My city subreddit isn’t even the worst, but someone asks how to ride the trolley for free and gets downvoted to shit and shamed.
There are two things going on here:
- “Cop energy” – overtly pro-police sentiment, Blue Lives Matter shit, that sort of thing.
- People who want others to follow the rules, because they perceive themselves as following the rules and they don’t want to be a rube.
While the second can lead to the first, the two are distinguishable. Cop energy, for instance, is often more of an extension of racial and class prejudice (“they beat up the right people”) than an extension of placing importance on rule following. This is why you get chuds who’ll back the blue but then turn around and talk about cheating on taxes, skirting gun laws, and otherwise flaunting any rule they personally disagree with. That second, “rule following” motivation is more of a liberal trait – they believe more in government and try harder to stay within the lines, which leads to resentment of those who don’t. They pay their trolley fare, so why shouldn’t you?
So of course asking how to ride the trolley for free gets downvoted – chuds downvote it because they hate the poors, and and libs downvote it because they feel taken advantage of if they pay while someone else doesn’t.
hat second, “rule following” motivation is more of a liberal trait – they believe more in government and try harder to stay within the lines, which leads to resentment of those who don’t. They pay their trolley fare, so why shouldn’t you?
These aren’t mutually exclusive, though, I think you’re missing some class analysis.
You’re forgetting the conservative Law and Order crowd where, especially in the context OP posted, it’s about the dang poors contributing their part to the trolley they personally sustain by doing the excel at the office they drive their car to (over the roads that just fall from the sky).
Which is how this agrees with cheating on taxes and the other laws. Obviously they have earned this freedom and so did everybody richer than them.
Yeah, it’s the same energy as the libs that oppose free college. “I paid for college, I followed the rules, why shouldn’t you just because the rules are arbitrary and cruel?”
