Didn't know what to tag this as. Please note that I do not hate the people in the images, rather I hate what the title describes, and the motion around it. I repeat, i do NOT hate the people in the images nor do I condone hating on the people in the images.
The images are from a thread under a post which finally inspired me to make this post. I heard that the BK image is ironic or a joke or whatever, and I get that, but it still doesn't change what I'm going to say.
This might get a lot of downvotes, disagreements, or otherwise, simple due to how prevalent it is online.
But I hate how, for lack of a better word, "normalized" and even "praised" the hate for French people has become. Now look, I'm not French myself, I'm American, but I have a online French friend and, quite frankly, he's one of the nicest people I know and one of the bestest friends I've ever had.
I heard one of the reasons people hate French people is due to their unpleasant and rude personality, and while that may or may not be true, my friend also happens to be one of the chillest and wokest people I know as well.
But I didn't come to talk about my friend.
I don't like this "hate" that people have come to foster online. When I first heard about it, I thought it was just a light joke. Infact, I used to be one of those people, particularly because the aforementioned friend used to make those same types of jokes towards his own kind.
However, I stopped when I realized my friend had also stopped, and those type of jokes even began to make him uncomfortable (atleast from what I could tell). I realized that, yeah, what I was doing was pretty lame and it was hurting someone I was close with. It was dumb and I regret it, and I stopped now.
But realizing how it was hurting my friend overtime also made me realize how frankly stupid the whole thing is. Now, to be fair, I don't completely understand it as I haven't been able to find a valid reason as to WHY its become to mainstream in the first place.
But I think that's part of the problem, there is no valid reason. What started as a "joke", has become straight up xenophobia, and xenophobia has no valid reason.
Hating an entire population of people simply for who they were born as is Xenophobia. You don't hate them because you actually know who they are as people, as if you've met every single one, you hate them because of what you've seen online and what they have been generalized as, or because of the actions of the corruption in power, in which case neither are right.
And it doesn't matter how much you joke about hating them or hate them unironically, the fact that it has gone into constantly dehumanizing them and treating them like they're animals and encouraging it is weirdo behavior to me. And it being about French people, just because hating on them has now become so normalized, does not make it any better than hating on other groups of people.
I know people will probably try to defend it by saying "but its just a joke!" I already understand that it is, but it doesn't change that I haven't been able to find a valid reason why its become a joke in the first place, nor does it change the fact that its starting to become increasingly less ironic.
I'm not referring to the people in the images but I've interacted with others who genuinely seem to hate French people.
So yeah, I don't say this because I'm defending the French government's past or their actions or whatever. But respectfully, I think the whole "joke" is nonsense, it's not funny anymore, and at this point sounds no longer like a joke and just sounds like genuine xenophobia. I hate how mainstream it has gotten recently.