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Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? I had to pretty much hide who I was during school due to fear of bullying/ not fitti

Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? I had to pretty much hide who I was during school due to fear of bullying/ not fitting in but most kids these days seem to be able to be themselves in many ways. I agree we can be friendlier though!

hilsdev 1y ago
You’re right the world is a lot more accepting. No matter how much things improve and how positive the trajectory though, there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough
- ghurtado 1y ago
  The world can absolutely be more accepting of certain groups than in the past, while at the same time being less accepting of other groups. If you were part of the latter, you would instantly understand why we still have a lot of work to do.
- phs318u 1y ago
  Yes, and there will be others rolling their eyes and calling out all this "woke" acceptance. On a serious note, if the world is a lot more accepting, it's mostly because the youngest generations are a lot more accepting, and the more bigoted among us (which tend to skew older) are slowly dying off.
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    > are slowly dying off. Far too slowly, I might add.
  - esseph 1y ago
    New bigots and racists are made every day. Nothing went away, it just got hidden under a thin veneer.
- r14c 1y ago
  Generally that's because they're in the group (or have some sympathy for the group) that still isn't being accepted and may otherwise face obstacles that make it difficult to live a fulfilling life. tolerance is a peace treaty, but there are a ton of gaps in how we implement it because our default socially and politically is more-so based in privilege than co-existance.
- mynameisvlad 1y ago
  As someone that lives as multiple minorities, both visible and not, this is very much untrue. And that applies for many definitions of "normal". A person outside the "norm", in whatever category, is accepted far less than you claim. Sometimes it may not be visible or even intended, but it's there.
  - samplatt 1y ago
    The whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now. There's a lot of people that have woken up to this and are loving and accepting, and sometimes it can feel like this is becoming the norm when you're able to surround yourself with that kind of person... but you're right. It isn't "the norm" it just normal enough for some lucky people.
    - vanviegen 1y ago
      > The whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now. Could you please expand on that? I have no idea what you are talking about.
      - sjw987 1y ago
        Not the OP, but they're possibly referring to hatred of "others", a group far enough geographically or away from social acceptance, that people don't see any issues in the future with holding aggressive / intolerant views on them now. I think a lot of social acceptance today is a mask. It's something people put on to virtue signal in the age of social media, and they expand their appearance of tolerance as wide as is currently socially acceptable to avoid anything being used against them in the future. You can see these masks slip occasionally. My wife was originally born in Russia. She's lived outside the country for over 2 decades, is as little aligned with that country's politics as you can be, and is generally a very likeable charismatic person. I've seen some incredibly "tolerant" and "accepting" people (of religious, ethnic, sexual, nationality aspects) who are unaware of her nationality spurt out the most vitriolic opinions of Russians (mostly when something relevant appears in the news), sometimes pretexted with "all" or "majority". In the environment these "tolerant" people live in, Russians are an acceptable group to hate en-masse. Many other nationalities also apply. Many times she doesn't say anything, but when she has, you can see the mask going on in real-time. "Not all", "not you", "except you", backtracking and saving face.
- Loudergood 1y ago
  It's ok to say "we can do better" even when we already are.
- mathieuh 1y ago
  It didn’t just happen. It happened through struggle and its continuation is not guaranteed. Look at all the reactionary movements springing up around the world. This is not an area I believe we can settle on “good enough”.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    I think societies somewhat naturally wax and wane on most topics, probably because it seems we're simply unable to maintain a middle ground on anything. We always end up taking things to an extreme which, regardless of what that extreme may be, tends to lead to unpleasant scenarios which causes society to start bouncing back in the opposite direction only to repeat the cycle in the equal but opposite direction some time later. You can see this playing out in real time with religion which went from societies that were highly religious to secular to militantly anti-religious, and now gen-z is suddenly some ~400% more religious than previous generations. [1] The most interesting thing is that that's also a global trend, probably owing to the relative global homogenization of societies in many ways. [1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-christianity-rise https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-chri...
    - shafyy 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - Thorrez 1y ago
        Most communist countries haven't been such a utopia as you describe. >He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution." https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...
        okasaki 1y ago
        Cool story from an alcoholic traitor > On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, began a major economic and administrative reform ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of "macroeconomic stabilization", a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization programme, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending. > In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. The reforms devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare programs.[108] Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50%, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, whilst incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out many people's personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.[109][110]
