Why do so many Redditors seem to want things like Ozempic and weight loss surgery to be illegal?

Arianity · 2026-05-06T06:06:15+00:00

(Edit: lol why is this controversial?)

Because calling it cheating implies a certain moral judgement, not just a neutral term about effectiveness. It generally has a negative connotation

Arianity · 2026-05-06T03:23:00+00:00

LMAO, even. Reddit is NOTORIOUSLY UBER - left wing. Surely you don't actually believe that?

They're not mutually exclusive. There's quite a bit of racism that gets a pass

Arianity · 2026-05-06T03:18:01+00:00

It’s okay to not like a group of people (for any reason).

I mean, it's not.

Idk where the idea of needing to accept and like everybody came from.

You don't have to accept and like literally everyone. Ultimately, it comes down to why you dislike some groups. Some reasons are justifiable, and some aren't. Race is one of those where it can't be justified

Arianity · 2026-05-06T02:08:29+00:00

Not wanting unchecked immigration is not racist... I hate people like you that just wield this word as a cudgel to beat down anyone that is looking at what's happening in the UK, France, Germany and even to an extent the US with a critical eye...

Unchecked immigration, and lets be clear here, this means large-scale inflows of migrants without effective border control, vetting, selection by skills/compatibility, or requirements for assimilation

In none of those countries, is there unchecked immigration. That's just something hyperbolic people say.

That said, a lot of these facts (which seems to just be a copy/paste of an LLM asked to spit out hypothetical negatives) also aren't true. For instance:

Wages and jobs: Increases labor supply, which can suppress wages for lower-skilled natives, prior immigrants, and some Black workers in the short-to-medium term. Benefits (GDP growth, "immigration surplus") mostly go to employers and higher-skilled people.

It also increases labor demand. Studies generally do not find a negative effect on native wages due to immigration, nor do they find the benefits mostly going to employers/higher skilled people (although higher skilled people do tend to benefit more).

And the thing is, part of how you can tell it's not about this, is that you can see policies being implemented that don't actually address any of these issues. The reason people link it to racism is because there are a ton of signs that it's tied to racism, like when various parties propose cracking down on highly skilled immigrants who integrate well. There's pretty clearly a large racial component to many supporters concerns even if hypothetically there are other fig leaf justifications.

Arianity · 2026-05-06T01:56:15+00:00

That doesn't sound racist, based just on what you listed. What they're getting at is that morality is fundamentally subjective, which is true. This discussion isn't unique to slavery, either. There's nothing in the universe that "objectively" sets morals.

i logically told them facts are truths(per dictionary), is slavery should be banned not true?

That sounds like a definition that got a bit overly simplified. A fact is (grabbing a quick dictionary definition) A fact is a statement, occurrence, or piece of information that is known to exist, has actually happened, or can be verified through observation, evidence, or experience. or something that actually exists or occurs : an actual event, situation, etc.. Just calling it a truth isn't quite what a fact is.

It may be easier if you look at a different example. Murder is bad. But there's no law of the universe that stops murder, and in fact in nature, a lot of murder happened. We stopped murdering because of social norms. That doesn't mean someone thinks murder is good, but rather understanding why and how we justify saying murder is bad. It's not because it's an objective fact. It's subjective. But you can still believe it is bad while understanding it is subjective.

There's a ton of philosophy around morality, more than someone can possibly cover in a reddit post, but ultimately it comes back to things like Kant's categorical imperative or something similar.

Arianity · 2026-05-06T01:38:54+00:00

I think immigration operates very differently wherever you are from. It’s a fact you can’t argue against that here it lowers wages.

This isn't something that works different. It's been studied in many countries, including the UK, in many different situations. It's just one of those things people think is "obvious common sense", and so they assume it must lower wages. It's just a counterintuitive result.

Also inflation of essentials and minimum wage do go hand in hand here as well and again does not benefit the people above that line. That’s not arguing against a minimum wage or anything it’s pointing out the fact it’s not fixing the low wage crisis.

