Sure, people can be deliberately mean without being moustache-twirling villains. But the particular kind of deliberate meanness that you seem to be hypothesizing here seems pretty moustache-twirly.
Normally when people are deliberately mean to others without being moustache-twirling villains it’s (1) because they particularly dislike those other people or (2) because there is some concrete benefit to them from being mean.
In the present case, you’re suggesting that the MTA put out advertisements that intentionally had subtexts like “hey you, mask-wearers, eat shit”. Is it plausible that the MTA (or their executives, or the people running their ad campaigns) particularly dislike their customers as a whole, or specifically their customers who wear masks in order to reduce the spread of disease on the trains? Not to me. Is there some other concrete benefit the MTA (or etc.) would get from making their customers (as a whole, or etc.) feel bad? Not that I can see.
What’s the actual psychological process you envisage here, and why do you find it plausible?
I guess people are mean because it moves them up in the pecking order, or prevents them from moving down, and they think it’s safer to be an aggressor than a victim. Since scolding people for maybe not wearing masks is a protected behavior, they can get away with more meanness, with less discernment, than in other contexts. I don’t fully understand why this gives people cover for being mean to mask-wearers in the name of pro-mask propaganda, but it seems to be the case. This seems like part of the same phenomenon: https://reductress.com/post/how-governor-cuomo-once-a-soft-sidepiece-snapped-into-a-dom-daddy-i-would-let-choke-me/
Even a similar focus on allowing the dominator to constrict your breathing!
My best guess is that being mean to people is considered part of the process by which you take care of them, since it’s part of the process of giving orders, as I sketched out in Civil Law and Political Drama, much like frame-controlling them is, as Vaniver pointed out here and here.
Sure, people can be deliberately mean without being moustache-twirling villains. But the particular kind of deliberate meanness that you seem to be hypothesizing here seems pretty moustache-twirly.
Normally when people are deliberately mean to others without being moustache-twirling villains it’s (1) because they particularly dislike those other people or (2) because there is some concrete benefit to them from being mean.
In the present case, you’re suggesting that the MTA put out advertisements that intentionally had subtexts like “hey you, mask-wearers, eat shit”. Is it plausible that the MTA (or their executives, or the people running their ad campaigns) particularly dislike their customers as a whole, or specifically their customers who wear masks in order to reduce the spread of disease on the trains? Not to me. Is there some other concrete benefit the MTA (or etc.) would get from making their customers (as a whole, or etc.) feel bad? Not that I can see.
What’s the actual psychological process you envisage here, and why do you find it plausible?
I guess people are mean because it moves them up in the pecking order, or prevents them from moving down, and they think it’s safer to be an aggressor than a victim. Since scolding people for maybe not wearing masks is a protected behavior, they can get away with more meanness, with less discernment, than in other contexts. I don’t fully understand why this gives people cover for being mean to mask-wearers in the name of pro-mask propaganda, but it seems to be the case. This seems like part of the same phenomenon: https://reductress.com/post/how-governor-cuomo-once-a-soft-sidepiece-snapped-into-a-dom-daddy-i-would-let-choke-me/
Even a similar focus on allowing the dominator to constrict your breathing!
My best guess is that being mean to people is considered part of the process by which you take care of them, since it’s part of the process of giving orders, as I sketched out in Civil Law and Political Drama, much like frame-controlling them is, as Vaniver pointed out here and here.