If you’ve lost friends over your opinions, you’re not alone.
If you’ve gone quiet in group chats, if you’ve stopped sharing certain links, if you feel like you’re the only one who sees the contradictions, it’s not because you’re crazy.
It’s because you’re waking up.
And this is good news. You’re allowed to change. You’re allowed to ask questions. You’re allowed to outgrow ideas that no longer make sense.
“You’ve changed.”
I’ve heard that a lot lately—usually from people who used to be friends. Sometimes it’s an accusation. Sometimes it’s concern, or confusion, or just a quiet unfollow. The irony is, they’re right. I have changed. I’ve changed because the world changed. Because the political climate shifted, because I started asking questions, because I got tired of nodding along to narratives that no longer made sense.
Imagine never changing your mind. How boring would that be? Imagine going through the last 5 years and staying exactly the same. Imagine being so allergic to nuance that you’d rather ghost someone than entertain a new perspective. And yet… that’s the environment we live in now.
Every time I write something like this, unsubscribes go up, followers go down. It’s become a type of ritualistic purge. It happened when I said Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to die for speaking. It happened when I wrote a rebuttal to a piece reducing wellness influencers to fascists (lmao). It happened when I pointed out the toxicity and flaws of identity politics. It happened when I critiqued media narratives. It happened when I laughed at the fake outrage over Sydney Sweeney wearing jeans. And it’ll happen again today.
“You talk about politics so much now.”
“This just isn’t what I followed you for.”
Cool.
You can unfollow.
I’ll survive.
Because what’s been equally surprising lately, is what follows: my DMs and email fills up with private support. People message me to say:
“Thank you for saying this.”
“You’re brave for saying what we’re all thinking.”
“I wish I could say it out loud, too.”
That’s the definition of a collective illusion: most people privately agree with you, but no one wants to go first. This is how the silent majority works. Not because they’re weak, but because the cost of saying the wrong thing is oftentimes too damn high.
This is how it plays out:
You raise a point → they call you a name → now anyone who agrees with you gets the same scarlet letter.
It’s a form of social contagion. A virus made of words.
And suddenly the point doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve been labeled. Game over.
Welcome to the age of the political slur, where you don’t need to make a point anymore—you just need a label.
Fascist.
Communist.
White supremacist.
Baby killer.
Alt-right.
Groomer.
Neoliberal shill.
Controlled opposition.
Useful idiot.
You Don't Even Know What Fascism Is, Bitch
I didn’t want to write this. I’ve tried really hard to keep politics off my Substack. That’s what X is for. Over here, I like to write pretty things. Thoughtful things. Slow, expansive pieces. But la…
Welcome to the Thunderdome of Discourse™! Where everyone is either Hitler or Stalin and no one reads past the headline.
But this isn’t just dumb. It’s strategic. And there’s a name for this move: ad hominem—attacking the person instead of the argument.
And it works.
How ad hominem silences dissent—
The logic is simple:
You raise a legitimate concern.
They label you something toxic.
Now anyone who agrees with your point risks social contamination.
Reasonable people stay quiet (enter silent majority).
Only the loudest psychos keep talking.
Media points to the psychos and says: “See? Told you they were all extremists.”
Rinse. Repeat.
This is how you turn a nuanced position into a radioactive identity.
And it’s not just name-calling. It’s a whole rhetorical toolkit.
Guilt by association: “You retweeted someone problematic = you are them.”
Tu quoque (whataboutism): “You didn’t post about [insert outrage] so your argument is invalid.”
Genetic fallacy: “Your background/beliefs invalidate your argument before we even hear it.”
Tone policing: “You’re emotional = you’re irrational = we don’t have to listen to you.”
Same playbook every time: control the framing, dismiss the human.
Because the moment you attach radioactive labels to a movement, you discourage good people from participating. You keep the public discourse full of fringe voices and keep the rest afraid to speak.
That’s how you lose the center. That’s how you create polarization. That’s how you fracture democracy.
To be clear, I don’t want to write about politics all the time. I wish I didn’t have to. But when your basic rights, safety, finances, data, and future are all shaped by those in power—silence becomes a form of self-abandonment.
And if you're not paying attention, you’re not being chill. You’re being selfish by relying on others to fight your battles while you sit comfortably in ambiguity.
That’s why I started asking harder questions. I stopped letting ideology do my thinking for me. And I realized so much of what I believed was held in place by fear.
Fear of being called the wrong name.
Fear of being seen on the wrong “side.”
Fear of being disliked.
But the crazy thing I’ve come to realize is, no one is ever actually arguing against what I say. They're just mad that it was said out loud. They don’t challenge the ideas. They just challenge the fact that I dared to say them. They shout these names at me as if I’ll cower back into a corner and stop saying what I think.
Sadly, many of these people can’t tell the difference between critique and cruelty, between disagreement and danger. To them, dissent is violence. But I’m not sorry for pushing back. Because if we let those people define the Overton window, we lose the ability to think at all.
And that’s their whole point. That’s the playbook now. Call it hate speech. Label it dangerous. Imply some slippery slope from disagreement to genocide. And if all else fails—just call them a name and hit unsubscribe.
Because if they can make disagreement feel radioactive, they don’t need to make a counterargument. They’ve already won.
I’m not certain of much of anything, but historically speaking, there’s one thing I do know for sure. The pendulum always swings. And when it does, it doesn’t ask permission.
What we’re witnessing now is the swing back. The side that was once in cultural control—academia, Hollywood, newsrooms, the digital left—overreached. They institutionalized emotional coercion, and called it justice. They rebranded dissent as harm, and called it safety. They canceled nuance, and called it progress.
But reality always returns.
The backlash, the migration, the breakups, the audience churn—isn’t chaos.
It’s clarity.
It’s people waking up.
If this piece resonated with you, you’re not alone. In fact, you might be part of something much larger than you realize. You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to outgrow old ideas. You’re allowed to think for yourself.
So, I’ll be here. Writing through it. Asking better questions. Saying the quiet things out loud.
Because silence is exactly how they win.
—S
The Orwell quote is perfectly placed here. What’s saddest about this for me is that people are so blind to their own insecurities and judgment. The need to lash out and project is becoming stronger than our ability to think critically and deeply, and it’s causing such a storm.
YES! LET'S GO. Not worth it to stay quiet anymore. The quote you attribute to Orwell is actually from Selwyn Duke—it's commonly misattributed. I reached out to Selwyn last week and he confirmed this is the correct wording: "The further a society drifts from Truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." :)