Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

yep

also youre not his da, short answer

Repeating "I've never seen that" helps, as often it gets a "well, neither have I but" acknowledgement.

why not murder them

NAILS IT

get over it. people have opinions. furthermore people are more than their media consumption habits and painting somebody as "infected" because of their media choices is some weird dehumanization Othering that shouldnt impact a real life friendship. OP says they are irl friends that hang out w this person once a week. you don't feel comfortable discussing political topics with them in real life, yet you will make a big post on the internet and talk about them with strangers? this passive aggressive signalling through media choices has poisoned YOUR mind as well.

if it's a person you care about irl then talk to them. if you can't stand their social media posts you can hide them. it is like a two click action. if you need everyone of your friends to subscribe to the same media you do then it would seem the friendship is secondary to your social media feed. get over yourself.

https://i.imgur.com/1WU8ron.jpg

being into comicsgate is not about "media preferences"

To be honest, the main issue for me isn’t “can I change his mind?” That won’t happen. It’s more, “can I continue being friends with him?” If he stays confined to complaining about “SJWs” ruining the comics industry online, maybe, but if it devolves beyond that? I’m not sure it will, but I can’t tell anymore. It seems like a lot of seemingly sane people’s brains have been broken over the last few years.

Uh, x-post

Adam, your post is more than a little fucked. 'Dehumanization' and 'othering' is exactly what this shit is all about. It's informed by very thinly-veiled white supremacy, and that kind of reappropriation of the language of oppression is exactly what they use to paint themselves as victims. 'Victims' of people who just want to see their own perspectives represented in media which is overwhelmingly white and male and hetero. You don't get to champion a viewpoint like that and then brush it off with a 'but I'm a cool guy otherwise'.

I wasn't even aware of comicsgate before this thread but of course there's a comicsgate, and of course it's in opposition to the exact comics and creators I would've expected. Expected but depressing as hell.

I dunno, man, no one can really tell you whether to remain friends with someone or not. Personally, I couldn't, but then I've never had trouble disconnecting myself from toxic people. The employment of 'SJW' as a pejorative is so pernicious because that particular utterance is several steps removed from what it's actually saying. You pooh-pooh the SJWs, which means you're against the social justice warriors, which tells me that you're against social justice, which in turn suggests you're for social injustice. And if you're a straight white dude, that tells me pretty much everything I need to know.

Shunning and ostracization are underrated methods of letting people know that their antisocial (in the most literal sense) views/behavior are unacceptable, imo.

I dunno, they seem pretty popular right now and I don't see them having much of an effect. Not that you need the effect to be clear, I don't think I could remain friends with a comicsgater either.

won't somebody save the alt-right from dehumanization and othering lmao

Is comicsgate different than gamergate? I've cut off ties with most of my family because of their abhorrent views. I am not making small talk and sharing my life with them out of duty when they believe and say shitty things about women and other races. I put in my time trying to rationalize or have them try to restrain themselves. Out.

It’s basically Gamergate 2

From what I can tell, anyway

Lovely. Sigh.

it is absolutely a personal decision to make. personally i have enough problems in my life and i don't need "friends" who are continually spewing toxic bullshit, whether it's openly or on a passive aggressive level. i'm not equivocating here, but i haven't found this to be a specifically right-wing problem. leftists who spend most of their time, in 2018, complaining about how terrible hillary clinton is will get the chopping block just as surely as anybody who uses the term "sjw" pejoratively will.

i've said it before and i'll keep saying it - when i cut people off it's not because i'm judging them as inferior. if anybody is "inferior" it's me, because i haven't got the energy to put up with that sort of thing anymore. i'm totally occupied with my own crazy, and don't have time for anybody else's.

^^^ This too. I've had to put space between friends that I like but they spend all day texting me mundane complaints about shit everyone hates.

