Is that person actually smart? or do they just make you feel like you were ignorant and now you’re intimidated to ask about your previous assertions? Is that person revealing a whole new realm of discourse you weren’t privy to, or are they reaching for out-of-pocket reasons to critique things? Are you agreeing with them because you know they’re right, or are you agreeing with them because they are confident about their assertions? Does this person have good taste and enjoy mocking things they deem worthless, or are they a cynical ass that knows no joy? Do they actually believe this or are they being contrarian for attention?
The answer varies. Ask these questions to yourself frequently.
mansplaining
This post was actually about raising awareness of common lapses in critical thinking that happen when you are impressionable and interact with a community online that lives in a bubble. My experience is with one specific “revolt against the modern world” type ideology that enforces or is lenient to varying forms of oppressive or regressive behavior.
In “Words in uniform: A Propaganda Reader”, a book containing excerpts of propaganda and various essays on the topic, the author/editor Nick Aaron Ford points out that a very large sample of political propaganda pieces are repeated variations on association games. (Please note here that “propaganda” in general is a neutral term, but what I’m about to describe is particularly bad.) What that means is effective propaganda doesn’t make arguments. Effective propaganda merely trains you to associate good or bad emotions with a person, a place, or a thing. This is done by story, I.e. arguments from disgust, and/or explicit labeling, like the way Trump comes up with adjectives or titles for people and reuses them, i.e. “nasty woman Hillary Clinton”, “pathetic”, etc. It’s particularly effective and you can see how well it works, even sometimes completely dehumanizing others once the association hits critical mass in terms of people who have heard it.
One of the reasons this works is that if you are listening to a person you trust, you take in their opinion and it’s now associated with this idea that goes along with it. You will repeat the opinion yourself, probably. And we know from the few decades of psychological research we have that people tend to do things instinctively first and justify them after. So if you’re not careful, a baseless value judgement on your part or careless dismissal can develop into full-blown arguments (of varying merit) as they jump from person to person. It happens to me. It happens to all of us.
I’m digging a little deeper into the idea here because I want you to understand that you have inadvertently done the things that this post is guarding against. You associated another concept, a sterotype of a negative thing that men can do, into a discussion about staying impervious to association games on the internet. And it was funny too, for a second.
You are succeptible to these association games and you did not stop this one from happening either. Make sure you cherish compassion and avoid dehumanization and cruelty, even if it’s an ingroup activity that feels good. And I absolutely know it’s happening in your circles because you welcome TERFs, who reinforce regressive gender roles and oppress trans people in various unpleasant and occasionally even deadly ways. It’s got some significant similarities to the community that I was talking about. Be careful of these rabbit holes. They’ll make a monster out of you.
Buddy, if you’re throwing around terms like TERF, have I got some news for you.
Just seems like a mouthful, but I can do it
i’m used to seeing you post math memes so this is like when some show has the nerd character turn out to be a total fucking badass
