and say, Why are you feeding the ducks? Unless there's like a sign that says don't feed the ducks, right? But to question somebody else and to approach them, not only to question them, but also to approach them and then to like try to enforce something that comes from a place of entitlement, right? And so we want to know like who's giving you this license, where is this coming from? And it's all about kind of how we know people are socialized, yeah, and we also know where that's coming from, yeah. But you all but you I always I don't know about everybody, but I'm always still confused as to yes, the audacity you have the confidence to question somebody, yeah, yeah, like somebody standing on their umba you know driveway, yeah, and talking about do you live in this neighborhood? Yeah, what I've never seen you before. Okay, great. You don't need to see me. You are the new person, sir.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Like, excuse you, but that continues to happen. I think there's just and I think when we talk about privilege, that's one of them, right? Feeling like you belong in a space, and anybody else that doesn't look like you or represent you does not belong in that space. Yeah, and I think that is top down, right? It gets validated from the top down. Um, and just that confidence and that sense of belonging, just as small as that. People don't even think about, right? Like how, and then you know, you get into this whole discussion of what is privilege, and others will be like, I don't have no privilege. And I was like, Okay, friend. Um you don't.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

The fact that you don't recognize it isn't self-privilege, but that's a conversation for another way.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

The fact that people don't go around making you feel like you don't belong in a space, or you know, the fact that people don't even ask you, like, what are you doing here?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Yeah, they don't question your existence or your presence.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

So, really, in that rings, right? That online discourse then just emboldens people. And I think I've heard somebody say what used to be in the fringes has become mainstream, right? And I mean, just within the last 10 years, things have gone worse for a lot of minoritized groups. And you know, I think we we can easily name who is to blame for that, you know, without uh having to say it. I think our audience will understand whose effect that is, and to try to really empower a certain group and systematically target small groups over time, right? They just cycle through different people at different times, yeah. And I'm still in shock of just the blatant racism. And I think about things like when we had the separation of children from their families at the border, yeah, and I'm like, how is there no uh public outrage? I was like, because as a mom, I'm thinking, just imagining that, just imagine that horrifying. I mean, it is horrifying. I I can't describe it in any other way, and that other human beings are not horrified.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, you know, seeing that video of that three-year-old that was on trial, right? And the judge is like literally questioning the child, and not only do they not understand what's going on, they can't respond. They don't have their, they don't have a representative. It was a three-year-old who was on trial, right?

Platforms That Reward Dehumanization

SPEAKER_00 15:05

And then when and we've we've we've we've saw videos of children in literal cages, right? And there was no movement, no action. And and and I know like we say the last 10 years, but I feel like this has been a long time coming, right? Of whether it's we want to preserve, you know, certain rights over the actual harm it has, right? When you have these like mass shootings, this has become every day. Now we like this is part of our culture, right? Where children are taught mass shooter drills and they know exactly what to do. And you have students and individuals who have experienced multiple mass shootings, right? You know, in in elementary school and in college, same people, same experience. And we as a society have not taken action against that, and so this no this idea of like we need to adjust the structure so that we can protect certain people that is non-existent, and so and it goes back to this lack of empathy, right? Of like, oh no, these these rights are here, and so we don't we don't care, but then when you see internationally other countries where you know an incident has happened and now they've banned certain assault rifles and weapons, right? Immediately, because they know like certain quote unquote rights do not overpower the safety of of of society.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

It's just it's hard to exist in in a space like this, and also it you just feel so powerless as an individual, yeah, especially as an individual that belongs to a you know a minoritized group or a group that is impacted by most of those things. So, really thinking about like how do you protect your own humanity in this very hostile environment. I think about you know, how do you respond when you encounter hatred um without allowing it to harden you, right? And really, how do we raise children, build community, and maintain our own dignity when faced with dehumanization? So, really thinking about, you know, for me, I do have children, keeping them away from social media, right? Because they're just not equipped to, I am not, I a grown woman, am not equipped to handle the hate I see online. Yeah, so my children definitely are not equipped. It it's shocking, it's it shocks you to the core, and you know, and you don't want to fall into the trap of also othering people yourself. So, really to critically think about your own engagement and keep your kids away from that. At the same time, you have to educate children, right? I don't think they can be in the dark, right? You have to present the case in an honest and truthful way, of like this is what is happening. And I always use, I think, like some