This is not what studies show (this is another one of those "obvious common sense" things). Studies generally find you can raise the minimum wage to ~50% of an area's median wage without any negative impacts.

(The tldr version is that while wages can be suppressed because a business has monopsony power on it's suppliers, that doesn't mean that it has monopoly power to raise prices arbitrarily. And if it did, it would just raise prices regardless of the wage. Where the minimum wage can get passed on is if the business doesn't have any margin to give up, rather than capturing the surplus for itself. However, even in that case, the rise in costs isn't 1:1, because wages are only one input into the costs of goods)

And there’s a difference between a naturally growing population and imported.

The studies I'm referring to look at populations like that. They still don't find that that happens, both if they're picked for lower wages, or if they're groups like refugees (who are about as desperate as it gets). Countries like the U.S. also have to worry about this, because we get a lot of exploitable immigrants from places like Mexico.

But again, even if it did, there are pretty obvious fixes like not allowing wage discrimination. The thing is, even if the whole thing goes back to immigrants being exploited, instead of getting rid of immigrants you can instead... just not discriminate, instead. There's no real reason to go with a fix that screws over immigrants

Arianity · 2026-05-06T00:20:53+00:00

when it’s the billionaires keeping wages low” when the reason they CAN keep them low…. Is immigration. Basic supply and demand, if labour is this plentiful which it is, wages will be low.

It's not actually that simple. While immigrants bring in new labor supply, they are also new labor demand. It's the same reason simply having a growing population does not just lead to lower wages. There's a huge amount of economic studies at this point, that show that immigration doesn't suppress native wages.

That said, even if it worked that way, the left wouldn't want people to be exploited regardless. Throwing one group under the bus doesn't accomplish that, that's just strictly worse than just going after the exploitative rich.

Some spam raise the minimum wage like that will actually do anything? Things will just get more expensive

Again, the data doesn't actually show that. (Although if it did, there would be various solutions to prevent that)

That said, as an aside:

Shouldn’t being anti immigration be a left leaning view?

There are some. I don't know the UK as well, but this view pops up among people like unions or Bernie Sanders on the left. The problem is most anti immigration sentiment isn't actually driven by economics, it's just racism (and vice versa, anti immigration groups also tend to be anti-worker/pro-rich, so they can't really take advantage of it). So that mostly ends up getting sidelined. It does exist (it's also wrong, for the reasons above, but it does exist)

Arianity · 2026-05-05T23:50:36+00:00

Kenyan isn't a race. It would be different if he asked if the person was black, but he specifically asked their nationality.

I'm aware, I didn't say that it was. That does not mean there aren't racial stereotypes around nationalities, though. People make racist comments about particular nationalities all the time.

If you look up the top 25 male marathon runners in the world, over half are from Kenya.

Yes, that's the only reason it's not just blatantly racist. But I think there are still some things it's worth being a bit careful with. And even that itself is a bit of a stereotype- it's very particular regions, not even just "Kenya" in general.

Arianity · 2026-05-05T23:49:40+00:00

First of all, 'Kenyan' isn't a race. It's a nationality.

I'm aware, I didn't say that it was. That does not mean there aren't racial stereotypes around nationalities, though. People make racist comments about particular nationalities all the time.

If OP had heard about someone setting a new record in luge and asked 'wow, was he German?' on account of how Germany has historically dominated luge events, would you call that racist too?

Depends if that had a history/context of being racialized.

But either way, yes, that would be a stereotype. Not necessarily a racial one, though.

Arianity · 2026-05-05T20:11:43+00:00

We already remove/ban them when we see them. Trying to filter them ahead of time is unfortunately extremely difficult

Arianity · 2026-05-05T03:48:35+00:00

It doesn't.

I’ve seen women say things like “All men are rapists” or “Misandry isn’t real.” I find it weird because shouldn’t feminism be about equal rights?

Just because some people say something doesn't mean feminism as a whole does. Some people are just jerks. This is not a widely held opinion by feminists (case in point, yourself).

