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elementalheroSo I was on today's RP!S, and there was a secret about someone doing coke. It could have been true, or a troll secret, or whatever. But I found myself really disturbed by several replies. A lot of people replied condemning drug use, which is what I would have replied with if I weren't too chickenshit to reply to anything in rp!s (lol). But then a lot of people replied to those people to tell them to "stop being so judgmental" and that they were naive and stupid for saying "omg drugs are bad" because apparently, thinking that abuse of dangerous, illegal drugs like cocaine makes one a naive, stupid person.
I came away from that page disturbed and angered, mostly by a lot of people's cavalier attitude. I mean, I didn't reply after I read the secret because I was too busy rolling my eyes and thinking what idiots some people are, but it disturbed me that a lot of people seemed to condone illegal drug use because "it's a life decision" and something about "human experience" or whatever and just. no.
Drugs are bad. They aren't funny. They ruin lives. Not just the health of the people taking them, for whatever reasons, but the people involved in the actual drug selling process. People in Third World countries die every day for every gram of coke/heroin/whatever that rich suburban college kids buy and snort/smoke/inject for shits and giggles.
It's one thing to be on drugs and be out on the streets, with no other option, or in a dangerous business where that kind of thing is done. Honestly? I feel terribly over every memoir I read of people who made it out of the inner city and battled addictions to all kinds of substances, people who were depressed or felt they had no option. But affluent people doing drugs recreationally? For fun? Illegal, damaging, addictive drugs? That people die for? Even pot, which seems so harmless - pot, which funds the black market in all kinds of ways, the black market that also specializes in prostitution, human trafficking, other drugs, general life-ruining? Those people? I have no fucking sympathy for them. And to see people laugh something like that off and cast aspersions on people who try to speak up about the, you know, illegality of such actions? Fuck them.
I am probably betraying my inner sheltered white girl, and if so, please, speak up and tell me where I have spoken wrongly or insensitively.
I came away from that page disturbed and angered, mostly by a lot of people's cavalier attitude. I mean, I didn't reply after I read the secret because I was too busy rolling my eyes and thinking what idiots some people are, but it disturbed me that a lot of people seemed to condone illegal drug use because "it's a life decision" and something about "human experience" or whatever and just. no.
Drugs are bad. They aren't funny. They ruin lives. Not just the health of the people taking them, for whatever reasons, but the people involved in the actual drug selling process. People in Third World countries die every day for every gram of coke/heroin/whatever that rich suburban college kids buy and snort/smoke/inject for shits and giggles.
It's one thing to be on drugs and be out on the streets, with no other option, or in a dangerous business where that kind of thing is done. Honestly? I feel terribly over every memoir I read of people who made it out of the inner city and battled addictions to all kinds of substances, people who were depressed or felt they had no option. But affluent people doing drugs recreationally? For fun? Illegal, damaging, addictive drugs? That people die for? Even pot, which seems so harmless - pot, which funds the black market in all kinds of ways, the black market that also specializes in prostitution, human trafficking, other drugs, general life-ruining? Those people? I have no fucking sympathy for them. And to see people laugh something like that off and cast aspersions on people who try to speak up about the, you know, illegality of such actions? Fuck them.
I am probably betraying my inner sheltered white girl, and if so, please, speak up and tell me where I have spoken wrongly or insensitively.
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Date: 2010-07-22 05:51 am (UTC)To address your first point, I definitely didn't mean for it to come off that way, and looking up, I definitely used too many aggressive italics. Joking about drugs in general is not what bothered me - I've certainly made many drug-related jokes in my lifetime and I'll probably make more in the future.
The secret itself went something like, "I'm so dedicated to my game that I once accepted an app while coming off a coke high." Aside from the usual slew of "lol cool story bro"'s and cries of "troll in the dungeon," some commented saying things like, "I think your priorities are a bit screwed up," or, "I don't think that's necessarily an example of good dedication." Then, several anons commented to those comments, saying things like, "don't be so sheltered, people use drugs in the real world, shocking but true," and "how dare you judge the OP," and generally berating several commenters that spoke up against drug use.
What bothered me were the comments that belittled and berated people for speaking up against drugs, especially in the contemptuous way many of them were delivered. (Of course, there were also anti-drug commenters who were jerkasses, I am not trying to make this issue black and white.)
There is certainly dialogue to be had about the criminalization of the drug trade, the societal implications, the morality involved, the legal drugs that are just as bad as the illegal ones, but basically, what I was trying to get at with this entry was that I felt disturbed that so many people felt that someone using cocaine - a stereotypically "rich white person drug," as I discussed with
Again, thanks for giving me such a well-thought-out reply, and I feel more enlightened on this issue now that I've gotten to see some counterarguments not delivered by sarcastic anons with stupid GIFs.