{"id":13486,"date":"2026-04-14T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/?p=13486"},"modified":"2026-04-13T21:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T02:22:19","slug":"the-bestiary-of-online-discourse-part-2-the-compassionate-hatemonger-the-profoundly-vague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/14\/the-bestiary-of-online-discourse-part-2-the-compassionate-hatemonger-the-profoundly-vague\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bestiary of Online Discourse \u2014 Part 2: The Compassionate Hatemonger & The Profoundly Vague"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Compassionate Hatemonger<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It starts with a screenshot. Someone said something online \u2014 maybe it was clumsy, maybe it was genuinely offensive, maybe it was a joke that didn\u2019t land \u2014 and now the Compassionate Hatemonger has found it. Within hours, the machinery is running. The offending post is shared with breathless commentary. A list is assembled: who liked it, who commented approvingly, who failed to condemn it quickly enough. Names are tagged. Employers are contacted. The Compassionate Hatemonger is not angry, you understand. He is concerned<\/em>. He is doing this because he cares about people. He is making the world safer.<\/p>\n

By destroying someone\u2019s life over a tweet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Compassionate Hatemonger keeps lists. Not literally (usually), but functionally \u2014 a running mental catalog of people who have been identified as Bad. The lists update daily. Yesterday\u2019s ally can become today\u2019s target if he says the wrong thing, follows the wrong person, or fails to perform the right public ritual of denunciation when called upon. The lists are maintained with the same meticulous energy that the Hatemonger claims to oppose. He will tell you, with complete sincerity, that he is fighting hate. He will not notice that his primary daily activity is hating people.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the false identity. The Compassionate Hatemonger presents himself as a Guardian. A protector of the vulnerable. Someone standing between the marginalized and their oppressors. And he believes it. That\u2019s what makes him different from the Booger Head (who knows he\u2019s causing chaos and enjoys it). The Compassionate Hatemonger genuinely thinks the lists are righteous. He has convinced himself that hate becomes love when it\u2019s directed at the right targets, that cruelty becomes justice when the victim has been properly labeled.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what he never does: forgive. Think about that for a second. Every moral system in human history \u2014 religious or secular \u2014 includes some mechanism for repentance, correction, or redemption. The Compassionate Hatemonger\u2019s system has none. Once you\u2019re on the list, you\u2019re on the list. Apologies are parsed for insufficiency. Changed behavior is dismissed as performative. The only acceptable response to being targeted is to disappear, and even that isn\u2019t always enough.<\/p>\n

The real damage goes beyond the individual targets (though those people\u2019s lives are genuinely wrecked). The deeper damage is to the idea of compassion itself. Every time the word \u201chate\u201d is used to describe a mild disagreement, it loses meaning. Every time \u201csafety\u201d is invoked to justify silencing someone, it cheapens the concept for people who are actually unsafe. The Compassionate Hatemonger has burned through so much moral vocabulary that the words barely mean anything anymore. When everything is hate, nothing is.<\/p>\n

A lot of well-meaning people get pulled into this. They see the Hatemonger\u2019s posts, feel the genuine emotional pull of wanting to protect people, and share the outrage without examining it. They don\u2019t realize they\u2019ve joined a mob. They think they\u2019ve joined a movement. The Compassionate Hatemonger counts on that confusion.<\/p>\n

If you recognize this pattern in yourself, here\u2019s the question you need to sit with: When was the last time you extended to someone you disagreed with the same compassion you claim to be fighting for? If the answer is \u201cnever,\u201d then you\u2019re not compassionate. You\u2019re just a hatemonger with better marketing.<\/p>\n

The Profoundly Vague<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n\u201cWe need to hold space for the complexity of this moment and center the voices that have been historically marginalized in conversations around systemic accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quick: What does that sentence mean? Take your time. Read it again if you need to.<\/p>\n

It means nothing. But it sounds<\/em> like it means something, and that\u2019s the entire operating principle of the Profoundly Vague. He (or she) has assembled an impressive vocabulary of words that carry emotional weight without carrying information. \u201cIntersectionality.\u201d \u201cPraxis.\u201d \u201cCentering.\u201d \u201cLived experience.\u201d \u201cProblematic.\u201d Each word gestures vaguely in the direction of a concept, but the Profoundly Vague never pins any of them down long enough for the reader to check the math.<\/p>\n

Now, you might confuse the Profoundly Vague with the Pontificating Ignoramus, but they\u2019re different animals. The Pontificating Ignoramus knows, on some level, that he\u2019s bluffing. He\u2019s performing expertise he doesn\u2019t have, and if you cornered him with a specific question, he\u2019d change the subject. The Profoundly Vague is more interesting (and in some ways more dangerous) because she genuinely believes she\u2019s saying something meaningful. She walks away from her own posts feeling enlightened. She reads her own words back and thinks, \u201cYes. That\u2019s exactly right.\u201d She doesn\u2019t care that no one can explain what she said, because she interprets the confused silence as awe.<\/p>\n

The false identity: the Philosopher. The Deep Thinker. The person who sees connections others miss and operates on a higher plane of understanding. In reality, the Profoundly Vague has simply learned that certain combinations of words produce a social response that looks like respect. People nod along because they\u2019re afraid that asking \u201cWhat do you actually mean?\u201d will make them look stupid. So nobody asks. And the Profoundly Vague takes the nodding as confirmation that she\u2019s brilliant.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a useful test for this one. Take any statement from a Profoundly Vague person and try to disagree with it. You can\u2019t. Not because it\u2019s irrefutably true, but because there\u2019s nothing concrete enough to push back against. \u201cWe need to do better as a society\u201d \u2014 better at what? By what measure? Compared to when? The vagueness isn\u2019t a bug. It\u2019s the whole product. A statement that can\u2019t be disagreed with can\u2019t be agreed with either. It\u2019s linguistic fog.<\/p>\n

The real cost is to actual thinking. Every discipline \u2014 philosophy, theology, science, political theory \u2014 has real ideas that require careful language to express. When the Profoundly Vague floods the conversation with impressive-sounding emptiness, she trains everyone around her to stop expecting words to carry meaning. People start evaluating arguments by how they feel<\/em> rather than what they say<\/em>. And once that happens, the person with the best vocabulary wins every argument, regardless of whether they have a point.<\/p>\n

If this sounds familiar, try this: Take your last important post or comment and replace every abstract noun with a concrete one. Every time you wrote \u201csystemic,\u201d name the system. Every time you wrote \u201caccountability,\u201d say who should do what. If the sentence collapses, it was never saying anything. And that\u2019s not depth. That\u2019s a fog machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Compassionate Hatemonger It starts with a screenshot. Someone said something online \u2014 maybe it was clumsy, maybe it was genuinely offensive, maybe it was a joke that didn\u2019t land \u2014 and now the Compassionate Hatemonger has found it. Within hours, the machinery is running. The offending post is shared with breathless commentary. A list … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13486"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13493,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13486\/revisions\/13493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacklewis.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}