Sometimes you do things that you know aren’t perfect, or even great, because they’re convenient or feel good to you. That’s part of being alive in society. What we’re seeing now is people unable to handle that and it’s driving them completely up the wall.
It’s very similar to telling people they shouldn’t shop at Walmart in the 2000s, but instead of just doing it, there’s a bunch of people who have decided they need to argue why going to Walmart is actually the good thing to do.
Social media traps and encourages people to engage with other people who have stupid and bad opinions. We used to ignore and walk past those people. Now, we feel compelled to tell them how stupid they are. But stupid babies need the most attention, so it just encourages it to happen more often.
There's another factor, which is that if individual personal advice, practical stuff, doesn't also overturn capitalism, it's received as apologia for capitalism rather than as a survival technique.
This scales up beyond the individual. "There's no point in building more homes if anyone conceivably could profit from it" is the same sentiment. Right-wing concern trolls have made nuance and "getting a foothold", material improvements, read like do-nothing incrementalism.
Hyperindividualism means that even communal/socialist arguments have to use the individualist frame: I need the government to deliver XYZ to me specifically. And because new housing is, definitionally, almost always for unseen other people rather than "oneself", it doesn't fit the frame easily.
Like, if the norm for apartments was that in order to move you always had to pre-order one to be built just for you, then even though that would clearly be worse for society, it would actually be *easier* to make the too-online-sort-of-leftist argument in favor of allowing new housing.
I've literally had someone make the argument to me that housing should be made to order
Like, on the basis that it's the only way to prevent speculation and keep "undeserving" gentrifiers out. If you're a refugee, ask for permission and we'll build you an apartment.
And by right-wing concern trolls I include, like, many elected Democrats lmao.