The Clintons are terrible tbf

This thread has really great clusterfuck potential

completely baffled by adam's post. latebloomer, you have my sympathies, i don't know what exactly i'd do. i'm on a weekly bar trivia team as a device to regularly see a certain cluster of friends and shoot the shit about movies, and i really can't imagine it being an enjoyable or meaningful experience if below the surface was the awareness that one of them is carrying water for alt-right talking points as a way of blowing off steam online or whatever it is. that's not a person i want in my life. but the exact etiquette and approach of making that cut, i don't know. for me personally, if they were really committed to this stuff i couldn't stay friends (and probably, we would have drifted apart long ago for not having much in common). we've spent a lot of time talking about this w/ regard to right-wing family, but friends are a slightly different matter in a lot of ways...

if it's not QUITE to that point... hrrrrrm. i imagine staging an intervention would only feed the "libs are out to shut us down" mentality, but is there some viable version of "hey, man, i noticed you've been expressing some intense feelings online, has everything been okay?" or maybe even a way around to discussing his emotional state/life situation without mentioning the political stuff --- you're not his therapist, but if you are his friend it is mayyyyybe conceivable that he's still early in being seduced by this stuff (or susceptible to it being a brief phase that he later looks back on with embarrassment). and that it might be genuinely useful to open up a channel to talk about whatever it is that's leading him to frustration and grievance and blaming-the-sjws. it depends what kind of friendship it is, how close you are, how much cred you have with him versus how much he feels the youtube mini-limbaughs really get him, how much work it's worth to you, all of that stuff.

I liked South Park's depiction of Kyle's dad staying up nights to troll online like it's his job while drinking red wine.

If you have a racist friend
Now is the time, now is the time
People have opinions. Get over it.

I mean, wrt this particular sitch, I can hang with people who don't agree with me politically/philosophically/religiously/etc but there are certain uncrossable ideological lines and stanning for white supremacy is one of those. Maybe laying it out in terms of 'disagreement is fine, championing oppression is not' would be helpful?

Argh, this thread made me google comicsgate and now I hate knowing what it is. Tell your friend I blame him for that.

pretty sure most of the people i drink with are some kind of right wing but it's not like we spend much time talking about politics except when they accuse me of being a Maoist

and i agree with them and tell them they'll be up against the wall first

Also, one possible tack to take wrt comics creators in particular is to discuss the reappropriation of Pepe the Frog. Ask him how he would feel about people hijacking his own work to express political opinions completely counter to his own. And how he feels about a professional like Van Sciver in particular doing just that. Even divorced of the political implications, it's hugely disrespectful and unprofessional.

Oh man, I just read up on comicsgate too. This shit is so unbelievably stupid.

Yep :(

I think the thing these trolling dipshits don't get is that you don't get to claim "oh, I'm actually a nice guy in person, I'm just trolling" when 100% of your public persona is racist, sexist, garbage

if you genuinely believe the problem is that it's the "wrong people" getting work or acclaim based only on their ethnicity, gender, or views... then spend your time advocating for people you think are talented and help them find an audience

latebloomer, has your friend published anything before? there genuinely are some barriers to entry if you're not established, but I don't think any of them have to do with being a white man. I knew some people who genuinely tried to break into mainstream comics a number of years ago, and none of the reasons they failed to get a strong foothold had anything to do with this comicsgate horseshit.

Not to get too off track but was a picture of a bunch of young women enjoying milkshakes really a catalyst?

women can't be employed in a coveted field, happy, and pictured together. it just drives dudes completely insane

I also didn't know about Comicsgate (or I knew, but about the one a few years ago around "hey guys maybe don't put traced porn shots on comic covers") - the article here makes the point that it doesn't even have the figleaf of ethics in games journalism, it's literally just "we fear the rise of women and brown people"

https://www.inverse.com/article/41132-comicsgate-explained-bigots-milkshake-marvel-dc-gamergate

