There Are Still Faint Glimmers of Civilisation

It is hard to be vulnerable when you think vultures surround you. I was convinced for a large part of my life that in a hypothetical scenario where I was wounded and alone with strangers, people would most likely not help me, or if I were with men, would rape me instead.

I thought this way due to my childhood experiences and what came after. I was so emotionally and socially stunted with neglect that I could not form relationships with other children in class.

I was a chronically online iPad kid. I watched Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, PragerU, Richard Dawkins, Laci Green, Blaire White, ContraPoints, Philosophy Tube, and the whole of DebateTube.

At that time, I didn’t have a defined or consistent moral philosophy, but I would argue endlessly for hours in comment sections as a 12-year-old, posing as someone older. One time, I was insulted during an argument, where my interlocutor said I argued like a 13-year-old. I felt that was a compliment!

My self-harming online habits made it so that I had significantly more contact with angry men who simultaneously hated women but also felt entitled to have sex with them.

Out of habit, I initially responded to a lot of them, trying to refute their stance. I eventually realised that just as one cannot have a productive argument about the ethics of war if the other person doesn’t believe killing people is bad, you can’t have a meaningful argument with someone who fundamentally doesn’t view women as human.

I argued so much — less to prove a point, but because that was the only form of social interaction I had. I was bullied in class; I had my back bra strap pulled by boys, and girls called me a slut and a whore, despite being a virgin. I had an anger management issue then, and got pretty violent that I earned the moniker of “The Nutcracker” for doing exactly that. Then, puberty caught up to the boys, and I could fight them no longer.

I anticipate that by writing this, I will earn the ire of men who will accuse me of lying or exaggerating, because they do not believe that girls can be bullied. It also did not help that I was an attractive girl. But the thing with having boys crush on you is that at that age, the thing boys do when they like you is bully you.

I only made two friends from kindergarten to the end of high school, who remain my best friends now. One was an emotionally sensitive girl who was born in Australia but moved to Indonesia, and in particular, my provincial hometown, where people are still deeply conservative and less receptive to Western ideas. The other was an autistic girl who was severely bullied. The three of us felt we were outcasts, each in our own way.

It seemed as if I could only make friends with people who felt like outcasts.

. . .

I am now an emotionally and socially stunted, oxytocin-deficient 22-year-old — through no one’s fault but a combination of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors.

In psychology, oxytocin promotes a feeling of safety and love, which incentivises nonselective social engagement, fostering social reward, the formation of social bonds, and a sense of safety (Carter, 2017). Low levels of oxytocin, like high levels of vasopressin, are linked to social avoidance, defensiveness, and fear.

Oxytocin is involved in modulating social behaviour, such as empathy, trust, attachment, and social cohesion. Oxytocin also regulates stress and anxiety responses, calming people down. Finally, oxytocin is responsible for sexual and reproductive behaviour, as well as feeding and appetite control (Paparella et al., 2025).

I often feel hopeless and fearful because of the kinds of people I encounter online (many of them oxytocin deficient). Because of long-term, consistent negative exposure and my own inability to stop self-harming, I became scared of people in real life too — since I worried they might act the way they did online.

Thankfully, I now realise why the internet is toxic and how to find hope in real life. Most good people are not online.

While there are good people online, the vast majority are offline because they are not neurotic and oxytocin deficient. Toxic people online are the way they are because they are oxytocin deficient and are not conscious of how certain childhood experiences or lack thereof affect them.

Many of these people do not have meaningful, deep, and genuinely loving connections in real life, because they lack the emotional bandwidth to sustain or cultivate them. I say this not out of judgment but out of intimate understanding. The only way to get better is to experience healthy connections and seek help from a professional.

Many people who do need help are not conscious of needing help or are in denial about it, believing that there is nothing wrong with them, and instead blame their suffering on minorities, women, or an abstract group of people their oxytocin-deficient brain fails to empathise with.

Nowadays, if I get harassed in the comments or DMs, I just block them instead of arguing.

Every time I post something online, I always brace for an attack. It hurts, of course, to be reminded of violent male behaviours and narratives — the same ones that hurt you physically in real life, too.

But I try to see the “humanity” behind the people who refuse to see me as human. Humans are capable of creating great beauty, but also catastrophic, idiotic calamity. When I lose faith in humanity because of the latter, I remind myself of the former.

As aptly stated by Monsieur Gustave from The Grand Budapest Hotel:

“You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh, fuck it.”

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This post was previously published on Age of Empathy.

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