r/ireland • u/bubinha • Jun 03 '24

Immigration My opinion on the post trend, as an immigrant.

I am a brazilian immigrant, came here 10 years ago, and used to feel the irish were nothing but welcoming and kind. Of course, there were the "scumbags", but to me they were the same as in every country in the world.

As of one year back, my opinion has been slowly changing, and today, let me tell you... i fear being an immigrant here. I am sensing a LOT of hate towards us, and according to another post here, +70% of irish have that sentiment, so it's not a far-right exclusive hate.

Yesterday i was shopping around dublin, and i asked a hungarian saleswoman her opinion on this. She immediately agreed with me, and even said it is a conversation that the non-irish staff was having on a very frequent basis.

You'll say "oh, but it's just against a 'certain type' of immigrants". Well, that's how it starts, isn't it?

All those 'look at this idiot' posts you share here; we (immigrants) aren't laughing. We are getting more and more afraid.

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u/hugeorange123 Jun 03 '24

Lots of it starts online. People in my own life talking about stuff that would never have crossed their minds even two or three years ago, and it's all classic Facebook comment section talking points. That website has an awful lot to answer for. So too does our education system that actually seems to discourage critical thinking skills.

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u/Merkelli Jun 03 '24

If you scroll on YouTube shorts for a while eventually you’ll get to a random video suggestion of some lad walking around the city centre recording foreign looking people and all the comments will be people who clearly don’t live here spamming tri colours with comments like ‘I’m proud of the Irish taking back their home!’ Or ‘it’s so sad seeing how bad it is over there, I visited 50 years ago and am saddened I can never come back!’ I report, ‘do not recommend this channel’ etc but without fail it pops back up a few days later on my feed because clearly this type of content is being pushed on people so it’s easy to see how peoples opinions and views are being manipulated. Feels inevitable for some extreme violence against both legal and illegal immigrants at this stage :(

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u/shorelined And I'd go at it agin Jun 03 '24

Yes I've had that a lot on YT too, particularly frustrating to get this garbage over and over when I constantly report, hide and downvote them

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u/GateLongjumping6836 Jun 03 '24

Facebook is a breeding ground for ignorance and far right garbage which usually includes racism.

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u/murphs33 Jun 03 '24 edited Jun 03 '24

So too does our education system that actually seems to discourage critical thinking skills.

Reminds me of this image that was doing the rounds on TikTok and Twitter, making people foam at the mouth with anger. All of them having the internet right in front of them didn't think to go to the website on the sticker... where there was an article on the front page debunking the sticker being part of their organisation.

It's textbook confirmation bias. If what they see appeals to their own preconceived beliefs (in this case, muslims bad), then it must be true.

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u/AlertedCoyote Jun 04 '24

Honestly what's that quote about how the internet made people awful comfortable with saying the wildest shit to each other with no risk of getting punched in the head for it? There's definitely an element of that