I am not sure if laughing is the right response to idiotic claims, but I snorted when I saw this gem from one of these comicsgate turds

good lord pic.twitter.com/S2aY5Fcnwg

— BAKOON (@BAKKOOONN) May 14, 2018

I think the ongoing collapse of legitimacy of liberal institutions, increasingly anxiety producing omnipresence of (social)media, increasing forgetfulness of 20th century totalitarianisms (and hence the taboos around them) and finally ambient stress from environmental collapse all push ideological identification closer to the Cult mindset than it's ever been since the 40s. Or at the very least the melding of Cult tendencies familiar from the mid-century with political discourse seems like a natural evolution of the form. Hence, you should take your cues from this guy:

https://harpers.org/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-saves-you-from-yourself/

All nerd media needs to morph into a wall-to-wall multicultural pansexual orgy until all the chuds are stricken with massive rage aneurysms, at which time we can return to business as usual.

xpost Yes, I feel like deprogramming techniques are probably going to be an increasingly-useful tool to have in one's belt, sadly.

even if it was, and it definitely is NOT the case, that writers/artists are getting gigs because of a hype cycle and not due to extraordinary talent, these guys have short memories. a lot of the so-called adults making the most noise are my age or older and came to age during the time when the superhero comics market was 90% hype, there was Wizard magazine and a couple knockoffs publishing lists of "hot artists" that had nothing to do with artistic ability, and the comics were pretty disposable

and nearly without exception, the "hot" writers/artists were young men in their 20s -- it was some weird confirmation that every kid drooling over their comics collection, if they were into it enough and practiced drawing misshapen women and big guns, could be a success in the industry in a few years

The biggest problem here is that there's 457 easy logical arguments against believing any of this dumb shit and none of them will take because this dumb shit isn't founded on a logical argument in the first place. It's people who mistakenly believe the source of their insecurities is external to them and who've found an echo chamber to point them in the direction of an easy scapegoat.

Like, no responsible professional is gonna say 'yeah, sorry, forget about getting into the industry at a time when probably thousands of different comics are being produced every month, and you can blame affirmative action' but at the same time these dopes are busy expressing butthurt on Twitter rather than asking responsible professionals for advice.

we don’t really interact online much

then what is the problem? you say you hang out every week and have known him since 7th grade, this seems like a very longstanding friendship.

when I took a closer look and saw that he’s been hobnobbing with a lot of alt-right adjacent type folks and actively arguing with “SJWs”. Now he’s apparently following dudes like Stephen Crowder and tweeting recommendations for books by Ben Shapiro. BEN MOTHERFUCKING SHAPIRO. Ugh.

okay i have no idea who these people are. please explain why this is some decades-old friendship killing thing. these people are media critics, right? why judge him on believing what you believe that these media people believe.

It’s just heartbreaking because he’s not a jerk at all IRL. He’s always been a good friend and has helped me out and had my back numerous times.

so he sounds like a real person in real life but you have a problem with his virtual avatar posting links. if he's a stand up fellow irl who cares?

But in his online life he’s kinda turning into a real “why won’t you let me debate you, coward” sort of douche

hide his offensive posts on social media & your newsfeed. don't respond to his posts, don't give him that attention, that platform. if you don't like it, and it seems like you don't, then don't do it. it is very simple. don't take the bait. it is the best way to deal w a troll. if you decide this is cowardly and you want to be a knight in shining armor defending whatever issue he is talking about then you are stepping right into whatever SJW role that linked story has prefabricated for you, it will be a useless endeavor, possibly giving you some ownage gratification but little else, and will harm your irl relationship in the long run.

for that matter, it is harmful to the society at large for progressives to cut off their "infected" friends. doing so sort of proves them right, that these ideologies have indeed taken away a very real relationship from them, that the other side is extremist and only interested in defending an ideology, etc. i mean, people really do sound like Warriors when they say shit like "they'll be up against the wall first"

Hey Adam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqH_0LPVoho

I recently found out this crackpot character I used to hero worship a bit in my formative years is a fairly typical bigot these days. Fuck knows how he justifies being a racist cos his biological dad was Afro-Caribbean. But he used to be funny as fuck and had a rep for breaking into local chemical plants to steal ingredients for his amateur pyrotechnics experiments and occasionally blowing up phone-boxes. He is welder these days and is Islamophobic, hates Eastern Europeans, rants about "benefits scroungers" (even though he was on the "rock'n'roll" himself for the best part of a decade). It saddens me that he is so fucking thick-headed these days, but I'd probably still talk to him and be civil. But wouldn't bother talking politics with him for sure.