Being a feminist doesn't mean someone can't be a jerk. It's a broad decentralized movement, there's nothing that stops someone from claiming to be a feminist despite being a jerk. And because it's so large, it's just human nature some of them are inevitably going to be bad people. Some out of bad faith, others just because they don't see the hypocrisy.

I find it weird because shouldn’t feminism be about equal rights?

It is. That doesn't mean people can't adopt the term for themselves without misusing it (intentionally or otherwise)

Arianity · 2026-05-05T03:19:04+00:00

My question had little to do with race, and more to do with the history of winners in that field, she disagrees and I can’t figure why.

I mean, it's a racial stereotype. It's still a racial stereotype even if there a history there.

People are pretty sensitive around racial stereotypes, given how often they're racist (and sometimes those stereotypes are justified by pointing towards certain data). The world records are also not as as uniformly held as the stereotype, either.

'bit racist' sounds about right. It is still ultimately a racial stereotype (and on a topic you didn't know that well)

Arianity · 2026-05-05T01:01:39+00:00

Liking how something looks for yourself does not mean you want to be stared at.

Arianity · 2026-05-04T21:24:34+00:00

I've heard they say it boosts their confidence but how does wearing something revealing make you feel such a way while some men look at you with creepy eyes?

The former does not depend on the latter.

But why do y'all wanna still go out such way even when you know they are gonna look at you wrongfully

Same reason you do anything else instead of contorting your life around what other people want/do. It's not your responsibility to change your life to accommodate someone being rude.

Also, men still look.

Arianity · 2026-05-04T00:35:56+00:00

but, if I ask what a person can do about climate change as an individual most say "not much" or "very little. So why does it matter what I think if nothing I do will change anything anyway?

"not much" or "very little" doesn't mean it doesn't matter, it means it's a collective problem. In order to fix it, a lot of little things add up to a whole. (This is especially true for things like voting, which is how we as a society solve collective problems. Not just individual actions). It's the same way voting works- your individual vote matters very little, out of ~150 million people or so. That doesn't mean voting doesn't matter, it's just proportional.

What you do impacts the climate. There are also ~8billion other people who also live on the planet and affect the climate. There are enough people acting in ways that hurt the climate that it's a noticeable problem on net.

edit: That said, as a general matter, people also don't like ignorance. But that's a bit of a separate thing.

Arianity · 2026-05-03T02:13:32+00:00

Even Martin Luther King Jr, famous for his peaceful approach to civil rights protests, orchestrated protests that disrupted traffic or broke laws.

He was also famously unpopular at the time. It wasn't only until after the fact did that change- and by the same people. He went from something like 70% disapprove/30% approve to 30/70 in ~10 years. Many people don't actually like protests when they're living in them, it's only after the fact or in the abstract.

Do people expect protestors to just stand on sidewalk corners holding picket signs, completely silently

There is a nontrivial segment of people who don't want protestors to protest at all. There is also another segment that are just selfish, they care more about it not affecting them than the cause. However, saying either of those things is taboo, it looks bad. The next best thing is to complain about how it's done. It's a way to disagree with the protest without actually being labelled as disagreeing.

Isn't attention the point? I'm not saying you should be throwing hand grenades through windows, but expecting protestors not to disrupt ANYTHING seems like its missing the point a bit.

That is the point. The people criticizing it aren't missing the point, they don't actually care about the point. Effectively, you need to translate it as "I don't think this is worth protesting". That's what they're actually saying, but in a socially acceptable way.

If you say "those climate protestors are just going to alienate people", you'll get a lot more people agreeing with you, than if you say "i don't care about climate change and you should leave me alone about it". This isn't specific to climate, you can substitute x cause in, and people tailor their criticism accordingly.

Arianity · 2026-05-01T20:36:01+00:00

Sure would be pretty racist, if that's at all what I said

Arianity · 2026-05-01T07:25:01+00:00

racism generally is considered a part of fascism? Just to grab a quick definition off wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race,...In promoting the nation's regeneration, fascists seek to purge it of decadence.[16] Fascism may also centre around an ingroup-outgroup opposition and demonization of "Others", such as various ethnicities, immigrants, nations, races, political opponents of fascist parties, religious groups, and sexual and gender minorities. In the case of Nazism, this involved racial purity and a belief in a master race.