- tstrimple 1y ago
  We live in a largely more accepting world that somehow exists in the same timeframe as "empathy is a sin". No matter how far we come as a society, there will always be people looking to "Make X Great Again" regardless of how great or not X ever was. Unfortunately humanity cannot rest on its laurels. No matter how much we advance as a civilization there will always be a conservative somewhere looking to pull up the ladder or cut off support. Ultimately looking for a way to game the system and deny benefits to others. It's quite amazing that we can look back on all the advances humanity has made in the last few centuries and can clearly see conservatives opposing all of it and somehow still rationalize conservatism as just some other process to achieve the same goals through other means. Yet at every major inflection point in our country conservatism has been the fucking enemy. They have been wrong. Every. Single. Time. When conservatives rebelled against the country and decided to start their own so they could maintain slavery, they were wrong. When conservatives fought against women's suffrage. They were wrong. When conservatives fought against civil rights. They were wrong. When conservatives fought against gay marriage. They were wrong. They have been wrong at literally every fucking important decision since their ideology was created during the French revolution. It's beyond time we stop pretending they have some insights worth listening to or some valuable lessons to convey and treat them as the enemies of humanity that they actually are.
  - robertlagrant 1y ago
    You've mis-defined "conservative" to mean "everyone who lost in history".
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      “Conservatives” yearn for an idealised version of something that has been, but that is no more. In that, they are the very definition of sore losers.
      - robertlagrant 1y ago
        You've done it too.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  > there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough And they would be right. And I say that as someone who’s hard anti-woke.
apwell23 1y ago
> Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? yes for sure. I make sure to teach that to my kids and model that behavior. Lot of my peers are doing that too. I like the 'differently abled' terminology and mindset so much better. When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.
- supplied_demand 1y ago
  == When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.== I’m 41 and have noticed the exact opposite movement in my lifetime. Today, we celebrate the meanest people in society (we even elect them President). Kindness is considered a flaw and means you aren’t taking advantage of every opportunity to move yourself forward. If I compare the rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, it doesn’t tell me that we are more kind as a society.
stickfigure 1y ago
I do think people - and especially kids - are generally nicer and more accepting than they were back in the 80s when I grew up. I wonder if this is related to the fairly dramatic drop in violent crime statistics we've been seeing over the last several decades?
- vanviegen 1y ago
  There may be a connectedion to reductions in lead-poisoning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  Lead-free petrol helped.
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    It’s fun to imagine that an alternative reality where lead was never added to petrol. We’d be colonising neighbouring solar systems by now and living in a post-scarcity society.
OJFord 1y ago
It's just fashion I think - for the last 10-15 years the idea of being a nerd who works for Google or whatever has been relatively cool.
esseph 1y ago
That really depends on where you are in the world right at this minute.
fennecbutt 1y ago
Probably in general, but not as much as you'd think. For example as a gay dude, people still hate gay guys (lesbians are far more accepted). But they're just much more quiet about it now, and even if they don't hate us we still "gross" many people out, which affects their decisions due to perception of us.
- exe34 1y ago
  Unfortunately I think lesbians are only "far more accepted" in the sense that they turn on straight cunts rather than repulse them. The objectification and othering is the same.
  - wvh 1y ago
    Maybe, but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to on either side of the fence, just their rational responses to "the other". And I'm not sure lesbians are "far more accepted", perhaps as long as they fit a traditional heterosexual idea of beauty and femininity and associated behaviour.
    - exe34 1y ago
      > but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to That's an odd thing to bring up randomly.
      - topato 1y ago
        I think it's because you said "cunts" lol
        exe34 1y ago
        Ah the "straight" was the adjective to qualify the noun, not the other way round! I.e. the same cunts who will get disgusted by two men kissing and try to harm them, will get turned on by seeing two women kissing and therefore it appears that the latter are more accepted. It's not kindness or open-mindedness, it's pure sleaze.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
I want to say yes, but there's a lot of regression happening right now, with right-wing rhetoric, manosphere influencers, and various regimes pushing the other way - the Trump admin firing people, removing symbols and renaming things that they consider "DEI" for example, or teenagers thinking women are property thanks to people like convicted sex trafficker Tate. The latest is that the Trump admin wants to institutionalize the homeless and "people with mental disabilities".
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jemmyw 1y ago
I notice that some of the teens my kids are friends with are pretty weird in ways that would have invited extreme bullying when I was their age and they don't seem to have the same troubles. However, I still hear about some bullying cases. Maybe that's changing for the better too though, when I was their age we seemed to actively hide that we were bullied from adults and now adults are often (ineffectively) involved.
SamPatt 1y ago
I have two teenagers, and bullying is still extremely common in school. Perhaps the range of acceptable weirdness has broadened, I'm not sure, but it's discouraging to hear their stories of just how mean kids can be.

