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

There was something of a more interesting development though. These are what 'memes' on the internet are saying, is that what he really thinks, or its sort of true but not really and kind of funny. It feels a bit like he simultaneously thinks this, but also at same time knows its silly, and has built in some level of plausible "its just memes bro" deniability, to where the actual level of belief is uncertain

But it also feels like the distinction between 'I believe this to be true' and 'I don't really believe this to be true or maybe I do who knows' isn't contradictory, that these two things aren't separable like this.

― anvil

this is also something i don't see as new. they say "scratch an ironic fascist and you find a real fascist", but i think it's more complicated than that. the Constantly Repeated Moral of _mother night_, for me it's less that we _are_ who we pretend to be, it's that we are changed by the things we say and do. "pretend" vs. "real" doesn't matter to me, if people say i'm a fake person i don't care, if someone says i'm a fake _woman_ i get mad because that's bullshit, but fakeness in general?

one of the things i consciously do is that i overtly try to take everything someone says as if they mean it. someone makes a "joke" and i take it completely seriously. a benign example is what happens to me when i tell this joke i learned as a kid. the joke goes like this:

my dog has no nose!

how does he smell?

terrible!

the funny thing, though, is if you try to tell that joke in real life, if you tell people your dog has no nose, nobody's going to play along and ask how the dog _smells_. they're going to say "oh my god, that's awful, what happened to your dog?" so that's what i do, is i no-sell a lot of humor. it's particularly easy for me because it just means turning on autism brain and taking everything everyone says as if they mean it literally. i understand subtext and metaphor, sometimes too well, but a lot of times treating everything on a completely literal level is the only way i can keep from getting lost in a maze of ideas where i don't know what's true or false anymore.

and i think that's what happens with a lot of the "brain worm" stuff. the jargon file from back in the '80s talks about this phenomenon. they call it "ha ha only serious". something's a joke but you also believe it. there's some cognitive dissonance in there... we all have to live with extremely high levels of cognitive dissonance, it's a basic survival skill these days.

i'm from the generation they used to call "gen x"... i was raised on irony, irony-poisoned some people call it these days. young folks these days are hyper earnest and straightforward, and i think a lot of it is because they saw what happened to us. irony is a dead scene, these days.

i was involved in an "ironic" cult in the 90s, and the guy who founded it did a whole documentary where the whole point was to say "IT WAS A JOKE, I WAS KIDDING"... he seems like a good enough guy, but i don't know that he really understood what he was doing, what he was starting. because he started the whole thing after reading about jim jones, about the lengths people would go for religion, so he said "i'll start one of my own, if people will die for this surely people will give me a dollar for mine..."

but jim jones wasn't starting a real religion either! i didn't know this for a long time, he was a communist, he was trying to use religion as a trojan horse... he didn't get kicked out of indianapolis for being psycho, he got kicked out for not being racist enough... jim jones, i think he's a good example of brain worms, it wasn't even that he was lied to, it was that he lied to _himself_... his "religion" was fake, it was a con, until it wasn't... he got high on his own supply, he, uh, drank the kool-aid. quite literally in this case.

so i'm involved in this "joke religion" and suddenly it becomes not quite a joke. the same way, back in 2010 i went to washington for the jon stewart/stephen colbert rally... it was, again, a "joke" rally but when i was there with 300,000 people at the mall on washington it started feeling different, started feeling like anything could happen. it's not a matter of individuals... you get enough people together in one place and stuff starts getting a little crazy.

my dog has no nose!
how does he smell?

terrible!

Let's also never forget, Hitler tried to use this joke to kill people.

this is also something i don't see as new.

Its new to him! He hasn't done that before. And also, its not clear that he IS doing that, I can't tell. He sometimes retreats behind "thats what the narrative is".

On some level it felt more like a "I haven't decided whether to believe this or not yet, so for now I'm just testing it out"

On some level it felt more like a "I haven't decided whether to believe this or not yet, so for now I'm just testing it out"

― anvil

i think that's a good observation, it kind of _is_ a form of boundary testing, isn't it? how much can i get away with, you know?

I don't think thats quite it. Its more like he is pulled in a certain direction, believes A, B, and C are true - but not really D and E. But at the same time, they were right about A, B, and C, then D and E could be true, so its best to bets a little bit.

There's also a pull in the opposite direction not to be seen as histrionic or dramatic, but the pull is weaker

So its not so much seeing what he can get away with, and more finding the right spot - and because the figurative and literal are all muddled together, its not clear where one ends and the other starts

best to hedge bets a little bit, is what that should say

Which means all these things could be true and not true at the same time

The only boundary this stuff tests is what people can get away with saying to friends and acquaintances imo

If you're already inclined to listen to bigot shit then really you believe it, some people just have enough social awareness left to be cowardly/cautious about it

nothing he said was bigoted though! just crazy.

i'm not saying there's a clear-cut distinction, exactly, but "the democrats are coming for your guns" is just a different thing than, you know, some of the other stuff

if the last few years has taught me anything it's that apparently unbigoted weird beliefs are very swiftly aligned to modern fascism

i haven't noticed a through-line from flat earth or antivax shit to communism

nothing he said was bigoted though! just crazy.