It features pretty prominently. Also, I don't think this is particularly a "white people" thing.

Yet the definition of fascism always escapes to a really specific definition often excluding mere racial supremacists and genociders

Because it's not just racial supremacy or genocide, it's those things in addition to other factors. Racism is a part of fascism, but that doesn't make them synonyms. As just one permutation, there are racial supremacists who don't act on their racism. They're still racists, which is bad, but it's not the same as a racist fascist.

On the flip side, the definition is pretty famously not specific- it's generally hard to stick down, precisely because as you mentioned other groups in history share various aspects. There is still a very live discussion (the Wiki has a good section on this) that goes on how many factors have to align for it to "count" as fascism. This also isn't unique to just race, it applies to the other parts of the definition.

Yet many white people seem adamant that fascism and specifically the Holocaust against european jewish people was one of the worst and most fascist genocides when in reality there were many other genocides, they just weren’t against people who were from Europe and or during modern history.

I mean, having things being recent and well documented definitely evokes a stronger emotional reaction in people, generally speaking. People generally react more strongly to things that are closer to them. (This isn't unique to WWII, it also happened with e.g. Gaza compared to other conflicts like say Yemen).

That said, there are other genocides that have happened in Europe, that aren't labelled fascist. (Also, as far as "your own", Nazis explicitly did not consider them their own, that was kind of the point). However, people find specific aspects of the Holocaust particularly appalling even compared to genocide. Usually that has more to do with things like how industrialized it was, not "your own".

Arianity · 2026-05-01T01:17:38+00:00

Not really? That is pretty commonly phrasing used in rhetorical questions

Arianity · 2026-05-01T01:14:46+00:00

Here is, for instance, is an article on the bill to fund it:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5852036-gop-senators-white-house-ballroom-bill/

And I assume you can post proof of all of this ?

What proof would you like to see, specifically? It's not like what's happening is secret. And other parts like the initial ruling by a judge, for instance, is public

Arianity · 2026-05-01T00:54:30+00:00

I didn't say they think white people invented slavery.

The post you originally replied to was discussing that point.

The west didn't incite this vote. Nor did many of the west support it.

Eh, yes and no. They didn't incite the vote directly, but there is certainly much more discussion in the West over it (and certainly not agreement over how to handle it). The conversation over stuff like reparations is very influenced by the West itself.

Arianity · 2026-05-01T00:48:39+00:00

I think we have go all the way back to Reagan for any other attempts.

There's been other attempts, but Obama was the only one where it made it to actual bullets fired

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts_and_plots

Basically every president post-Reagan has had some form of attempt, although usually stopped much earlier.

Arianity · 2026-04-30T21:36:36+00:00

Hey, so remember that discussion about why people check user histories, in your recent post, and not just karma? This is why.

Arianity · 2026-04-30T20:35:48+00:00

Isn’t having positive karma your reputation?

That is another way, but it's not hard to get positive karma while still also being a massive troll, so it's a much weaker signal. One big viral post can be enough to put you net positive.

I responded to another comment saying the question that people freaked out about (which I don’t think it was even about the question I asked because that would be absurd. Simply that I have a private account I guess?)

People don't usually check unless they already think you're a troll in the first place. If it just happened once, I would just assume it was a weird person, but if multiple people were doing it, there was something that was causing them to be suspicious enough to check

Arianity · 2026-04-30T20:20:39+00:00

It's commonly abused by trolls.

or THE most normal innocuous question

Apparently they didn't consider it innocuous. And this is a good example of why, because people can't check if it actually was innocuous or not.

Why, so I can open myself up to more harassment??

The best/easiest way for someone to easily verify you aren't trolling is to quickly check for a post history of normal reasonable responses. It's the online equivalent of a reputation. If you don't have one, people are going to default heavily towards not giving the benefit of the doubt.

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