hilsdev 1y ago

You’re right the world is a lot more accepting. No matter how much things improve and how positive the trajectory though, there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough

ghurtado 1y ago
The world can absolutely be more accepting of certain groups than in the past, while at the same time being less accepting of other groups. If you were part of the latter, you would instantly understand why we still have a lot of work to do.
phs318u 1y ago
Yes, and there will be others rolling their eyes and calling out all this "woke" acceptance. On a serious note, if the world is a lot more accepting, it's mostly because the youngest generations are a lot more accepting, and the more bigoted among us (which tend to skew older) are slowly dying off.
- rbanffy 1y ago
  > are slowly dying off. Far too slowly, I might add.
- esseph 1y ago
  New bigots and racists are made every day. Nothing went away, it just got hidden under a thin veneer.
r14c 1y ago
Generally that's because they're in the group (or have some sympathy for the group) that still isn't being accepted and may otherwise face obstacles that make it difficult to live a fulfilling life. tolerance is a peace treaty, but there are a ton of gaps in how we implement it because our default socially and politically is more-so based in privilege than co-existance.
mynameisvlad 1y ago
As someone that lives as multiple minorities, both visible and not, this is very much untrue. And that applies for many definitions of "normal". A person outside the "norm", in whatever category, is accepted far less than you claim. Sometimes it may not be visible or even intended, but it's there.
- samplatt 1y ago
  The whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now. There's a lot of people that have woken up to this and are loving and accepting, and sometimes it can feel like this is becoming the norm when you're able to surround yourself with that kind of person... but you're right. It isn't "the norm" it just normal enough for some lucky people.
  - vanviegen 1y ago
    > The whole world (not just America) has polarising hateful propaganda aggressively pushed at them for... oh about 2-3 generations now. Could you please expand on that? I have no idea what you are talking about.
    - sjw987 1y ago
      Not the OP, but they're possibly referring to hatred of "others", a group far enough geographically or away from social acceptance, that people don't see any issues in the future with holding aggressive / intolerant views on them now. I think a lot of social acceptance today is a mask. It's something people put on to virtue signal in the age of social media, and they expand their appearance of tolerance as wide as is currently socially acceptable to avoid anything being used against them in the future. You can see these masks slip occasionally. My wife was originally born in Russia. She's lived outside the country for over 2 decades, is as little aligned with that country's politics as you can be, and is generally a very likeable charismatic person. I've seen some incredibly "tolerant" and "accepting" people (of religious, ethnic, sexual, nationality aspects) who are unaware of her nationality spurt out the most vitriolic opinions of Russians (mostly when something relevant appears in the news), sometimes pretexted with "all" or "majority". In the environment these "tolerant" people live in, Russians are an acceptable group to hate en-masse. Many other nationalities also apply. Many times she doesn't say anything, but when she has, you can see the mask going on in real-time. "Not all", "not you", "except you", backtracking and saving face.
Loudergood 1y ago
It's ok to say "we can do better" even when we already are.
mathieuh 1y ago
It didn’t just happen. It happened through struggle and its continuation is not guaranteed. Look at all the reactionary movements springing up around the world. This is not an area I believe we can settle on “good enough”.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  I think societies somewhat naturally wax and wane on most topics, probably because it seems we're simply unable to maintain a middle ground on anything. We always end up taking things to an extreme which, regardless of what that extreme may be, tends to lead to unpleasant scenarios which causes society to start bouncing back in the opposite direction only to repeat the cycle in the equal but opposite direction some time later. You can see this playing out in real time with religion which went from societies that were highly religious to secular to militantly anti-religious, and now gen-z is suddenly some ~400% more religious than previous generations. [1] The most interesting thing is that that's also a global trend, probably owing to the relative global homogenization of societies in many ways. [1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-christianity-rise https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-chri...
  - shafyy 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - Thorrez 1y ago
      Most communist countries haven't been such a utopia as you describe. >He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution." https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...
      - okasaki 1y ago
        Cool story from an alcoholic traitor > On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, began a major economic and administrative reform ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of "macroeconomic stabilization", a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization programme, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending. > In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. The reforms devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare programs.[108] Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50%, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, whilst incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out many people's personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.[109][110]
tstrimple 1y ago
We live in a largely more accepting world that somehow exists in the same timeframe as "empathy is a sin". No matter how far we come as a society, there will always be people looking to "Make X Great Again" regardless of how great or not X ever was. Unfortunately humanity cannot rest on its laurels. No matter how much we advance as a civilization there will always be a conservative somewhere looking to pull up the ladder or cut off support. Ultimately looking for a way to game the system and deny benefits to others. It's quite amazing that we can look back on all the advances humanity has made in the last few centuries and can clearly see conservatives opposing all of it and somehow still rationalize conservatism as just some other process to achieve the same goals through other means. Yet at every major inflection point in our country conservatism has been the fucking enemy. They have been wrong. Every. Single. Time. When conservatives rebelled against the country and decided to start their own so they could maintain slavery, they were wrong. When conservatives fought against women's suffrage. They were wrong. When conservatives fought against civil rights. They were wrong. When conservatives fought against gay marriage. They were wrong. They have been wrong at literally every fucking important decision since their ideology was created during the French revolution. It's beyond time we stop pretending they have some insights worth listening to or some valuable lessons to convey and treat them as the enemies of humanity that they actually are.
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  You've mis-defined "conservative" to mean "everyone who lost in history".
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    “Conservatives” yearn for an idealised version of something that has been, but that is no more. In that, they are the very definition of sore losers.
    - robertlagrant 1y ago
      You've done it too.
wiseowise 1y ago
> there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough And they would be right. And I say that as someone who’s hard anti-woke.

