I was a big ‘offend everyone’ dweeb, with a side serving of “free speech”.

I grew up in structure where etiquette and taboo were abused and hated them. Like the chilidish little maximalist I was, I applied that hatred to everything. Slurs were particularly hilarious, I thought people were ridiculous with how they tip toe around them and delighted in their discomfort when I’d just come out and say it. They were just words, why be scared of them?

In my mind, I clearly didn’t hold any bigoted views. Particularly with homophobic ones - I’m queer, I’ve been beaten for it, I’ve been beaten counter protesting “actual” bigots. I’d ask critics “what have you done?”, before calling them a fa-

Well, you get the idea.

At the end, I was also a sort of community figure. An extremely minor one in the grand scheme of things, but I still had attracted a small audience. This included a large number of younger men who were impressionable. The thing is, they attract their own audience too.

I noticed an increasingly amount of what I considered, back then, to be “actual” bigoted stuff being said. Usually from older men trying to sway those younger men. I saw them buzzing around my peers too, encouraging them to say things for them, dropping bait in chats and pulling aside the younger male audience members to try to recruit them, more or less.

I tried a couple of times to call it out, but they’d fall back on “it’s just a joke”. They’d point to all the bullshit I’d said over the years and the obvious hypocrisy. I’d given up any credibility I had and bred an environment where these people could thrive. It also became clear that plenty of my audience had taken me seriously, and were imitating what they thought I was doing.

It made me reevaluate things. I’d alienated people, good people, by acting in this way. I’d hurt people I never had any intention of hurting with my callous disregard for their feelings. I’d convinced people to be worse in ways I’d fought against, destroying far more progress than I’d ever made.

So I stepped away from the spotlight and stopped. As a side note, working it out of your vocabulary is a truly frustrating progress. I’d trained myself to use slurs to mean the most basic things. Getting sober was more difficult but at least it was quicker. It took literal years of diligence to kill the impulse to call someone who is being annoying a fa-

Anyway.

Afterwards, a surprising number of the people who distanced themselves from me reached out. More than I deserved. I hadn’t told anyone I’d had a revelation, or made some grand apology to try and absolve myself of the sin or whatever. It is telling about how bad it was that people took notice just from it’s absence. Many of those shared stories of how it’d hurt them.

The one that broke my heart the most was a transwoman who I had stood up for when others tried to push her out. She had been lonely, and I’d given her just enough acceptance for her to get trapped in a toxic community. My bigotry she rationalized away, and it desensitized her just enough to try to fit in with the broader community around me. She internalized the horrific transphobia that was being said. I think it goes without saying what that did to her mental health and the places it lead. I had caused deep harm to not only someone I liked, who had looked up to me, but someone I had tried to help.

It’s not just jokes, the intention doesn’t change that.

Being antivax.

I grew up in an antivax house and I never questioned it, especially since me and my family used to be healthier than most people around us.

There would be vaccine days in school and we would have to go and refuse them. only when the corona hit and suddenly there was all this discussion about the importance of vaccines and I started to actually research it, given I was still young at the time so I don’t blame myself for not doubting it up until that point.

To this day I’m still wary of vaccines and I do have this deep feeling that I don’t want to be vaccinated but I do get my vaccines after researching them and proving to myself that the data makes sense.

I also can’t ignore the fact that there is a conflict of interest for these companies to release these vaccines and them maybe not being as safe as possible but I try to follow the data especially from independent research that isn’t related to the company that made the vaccine.

It’s really crazy how childhood beliefs can hold you so strongly even when you logically get through them and realize they are wrong.

Trigger warnings.
I used to think they are for overly sensitive people, then life happened and now I have my own triggers and would like a trigger warning for certain topics.

Off the top of my head, I used to think that economic growth of a country equals wealth growth for its people and equals good leadership is steering the country policies.

Turns out that good leadership and economics are rather loosely correlated and also a large inertia allows bad leadership to reap what others saw

For me one of the most recent things I’ve changed my mind about was my stance on (Finland) joining NATO. I used to oppose the idea because I was uninformed and thought that if a member state somewhere far away gets attacked that means I’m almost guranteed to be sent there fighting. I also didn’t think an actual hot conflict was a realistic threat in the civilized western world or atleast that the possibility of something like that was extremely small. Suffice to say I was proven wrong.