Are they a jerk or just going through something?
I have an Obsidian note titled "Copypasta" where I copy/paste random shit I stumble across that I think is weird/funny/interesting and don't want to forget. The other day I was looking at it and found a weird Amazon review I had saved from last year. It was so unhinged, I had to keep it:
"worst pillows ever and way to firm and just slides up your back enough to make it even more uncomfortable and the arms are so little. not what i thought they would be. got these for my elderly mother who's getting out of hospital tomorrow after getting her foot amputated and wanted her to be comfortable in her bed and on the couch. iam not physically able to send these back so i can get the money back to buy different kind and cant afford to buy different ones right now. i used money out of what i had saved for a car. iam a struggling single mother with health issues who cant work and tryin to raise a baby on my own and now tryin to take care of my mother. iam so bummed out cause i really needed stuff to work out right and with these pillows and a mattress i got here also it has went horribly wrong....like iam not overwhelmed enough. so its just $30 some dollars i lost in these."
I guess the thing I find the most interesting about this random review is how much unhinged emotion there is for something as innocuous as a cheap Amazon pillow. It's a really great example of fundamental attribution error, a cognitive bias where people judge others' behavior based on what they do, while ignoring the situational issues that causes that person to act that way.
I always think of this when I'm driving in my car and I'm cut off by some asshole who swerves in front of me without signaling. In my mind I immediately think, "Ugh, what an entitled asshole." But then I think of "attribution errors" and wonder, "Hmm, or maybe he just really needs to get to a bathroom." At the end of the day, we don't know individuals as much as we think. The person who takes their anger out on a McDonald's employee might've just buried their dad that morning. Everyone is going through something.
Of course, critics might say that attribution errors are just a way for people to avoid accountability. I mean, we're all adults, right? And we should all be able to regulate our emotions like adults. But clearly some have a harder time than others.
The fact of the matter is I often stop and think of that random Amazon lady: how stressful her life sounded, how everything seemed to be going wrong, and how she couldn't even get a stupid pillow right. I think it's important to always remember empathy, especially when I stumble across unhinged things on the Internet. You never know what people are going through.