apwell23 1y ago

> Is it just me or do I feel like the society is way more accepting nowadays? yes for sure. I make sure to teach that to my kids and model that behavior. Lot of my peers are doing that too. I like the 'differently abled' terminology and mindset so much better. When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.

supplied_demand 1y ago
== When i was growing up the prevailing mindset among parents was that their kids will trampled on if they teach them to show kindness. Now we want our kids to be kind.== I’m 41 and have noticed the exact opposite movement in my lifetime. Today, we celebrate the meanest people in society (we even elect them President). Kindness is considered a flaw and means you aren’t taking advantage of every opportunity to move yourself forward. If I compare the rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, it doesn’t tell me that we are more kind as a society.

stickfigure 1y ago

I do think people - and especially kids - are generally nicer and more accepting than they were back in the 80s when I grew up. I wonder if this is related to the fairly dramatic drop in violent crime statistics we've been seeing over the last several decades?

vanviegen 1y ago
There may be a connectedion to reductions in lead-poisoning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...
pbhjpbhj 1y ago
Lead-free petrol helped.
- rbanffy 1y ago
  It’s fun to imagine that an alternative reality where lead was never added to petrol. We’d be colonising neighbouring solar systems by now and living in a post-scarcity society.

OJFord 1y ago

It's just fashion I think - for the last 10-15 years the idea of being a nerd who works for Google or whatever has been relatively cool.

esseph 1y ago

That really depends on where you are in the world right at this minute.

fennecbutt 1y ago

Probably in general, but not as much as you'd think. For example as a gay dude, people still hate gay guys (lesbians are far more accepted). But they're just much more quiet about it now, and even if they don't hate us we still "gross" many people out, which affects their decisions due to perception of us.

exe34 1y ago
Unfortunately I think lesbians are only "far more accepted" in the sense that they turn on straight cunts rather than repulse them. The objectification and othering is the same.
- wvh 1y ago
  Maybe, but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to on either side of the fence, just their rational responses to "the other". And I'm not sure lesbians are "far more accepted", perhaps as long as they fit a traditional heterosexual idea of beauty and femininity and associated behaviour.
  - exe34 1y ago
    > but we can't blame people for what they are/are not attracted to That's an odd thing to bring up randomly.
    - topato 1y ago
      I think it's because you said "cunts" lol
      - exe34 1y ago
        Ah the "straight" was the adjective to qualify the noun, not the other way round! I.e. the same cunts who will get disgusted by two men kissing and try to harm them, will get turned on by seeing two women kissing and therefore it appears that the latter are more accepted. It's not kindness or open-mindedness, it's pure sleaze.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago

I want to say yes, but there's a lot of regression happening right now, with right-wing rhetoric, manosphere influencers, and various regimes pushing the other way - the Trump admin firing people, removing symbols and renaming things that they consider "DEI" for example, or teenagers thinking women are property thanks to people like convicted sex trafficker Tate. The latest is that the Trump admin wants to institutionalize the homeless and "people with mental disabilities".

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jemmyw 1y ago

I notice that some of the teens my kids are friends with are pretty weird in ways that would have invited extreme bullying when I was their age and they don't seem to have the same troubles. However, I still hear about some bullying cases. Maybe that's changing for the better too though, when I was their age we seemed to actively hide that we were bullied from adults and now adults are often (ineffectively) involved.

SamPatt 1y ago

I have two teenagers, and bullying is still extremely common in school. Perhaps the range of acceptable weirdness has broadened, I'm not sure, but it's discouraging to hear their stories of just how mean kids can be.