not sure about your friend, latebloomer, but the red pill types i know have either been rejected at some point (because of their own issues, which they then blame on others) or they've been consistently unhappy and searching for answers, and this is just the latest place they think they've found them.

empathy can be pretty tough for people like this but it's important to try to hold onto it. i'm pretty tolerant of other viewpoints generally speaking, but for me it's not the opinions themselves that make me roll my eyes and ignore people (even though i may disagree strongly with them!) but rather the constant need to make waves, or always wanting to talk about every single little thing that the opposition is doing like it's the end of the world (which really does go for the left more and makes me want to quit a conversation immediately), or the trolling, or the clear need to intentionally hurt other people. so i mean i guess you can try to bring him back from the brink and talk about actual issues without the rhetoric or tedious right wing talking points. or lead by example, bring him out of the echo chamber.

he used to be funny as fuck and had a rep for breaking into local chemical plants to steal ingredients for his amateur pyrotechnics experiments and occasionally blowing up phone-boxes.

Tyler Durden was probably a key figure in the lives of many current "not as smart as they think" alt-right types and that's a pretty good example!

for that matter, it is harmful to the society at large for progressives to cut off their "infected" friends. doing so sort of proves them right, that these ideologies have indeed taken away a very real relationship from them

Foreseeing a backlash and a social cost to espousing antisocial ideologies doesn't make you 'right'. It just means you're able to identify basic cause and effect. 'See? I told you the maaaaaan would arrest me if I burnt down that warehouse! Typical!'

At any rate, this isn't even some conservative vs. liberal argument about how taxes should be allocated. It's a situation with zero benefit to anyone beyond the ego gratification of online sadists. Whose perspective we should consider with sympathy lest society-at-large be harmed...I guess...?

and Kate your most recent post is interesting but i'm struggling with focus at work and need to come back to it

i feel like here if nowhere else it may be okay to put forth the notion that there might be something to acknowledging that people's conspiratorial / aggrieved worldview do have a basis in a reality of disparity and exploitation.

In my case, it is definitely not rooted in anything like that, its based in transmissions from the internet. a woke liberal elite have captured the institutions, and are an existential threat. There's some fuzzyness about whether they're going to introduce communism if they ever get elected, or there already is communism, or both, or what communism is, but it is happening or has happened nonetheless

but there's a shape shifting quality to it. He got the vaccines, he was still wearing masks later than I was, was still doing covid tests later than most, so covid was definitely real but also fake and used by the liberal elite to control society but also real and a targeted weapon by China. All of these are simultaneously true, but not quite occupying the same space. Has never said anything negative about vaccines though

https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/28/live-worm-living-womans-brain-australia-depression-forgetfulness

Ah, posted a few days back. Still euwww

and by the way, i know anti-vaxxer anarchists who spend all their time doing mutual aid and passing out food at homeless encampments. it's weird and it is a thing!

― budo jeru

oh, absolutely, as a historical phenomenon anti-vax ideology is pretty interesting. i'm out here in pdx, it's a hotbed for new age "alternative science", which is where the anti-vax movement started out. honestly it's entirely possible that i'm in the pseudoscience pipeline myself. i get my hormones from a naturopath, which is legal in oregon and nowhere else, naturopaths are legally mandated to have parity with medical doctors. do i think naturopathy is evidence-based? not really. my provider, though, was the only one who would prescribe hormones for trans people back when nobody else would. nowadays you can get hormones from other people. sometimes. endos still tend not to listen to trans patients. i'm a fan of evidence-based medicine, however, when it comes to the actual effects of hrt, it's not really evidence-based, because _nobody is doing this fucking studies_. i take progesterone, for instance. does progesterone do anything? fuck knows! i think it does, but there's no fucking research out there to back it up. same way, i'm reading a book on somatics by someone whose experience with it comes from reichian bodywork. wilhelm reich, who in my mind will always look like donald pleasance, is a meme to me, somebody from hawkwind jams and the french band "zorgones". at the same time, i'm finding the book really helpful to me, not in a _scientific_ way, but it's helping me understand how to live a more embodied experience. embodiment means a lot to me. is there a medical basis for talking about dissociation and embodiment? not really.

