Lots of bad ideas over the years (I’m nearing 50 years old). I was never really outspoken about the cringiest shit, but I was really homophobic in high school. It really came out of a painful insecurity about my own sexuality, and the cultural setting didn’t help either. Ultimately, someone I respected let me know my opinion was garbage and that I should do better. I also got laid and developed some self confidence.

All of them at some point or another not rabidly racist or chuddy just a dumbass tepid uninformed liberal parasite paroting state talking points

Lots of internalised transphobia years ago when I was in my teens in my teens, also I briefly fell down an earlier version of the current internet TERF rabbit hole. Needless to say if there wasn’t such an intensely transphobic cultural milieu within the UK I maybe woulda made less harmful choices in life (especially for myself).

Nearly one year on HRT now, and a much more balanced person for it.

I’ve always been a feminist but not a very good one when I was a teen. I got so fed up with some radfem statements (and I’m now wondering how many of them were TERFs) that I started to buy into MRA talking points.

I wasn’t outright mysogynist or anything, but I did dislike things like gender-mainstreaming or women’s quotas, because in my eyes it was just blatant sexism against men, and in my naive teen mind I thought that everyone should be treated the same regardless of their gender.

As I became older, I started to question myself more and more and decided to educate myself properly on feminist concepts. I very quickly realized that treating everyone the exact same is impossible as long as systemic oppression is in effect and erased all reactionary thoughts from my brain.

During Occupy Wall Street, I became a libertarian and though Ron Paul was going to save our country.

For at least the first few months when black lives matter protest got big I was an “all lives matter” dipshit. And i was angry that their protest would disrupt my commute. Every time i hear Body Count’s No Lives Matter I’m hit with a massive wave of cringe.

I grew up in a very conservative community, but was like 5 when Iraq happened. I had an Iraqi neighbor and they’re daughter was in my kindergarten and constantly bullied for being Iraqi. I didn’t get it, she was nice. Then I just kept pushing back against everyone I knew as I started learning more and became a “humanist atheist” in middle school which really endeared me to the Christian school I went to.

Just kinda floated around libertarianism for a while because I didn’t know any better and had no one to teach me.

After I dropped out of college and got a job I tried to understand politics more by reading news and became a bit of a lib, though I still disagreed with them on a lot of things. Then I got a job delivering pizzas with a bunch of communists and finally got exposed to Marx and Lenin and Parenti. Turns out I was a communist all along and just didn’t know lol.

I’m sure I’ve got many bad ones, but a couple that come to mind—arguing to my parents while in college that drones were a good thing because they resulted in less casualties.

Also in college, mostly because I was surrounded by neocons-in-training, I occasionally flirted with the idea that the Israel/palestine conflict was a both-sides mess, and that Israel was our important democratic ally on the Middle East. But even then something always subconsciously rubbed, and pretty quick after leaving that world (as the neocons quirky liberal hawk friend) it became logically impossible to square that stuff anymore.

Or maybe the bigger picture was just that I still bought the idea that the US were the good guys and that we were stabilizing the world and spreading democracy… woooof.

I tend to be forgiving to myself on these because I was basically a young idiot, and that’s how it goes. I also feel that all of these stories people are sharing are exactly the point—we learn from our past mistakes and slowly improve our sense of the world, etc. it’s problematic if you aren’t aware of it, or cannot acknowledge it and adjust your thinking, but most growth doesn’t happen perfectly or cleanly, and being kind to yourself, and open to changing your mind are important qualities.

I enjoy the post OP, and also the other commenters’ stories.

I accidentally showed up to a tea party protest once. It wasn’t explicit in its purpose and I think it was meant to trick a lot of people into showing up. I know this isn’t the express point of the question, but it was an interesting experience. There were people there from Scandinavian countries talking about how evil socialism is. That was my first sign I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. The second sign and the thing that made me cut and run was:

(CW: Racism) a guy was on the phone with a friend and he was yelling into it “yeah man! We’re tea bagging the black house!” This was during Obama’s administration.

Our Republican state representative was there gladhanding and I walked up to him and said something like “make sure you’re doing your job” or some other libbed up “own” and he laughed it off. I didn’t put 2 and 2 together that he was there to gain support til I had already high tailed it out of there.

I was still in my early twenties and the most leftist stuff we were able to do in our small town was some libbed up anti bush and occupy type protests. At the time, it seemed like it had some power. Now I realize how many Saturdays I wasted.

Yes I used to be extremely unempathetic to social or economic causes and buy into society’s judgment of those it considers lesser. My family is all huge chuds and it took me many years to deprogram their hatred and vitriol.

Oh, more times than I’d necessarily care to admit, and I’m sure I still have some brainworms today. There were a lot of the typical ones when I was a kid, but the “funniest” one in hindsight, if it counts, is that I was an anti-brony for a few years as a kid — but then, somehow, within a few years of declaring the fans of a cartoon show about colorful horses as my archenemies, I ended up like, “Dammit, I’m supposed to hate these people, not spend time with them! Not like them! Not… become one of them!!!” — and now, within a decade of that, I now find myself organizing weekly watch parties for a show that I used to see as the harbinger of the downfall of civilization.

Maybe my anti-brony phase was me making my suppression of my own gendy feelies into other people’s problem, before realizing that I could myself use bronydom as a space to vent those gendy feelies in a manner more “sustainable” than wholesale suppression. Or maybe my anti-bronydom was a reaction to some genuinely unsavory MLP fan content my friends had shown me, before I’d developed the awareness and knowledge to make sense of why people would make and enjoy things like pony.mov. Or maybe both. Or maybe I was just a weird kid with some reactionary brainworms.

Yes. I was a shitty teen who had to work through a lot of ideas. I was raised in a very small bubble and it took a lot of work to overcome that. It’s very embarrassing for me.

I also don’t entirely remember the process, or what caused me to start having better views on social issues. I very distinctly remember my deconversion from Christianity, which is very important to me, but I wish I remembered more of why I left my reactionary views.

Mine is a complete chud :/

In 2016 I, a non-American, was angrily arguing online with leftists and telling them they should have gotten with the programme and voted for Hilary.

I cringe remembering how i debated someone about transgenderism being a mental illness