Who Gets To Belong In Public

SPEAKER_01 18:20

people, really tentative language and and not be collective and giving blame, right? I don't say like these people do this to that other group, more of like some individuals, right? Just like in any community, uh do some bad things, and this is what that looks like. Really intentionally educating your kids because they also cannot be in the dark, because I'm sure somebody's going to tell them to go home. It's just a matter of time, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Somebody's going to try to take off or another child is going to repeat what they hear and and kind of they may not hear from an adult, they may hear it from a peer.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah, yeah. And I've already experienced right discrimination in school spaces. Um, somebody had the audacity to try to tell me my child is lazy, and you know that what that is a code word for when it comes to that. Yeah. Um, so really being intentional ourselves and taking care of ourselves. So what that looks like, I think maybe Sam, you can talk more to what does it look like to take care of yourself from like a mental health standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yeah, it really uh, you know, depends on your capacity, right? If taking care of yourself means, you know, stepping away and quieting your world, you know, that's kind of what you need to do. That has been kind of what has worked for me in the past, but I'm realizing now the past maybe a couple of years, that speaking out is is what I need to do to process, right? And to like really be able to digest what's happening so that I'm not carrying it with me and holding on to it. And so for me, sometimes it's calling out the institutions that I'm in and saying, Hey, you're not acknowledging my pain or the community, and something has to change, or I am going to step away, honestly, right? It's like you don't want to put your energy and effort into a place that does not see your humanity, right? Because staying in an environment that is constantly invalidating these things are happening, but the system as a whole is not supporting, is not protecting, is not intervening, that itself is another level of betrayal, right? Institutional betrayal. And so what we are experiencing as a collective are different types of traumas and betrayals that each one adds on and compounds into each other, right? It's not simultaneous, it's simultaneous, but it hurts just as much. And so when we think about healing, we have to know what we're healing from. And so if we are impacted by a collective hurt, right, our healing also has to be in a collective way, whether that's finding community, connecting with people, if there's institutional betrayal, right? A part of our healing has to be the institution standing up and making amends, right? And you calling them out and doing that, right? We can't self care our way out of like systemic oppression. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say that out loud.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

There is no such a thing. That that thank you for saying that. You're right, because they will continue to. Happen. Yeah. So you can't be in this roller coaster of consistently trying to self-care. Right. Self-care is in the immediate to try to decrease the stress. But then if something is systemically sustained, then there has to be a systemic change that will unsustain it or like dim, you know, abolish whatever it is that is happening. At least try to diminish it. Right. For it to diminish and then for people to actually heal from it. And I think that's really another topic for another day, where the systematic gaslighting, right, of people, and that is also rampant, right? Of communal gaslighting, telling you as a community that didn't happen. Or it wasn't that bad. So let us write a book about how you know people were happy. No one was happy. No one was happy except for a few.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

So

Protecting Kids Without Hiding Truth

SPEAKER_01 23:05

really thinking about those things. And yeah, like you said, you can self-care out of something that is happening to a collective and systematically sustained. But at the same time, you can it's good to just have even one person that will acknowledge and validate that experience for you. So, right, that's when couples come into play and how they talk about and reflect on what's happening around them. And how a family discusses things and reflects on it and really maintains its own humanity. Because I think many times when you see these individuals who perpetuate violence, and then their parents say, Oh, I didn't know that was happening. I'm like, Well, you are not having conversations you should be having with your child. You were not as engaged in their world. You should be engaged in your children's world, should have an idea of what they're consuming online, who their friends are at school, who are their peers, are they struggling with peers? Are they making you know peer groups? Do they engage in pro-social activities? Those are the things you need to know as a parent. Granted, we know there is a lot of responsibility on parents because you work, you work in the house, you have to take care of bills, all of that. I understand, but it's one of those, just it's just the responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Um, and it needs to be done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah. And in a time where, you know, collectiveness is scary right now, right? We have to actually push ourselves towards that, right? We have to reach out even more across all categories of people because this impacts all of us, right? Like this like collective anxiety and stress that we experience, part of you know, we are social animals, right? And we need and crave connection. And if we don't have that, right, we will die, like literally. And so it's it's important that we try to find ways to ground ourselves first, but and right, not kind of result in isolation and you know, kind of putting yourself in the bubble because that itself is a trauma response, right? If you need to do that initially to help you kind of process, great, but you don't want to maintain that isolation for a long time. Right. We still want to find ways to have community. And as a trauma therapist, the number one form of healing that works is be you're having your trauma witnessed, right? Somebody else just listening to your story, holding space for you, validating you, and hearing you out, right? We can't undo the trauma, but one thing that supports healing and promotes that growth is having somebody acknowledge your pain, right? Avoidance is the number one symptom of PTSD. And so we have to kind of lean into that uncomfortableness and reach out to people when we feel like we're drowning because that's the only way. Like I said, trauma compounds, and if we try to do this ourselves, we will lose energy and we won't be able to swim anymore. And so always reach out to people, try to connect with people, build community. It doesn't have to be a lot of people, it could be one or two,

Healing Through Witnessing And Community

SPEAKER_00 26:35

but always have somebody in your corner, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Yep, yeah, and we want to recognize these are really difficult conversations and at the same time, they are necessary because cruelty is right, becoming more casual, then understanding it and resisting it becomes all the more important. And I think uh before we end this episode, I would like to say the call to action is that first we want to tell you that what is happening right now in the world is not okay, and it's not normal, right? But just let that sit with you. It is not okay, and it's not normal. Yeah, um, and that we would like for you to resist. Resist by being in community, resist by being together, resist by still congregating in public space and take space in public activities, go out. You do not have to hide and take care of your loved ones and yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for listening.