i still think of myself as a proponent of evidence-based science, but someone could look at the stuff i do that's _not_ evidence-based and conclude otherwise. there's definitely some cognitive dissonance in my attitudes!

like, when it comes to vaccines, the people i know in the queer community are _strongly_ pro-vax, about the most pro-vax people i know. if you want to go to queer events here, even in public, you need to show evidence of being vaxxed and boosted. a lot of it comes out of disability politics and an understanding of the disproportionate effects of anti-vax ideology on marginalized group. we'll fight, fight hard, for access to preventative care. you do have to fight to get PrEP in a lot of cases, and you have to lie sometimes. my girlfriend when to a doctor and they asked her if she had receptive anal sex with multiple partners. when the monkeypox vaccine came out it was advised for "men who have sex with men" to get it. i'm an asexual woman who's intimate with other women. i'm just as at risk for monkeypox as MSMs. if i want to get PrEP, if a doctor asks me if i have receptive anal sex with multiple partners, i'm going to lie. if they don't have a right to know, yes, i'll lie, and i'll do it without guilt.

Looking back i'd say the Lancet "vaccines cause autism" study from 1998 was a fulcrum point. Not just, I think, because it mainstreamed anti-vax ideology. What interests me is that the article published in the magazine dedicated to Medical Science was an iteration of anti-vax ideology that just happened to dovetail quite nicely with the normative biases of the time. Anti-vax ideology ceased to become a form of dissidence against hegemonic norms and instead a movement aimed at perpetuating those norms in a more explicit fashion.

OK that's all a lot of rhetoric, to get personal on this... I'm autistic, and I'm also queer. Coming out as queer helped me to re-evaluated my understanding with autism and my relationship to it. Because I'm not just autistic, I'm self-diagnosed autistic, something that was heavily stigmatized earlier in my life. People were derided as having "self-diagnosed Asperger's" (Asperger's being a form of autism created by a Nazi scientist as a form of legitimizing certain forms of neurodivergence, while allowing socially unacceptable neurodivergent people to be exterminated through the Aktion T4 extermination process. It's not a current diagnosis in the DSM, but was taken seriously at the time.

Having recognized the necessity of self-determination in the case of my queer and trans identity, I started to question the norms medical science established around autism, the framework they had constructed to define it. Autism, for instance, was seen as a single "illness", one that was diagnosed almost exclusively in white AMABs from affluent families. Furthermore, experts writing on the topic frequently did so in a fashion that transparently perpetuated their own cultural biases. For instance, one of the foremost experts on autism is Simon Baron-Cohen, who characterized autism as "extreme male brain". You can imagine how pleased I was upon reading _that_ one. Baron-Cohen's work is actually a lot better than a lot of the other allistic perspectives on autism. I figured that if this was what one of the foremost medical experts said on the topic, I was OK to self-diagnose, that I knew myself better than Baron-Cohen knew me.

For autistic people, the Lancet paper is not just about the anti-vax thing - it's a pseudoscientific perpetuation of the pathologization of neurodiversity. Given the observable correlation between neurodiversity and queerness, I do personally think of this as kind of a big deal.

Anyway. That's just kind of the way I look at conspiracy theories, the social implications of how they develop and are perpetuated.

in autistic social circles I have known it's truly impressive how much SBC's work and associated assumptions from professionals have managed to *differentially* fuck up autistic people's lives based on their psychiatrically-assigned genders - thereby enforcing cisnormative genderness on and driving a wedge into a population which has always been deemed to have been misperforming their gender in some way, troubling enough to require such an intervention

I'm sure my liberal science believing acquaintances would think this is another crazy conspiracy theory (like those ones I have about the media lying to people or bosses exploiting their workers) and really who are they going to believe, my hysteria or published research by a bunch of scientists?

