how far is far enough

when you’re in touch with your morality it acts as a filter to what content you consume, music, movies, comedy, even the silly reels you scroll past at midnight. but the filter doesn’t make you feel clean. it makes you feel guilty for knowingly watching those kind of things.

there was this comedian i used to watch. the jokes ranged from regional stereotypes to misogyny and i’m sure there were other things as well, way worse, which i’m probably missing out right now. and i want to be clear, i wasn’t just laughing along blindly. i used to catch the joke, i used to categorize it mentally, the filter was always on. i rarely even laughed at those jokes. i just needed a consistent source of low effort distraction and it did the work for me. that’s beside the point though. i still felt guilty about watching it.

i could’ve turned it off and i didn’t. i know that’s just a me problem.

but i don’t think it’s an unreasonable standard to hold either. it’s something we’re expected to do as good humans isn’t it. it’s a basic thing, like not using slurs in normal language, that’s just basic respect right.

so maybe the guilt was never irrational. maybe it was just telling me something true, that i spent my time on something that didn’t match what i actually believe, for a low reason, boredom, needing background noise. the choice was just a bit lazy.

and it wasn’t only the comedian. even silly reels made me feel like i wasn’t complying with my values, and i know that sounds like a stretch, but i just went deep into everything, linking everything. a slur joke and a dumb reel would set off the exact same feeling in me if something inside them clashed with what i believe. it didn’t matter how serious it was. i think what was actually bothering me was that i’d stopped checking anything before it went in.

there’s this image i keep coming back to, of me scrolling youtube trying to find the perfect non controversial video to watch, and every single video had something conflicting in it somewhere. i don’t really remember the exact day this was at its worst, i just have that image. me, scrolling, looking for something safe, and not finding it.

i think about meat the same way. i don’t eat it anymore, and a big part of why is that i know i wouldn’t be able to stomach an animal getting slaughtered right in front of me and then proceeding to eat it. so i decided i don’t get the easy way out either. if i couldn’t do it myself, i don’t get to benefit from someone else doing it out of my sight.

i read later that there’s actually a name for this, the meat paradox, the gap between saying you care about animals and still eating them, and the main way people seem to live with that gap is just by keeping the two things separate in their head. you don’t really connect the meat on your plate to the animal it came from, it just becomes food. even the words help with that. you say beef and pork instead of cow and pig, and somewhere in that little swap the animal quietly goes missing. and it only works because of distance, because the killing happens somewhere you never have to see it.

and when people defend eating meat they tend to reach for the same handful of reasons over and over, that it’s natural, that it’s normal, that it’s necessary, and that it’s nice. someone actually sat down and grouped them exactly like that, which i found kind of funny, because when i first stopped and people asked me why, that’s almost word for word what i got back. that we’ve been eating meat forever so it’s natural, that everyone does it so it’s normal, that something bad would happen if we all stopped so it’s necessary. i don’t think anyone was being dishonest with me. i think those are just the ready made answers your brain hands you when something you’ve done your whole life suddenly gets a question mark put next to it. and i had my own ready made answers too, pointing the other way. everyone does. that’s the part that unsettles me a little, how much of what i call a position is just a script i picked up somewhere and never really checked.

i think distance does that to everything. it dims the stakes. arguments feel less real over text, judging someone feels easier from a screenshot than from an actual conversation with them. being online has only made that worse. we’ve kinda lost the guts to be honest in person, so we say it in a comment section instead where it costs us nothing.

and this is the part that made me feel less crazy for linking all of it together. there’s a whole idea in psychology about how we let ourselves off the hook for things we know are wrong, and one of the main ways we do it is by putting distance between us and the thing, handing the responsibility to someone else, someone further down the line who actually did it. part of why that works is that the further something is from you, in space or in time or just in how personally it touches you, the more your brain files it away as an idea instead of a real thing with weight. up close it’s a person, an animal, a specific harm you can feel. far away it flattens into a concept you can sit and argue about calmly, and that flat version is a lot easier to live with than the real one.

it lined up with everything i was already feeling. the slaughter i don’t see, the joke i didn’t write, the person i only know from a screenshot. distance was doing the same job every time, making it easier to not fully own what i was taking part in.

and online adds a whole extra layer on top of that. you’re invisible, you don’t have to watch the other person’s face change in real time, none of it feels like it’s properly happening. and honestly so much of what stops us being cruel to someone in person is just having to be in the same room as the result, having to look at them, and online that room doesn’t exist. so everyone says the thing, and because everyone is saying it, no single person feels like the one responsible for it, and the whole thing gets to happen with nobody really having to own any of it.

there was a phase where i saw people in a very binary way. this person does this, so they’re automatically bad, i can’t watch that video, something like that. that has softened a lot since then. i don’t know exactly what changed, i think my mind just adjusted a bit over time. i think i just got tired of treating everything like it was equally serious.

the filter still buzzes sometimes. but it’s not the same as before, where it felt binding, like i had to prove something every time it went off. now it’s more like just recognizing what i’m consuming, what i’m supporting by watching it, without it turning into a whole thing i have to punish myself for.

there’s a flip side to this too. there are things i watch and feel completely fine about, no filter going off, nothing to catch. usually it’s stuff with kindness in it, empathy. and i think that says more about what i actually value than any of the guilt does.

i’m not sure how to end this. i don’t think i’ve fully figured out where the line is, or whether the guilt was always fair or sometimes just me being too hard on myself. all i really know is that it gets a lot quieter the closer a thing is to me, and a lot easier to ignore the further away it gets. i haven’t decided what to do with that yet. maybe just keep noticing, i don’t know.