Yeah, doesn't say anything bigoted that I can recall. Its more about Liberals than anything else, though as we know they are simultaneously feckless and weak and unable to tie own shoelaces, while also being all-powerful with a sinister vice like grip on society

in 2023 if you have to wait for the sieg heil you're probably being over-generous

fascism weaponizes tons of shit, and imo it's a losing game to try to blame the hatred on the music, the hair, whatever. and re: flat earth, i think it's broadly fine for people to be downright weird in their worldviews. it's not like the neoliberal "We Believe Science" doctrine is any less racist.

like, if it's okay to be skeptical of "Science" or post-Enlightenment Western rationalism for the sake of understanding the racist and patriarchal assumptions that are baked into the system, then it needs to be okay to have the skeptical or even paranoid impulse in the first place.

like, if it's okay to be skeptical of "Science" or post-Enlightenment Western rationalism for the sake of understanding the racist and patriarchal assumptions that are baked into the system, then it needs to be okay to have the skeptical or even paranoid impulse in the first place.

― budo jeru

pretty hard disagree here. i don't think it's accurate or fair to draw an equivalence between the _very understandable_ skepticism demonstrated by victims of racist patriarchy and the people who adopt pseudoscience in order to perpetuate that racist patriarchy.

that's not what i'm doing at all. i'm pushing back against NV saying that all flat earthers are crypto fascists until proven otherwise

but they are

and i enjoy zany counter-rationalism as much as anybody

but they are

yeah i'm with noodle vague on this one

budo there is a more nuanced argument to be had here but what i'm saying is that if somebody tells you, in 2023, that they've got concerns about vaccines or climate change or 15 minute cities then self-preservation says assume they're fash and hope for a pleasant surprise if you've got the stamina to discuss it

like am i skeptical of the way white patriarchal science is implemented in practice? hell yes. i suffered severe, permanent, and irreparable harm from enlightenment science's universalization of "factual and objective" norms regarding gender diversity that, in reality, had nothing to do with gender expansive people's actual lived experiences but instead were based on the bigotries and prejudices of cis men presenting themselves as "experts". what _they_ said about us was the only thing that mattered. that, you know, that's post-enlightenment western rationalism, and you know what else it is? it's fucking _evidence-based_. flat earthers aren't. covid deniers aren't. trans eradication shares certain apparent similarities to conspiracy theories, but acknowledging and advocating for the dismantlement of hegemonic institutions of repression is not remotely comparable to blaming COVID on "the chinese". it's not.

xp fair enough but we weren't talking about vaccines or climate change, we were talking about flat earth

ok, i'm going to take a step back because i'm not talking about blaming COVID on the chinese ... i was talking about moon landing / aliens

you know, that's post-enlightenment western rationalism, and you know what else it is? it's fucking _evidence-based_.

that _skepticism_ is a skepticism of enlightenment-era western rationalism, and that skepticism is evidence-based. wow. is my whole post this incoherent?

well, it's not like it's a super topic, in fairness

*super easy

questioning enlightenment values is fine by me, i'm a kneejerk postmodernist

the issue is the specifics of how flat earthism plays itself out and aligns itself at this moment

ok, i'm going to take a step back because i'm not talking about blaming COVID on the chinese ... i was talking about moon landing / aliens

― budo jeru

ok, so trying to come down from my dander here, lol, this is one of my special interests, conspiracy theories, i've spent a lot of time with them.

and my argument is that people spend so much of their time focusing on whether or not conspiracy theories are _true_ and to me the interesting question is _why_ people believe them. for instance, the "ancient aliens" conspiracy theory, if you look at what motivates that it's the assumption that non-white people couldn't possibly design and build monumental architecture. again, this comes from a _critique_ of enlightenment rationalist assumptions. if you drill down far enough as to _why_ people believe these conspiracy theories, you're really likely to hit a racist and/or patriarchal core assumption underlying it.

when it comes to the abuses committed by white supremacist patriarchal rationalist institutions, there's not a question of _why_ people object to it. there's your qualitative difference, i'd argue.

budo there is a more nuanced argument to be had here but what i'm saying is that if somebody tells you, in 2023, that they've got concerns about vaccines or climate change or 15 minute cities then self-preservation says assume they're fash and hope for a pleasant surprise if you've got the stamina to discuss it

― da elephant in daruma (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, August 30, 2023 3:29 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also, i broadly agree with this, but this is the friend infected with right-wing brain worms ("What to do?") thread, so 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.

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!

and, to further clarify, what i'm putting forth is largely a rhetorical argument in service of minimizing harmful right-wing discourse. i don't blame anybody who shuts it down or decides to walk away. i'm just trying to propose a strategy that sees an essential truth at the core of the conspiratorial mindset and tries to use it and pivot it with actual, useful analysis

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