I really want to trouble the assumptions about a rational (if complacent and ineffectual) liberal establishment vs a crazy conspiracy theorist underground because I see it a lot in thinkpieces but it doesn't at all reflect what I see IRL

Has anyone read the new book _ Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat_? There are parts in there about what to do when people you have an existing connection with go down that road

I'm sure my liberal science believing acquaintances would think this is another crazy conspiracy theory (like those ones I have about the media lying to people or bosses exploiting their workers) and really who are they going to believe, my hysteria or published research by a bunch of scientists?

― your original display name is still visible (Left)

i don't blame anybody individually for their skepticism of anything that doesn't conform to liberal norms... when i was a liberal i was the same way. i once, pre-transition, tried to argue with a trans woman of my acquaintance that her lived experience didn't conform to transmedicalism... not my finest moment. obviously, in retrospect i would have benefited much more from listening to her. that's one of the big issues with it and one of the main frustrations i have as a leftist... it's really easy for people to act against their own interests, when it's part of a norm they've been taught. i mean, my only mistake was believing literally everything i'd ever been told about gender, you know?

but it's impossible to explain, because liberalism does equivalate every form of dissent from what it falsely considers to be "objective truth". "horseshoe theory" really emblematizes this tendency of liberalism.

at the same time, in order to get rights, we have to justify and convince liberals that we deserve rights, the onus is on us... when it comes to trans rights, in the us, liberals have mostly been convinced, in the uk, not so much. more than that, we have to convince liberals to support us to the _detriment of their distinguished opposition_, which is an _extremely_ tough ask and is the issue america is struggling with.

when it comes to neurodiversity... people who don't have the lived experience we do, they have no understanding whatsoever of neurodiversity. honestly, most of them, to the extent they're aware of neurodiversity at all, probably hold the autism speaks (ugh) approach to things, simply because they're not aware of anything else.

It seems covid and the lockdowns will be coming back on October 16th in order to ban in person voting. But there is some confusion as the election isn't until next year. So it looks like there has been a miscalculation

When I asked about this issue regarding the year, he responded with "well it doesnt always have to make sense". Something of a Motte and Bailey effect seems to be present.

There's a newish local band I've been wanting to see, but I just checked out the bassist's FB page and it's wall to wall Trump-loving, Biden-bashing, Qanon memes and now I think I've noped out of ever supporting them.

Surprised it’s not the drummer.

I vaguely know one guy in the band and I'm surprised he can be in a band with this fuckwit. They must have a "no discussing politics" understanding, but I don't think I could do it.

Especially when it's not an important member of the band.

Bassists aren't important?

Yeah wait what? I'm a bass player!

EXCELSIOR

LOL

My son is a bass player also. He and I had a good laugh over the Onion (?) article about the groupie being dismayed when she found out she had slept with the bass player. "If I'm going to sleep with someone, they'd better be important."

itt - Rockists!

Cries in drummer

real champions of shat-on instrumentalists are viola players

https://media4.giphy.com/media/kZD8cN1MycfKw/giphy.gif

Apparently libs are being owned by Sydney Sweeney wearing a revealing dress at a, uh, GLAAD event?

It seems covid and the lockdowns will be coming back on October 16th in order to ban in person voting. But there is some confusion as the election isn't until next year. So it looks like there has been a miscalculation

My cousin has a trip planned for this October, and I asked him if he had any contingency plans with the lockdown coming back to help Biden by preventing in person voting and potentially making the trip more difficult. Caught out, there was no real answer. But I thought it encapsulated the idea that he believes something to be true, but also doesn't. And the former is a conceptual truth, and the latter a practical one - and theres's no contradiction, unless they are forced to occupy the same space at the same time, at which point there is no real answer.

