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Every time I see the phrase “toxic positivity” my first instinct to contest it, because my first experiences with the phrase were a misapplication (that being positive is somehow toxic,) but so far on Lemmy, I’ve only seen it used in ways that make sense (the toxic expectation that others will be exclusively positive.)

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Mr_Blott@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck you :)

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- sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I know this is a joke but my autism is on a roll:
  
  This is an example of passive aggressive behavior, not toxic positivity.
  
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  - Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Actually I would call that aggressive passive, because it’s very upfront and aggressive, but in a not actually very aggressive way.
    
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    sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure thing sweetie :)
    
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sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In a lot of uh, fast food social media (Insta, Tiktok, Twitter) ‘toxic positivity’ is basically used anytime anyone commits a single offense of being too optimistic or endearing in a way that gives someone an instant knee jerk ‘ick’ or something, when they’re in a bad mood and just wanted someone to also be as angry or depressed as them, in the moment.

…People who do not have narcissistic personality disorder understand that there’s a bit more to it than that, namely long, established, continuous patterns in someone’s behavior which indicate that this person has an enormous amount of privilege, do not realize this, to the point that they become blind to serious concerns and problems, and then those problems become worse and worse because of the toxicly positive person’s nonsensical advice being detrimental and time wasting, or just vapid meaningless platitudes.

And then also, the privileged person often become overwhelmed when anyone lays out the basic facts of their reality compared to the privileged person, and then also they usually then get angry with the less privileged person for pointing this out, and now its your fault that you made me feel bad.

This can also happen at a large scale, where an entire organization or group acts like this.

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- Sotuanduso@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fast food social media. Nice term there.
  
  Anyways, I don’t see why this has to be a matter of high privilege vs. low privilege. There’s definitely a correlation, but depressed rich people and happy poor people aren’t uncommon. Also, not all questions of positivity vs. negativity are in contexts that relate to privilege. It could be about the direction of a media series, for example, which is where I’ve heard it misused.
  
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  - sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You know, you are correct.
    
    You absolutely could be toxicly positive from a position of basically 0 privilege, such as maybe an ascetic who thinks that the solution to the problems of poverty is to actually embrace or accept suffering, and not do anything to change it.
    
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