Brainworms can be tidied away for a short while if it looks like they might get in the way of plans

anvil, reading this new yorker piece which seems to dovetail nicely with your post: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/22/dont-believe-what-theyre-telling-you-about-misinformation?utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned&mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=tny&utm_medium=social

Thanks for that, listened to the audio just now. Dovetails quite a lot I think. I'll look up the researchers mentioned in that too

The line about the sincere and the strategic being a false dichotomy. The thing about the how putting money on the table changes how people answer too (my cousin will never take my offer of a wager on anything - no matter how big or small the amount suggested)

The part about misinformation not being something top down is interesting. Have you seen the Sarcasmitron videos on Putin? He posits a somewhat inadvertent reverse misinformation pipeline from the mid 00's emanating from people like Lyndon LaRouche, with Putin as the recipient, and then reflected back to the West over the subsequent decade

I'm starting to worry that _I'm_ getting brain worms.

Worrying you have it is a pretty good prophylactic— who’s the last wingnut who ever conceded “hey folks I might be full of magic beans here”?

But some of these doofuses will absolutely put money on their professed unreality — I’m waiting to see if Biden wins so I can take the money of denialists who will continue to bet otherwise a full week after the fact like last time.

The piece got me thinking earlier about the study into doomsday type cult members before and after the judgement day comes and goes without incident. Before the event they "think" the cult's prophecies are true, and after the even they "believe" the cults prophecies are true - and this manifested in them being highly insular before the event and highly proselytizing after the event, where the performance or signaling became part of the belief

Belief kind of asks something of its adherents, you have to do something. Anyone can "believe" that pan of boiling water is hot, but can you believe its cold and put your hand in to prove it

we sort of touched on this in one of the religious thread that was bumped lately and people had very different views about what was meant and the range of things that could be meant by terms like belief and faith and i think you're veering slightly into territory there which almost demands that belief must mean the thing believed in isnt true or whatever

i think belief just "is" - absolutely independent of reality and a first order item in and of itself and anything less than this is more properly described as self delusion perhaps, or orneriness, or whats the word contrarianism or etc

You may be right, I'm thinking aloud based on the article Daniel linked more so than my own interactions, though there did seem a considerable amount of overlap, which is something we're unlikely to see from the likes of Sessegnon anytime soon

I think in the case of my cousin, contrarianism is definitely a part of it, but its more like a kind of a cosplaying or trying it on for size. But there is something else, an element of that which is believed is in some way hidden, a secret knowledge, which the ordinary man on the street can't see

there did seem a considerable amount of overlap, which is something we're unlikely to see from the likes of Sessegnon anytime soon

take it to ilf

my older brother's one of these guys...I think for him it's very much the appeal of knowing something the normies don't. he wants to be that guy in the corner going, "oh, you believe what you saw on TV..."

That's a huge part of it, yeah. And the community aspect of having others who also know your secret handshake.

But there is something else, an element of that which is believed is in some way hidden, a secret knowledge, which the ordinary man on the street can't see

This has come up before too right? The 'game' aspect. Don't ruin the game with your 'evidence'!

There's a huge desire of belonging and community I guess that drives this. Prior to the internet there were more isolated factions unified by radio shows like Art Bell's Coast to Coast and various crackpot authors, I guess.

The internet makes it very easy for these pockets to commune, fulfilling a basic need for many of these people. The article above does a compelling job of showing how social and survival motivations can hold conflicting world views depending on context.

The internet makes it very easy for these pockets to commune, fulfilling a basic need for many of these people. The article above does a compelling job of showing how social and survival motivations can hold conflicting world views depending on context.

― octobeard

i mean the thing of it is that i _am_ one of "those people". i'm not a proponent of horseshoe theory (or fishhook theory either), but if you're talking about radical rejection of the existing "empirical consensus"... that's something i've done. when someone is hurting and lonely and broken, repeating the facts over and over again like a mantra doesn't _work_. i've always been the sort of person who needs hope, and, well, it's been hard for me to find. if i work hard and i do everything i'm supposed to, surely things will work out, surely i can be _happy_. and i worked hard and did what i was supposed to and was given a whole heaping helping of privilege on top of that and i had professional career and a house and a car and a wife and i was miserable. and there was nothing more on offer. no other opportunity.

you look at a lot of the brain-worm people and they do have everything, and it isn't enough for them. it's what you do, you look around for people like you. you're lonely, you look for community, you say, ok, i will go to a church. and you can go to an episcopalian church and it's stuffy and everyone there is old and they perform ancient rituals, or you can go to this bright new megachurch that looks like a shopping mall and acts like a shopping mall and everybody is excited to see you and is making extravagant promises and who cares if they're lies? who fucking cares? one can go there and feel _not alone_, feel like _these are my people_, they _understand_. and that's your community, that's who you spend your time around, and other people say you're bad and wrong but they don't _understand_. and _that's_ what the "facts" are for, they're not there to _convince_ anybody, they're there to _defend_ the community, defend it against the attacks from outsiders. one feels marginalized, one feels besieged, and one is the midst of this great battle, great battle of great purpose. one is saving souls. one is making america great. what's the alternative on offer? "america is already great?" talk about believing lies, believing things not in evidence!

so much of what i grew up thinking of as "consensus liberal reality" is biases, prejudices, lies, presented as "fact". "fact": i am and always will be a "man", because i was born with an anatomically normal penis and testicles. that "fact" of theirs ripped at my soul for decades, wore me down, _hurt_ me. and then what? oh! it turns out they're wrong. what _else_, you know, what _else_ might they be wrong about? anything. _everything_.

when you need something, and nobody else is offering, one will grasp at any glimmer of hope. no matter what the cost. no matter if, in the end, it all turns out to be false hope. no matter if one winds up dying alone and bereft. fuck the future. i'm hurting _now_.

and, of course, there's something darker. crueler. all those lies hurt me and i am _angry_, and i hunger and thirst for _justice_. those Others, they prosper while I suffer, I suffer because of _what they have done to me_. pain, suffering, abuse, i was taught all of those things as normal, and it is a cycle, one wishes to do unto others as has been done unto them. sure. sure, i want vengeance. can i get it on the people who are _actually_ responsible, who have _actually_ done the harm? no, because at the end of the day nobody is responsible. at the end of the day, it's not _people_, it's a _system_. anybody you blame is on some level going to be a scapegoat. soros, murdoch, bezos, these people are not _people_ the vast majority of people, they are _ideas_. i, too, have seen myself turned into an Idea. you can't kill an idea, but you can turn that idea into a person and you can kill the person, and boy, that feels almost as good to a lot of people. dying for one's beliefs, at the end of the day, often isn't nearly as effective as killing some poor bastard for theirs.

i'm tired of being an idea. i'm hurting and lonely and i don't have the things i need in this life. you know, what else is on offer? whatever it is, i'll take it. truth, lies, i don't care. i'm _desperate_ for something, anything, that will let me _feel good_ again.

and that, that is how people who get brainworms feel.

Booming.

Powerful post. Thanks for sharing, Kate.

I firmly believe the deficit of IRL community is one of the biggest crises in society today, especially in the post-social media era. The need for communal, inclusive, and non-predatory Third Places feels more vital than ever as the 2nd Place, work, has merged with the home.

I haven't checked this but I read recently that the majority of people who protested against the stealing of the election on January 6 didn't actually vote in the election itself. I don't know if this is a manifestation or form of the above or not, but I thought it was interesting.

What I kind of got from it was the elections were rigged not necessarily in a factual sense but in a conceptual sense, and that all elections are rigged by their very nature (and possibly not even necessarily just by 'the other side'). This kind of conceptual conspiratorialism had a dampening effect on behaviour (they didn't vote, though it wasn't clear if they had in the past), but obviously also not a dampening effect on behaviour (they turned up to protest the results)

The latter is, admittedly, more exciting, and as stated or implied in a couple of the previous posts, why should we care so much about the truth, what has the truth ever done for us anyway