#social conformity

[none-ofthisnonsense]

[commonsensecommentary]

“Convincing many seemingly sane Americans that they are financially responsible for the mistakes of total strangers has been one of the most amazing social and cultural magic tricks of the past few decades. Knowing absolutely nothing about the life choices and personal character of people who insist all of their problems are due to bigotry, patriarchy, or cruel capitalism, every flavor of Liberals, Socialists, Marxists, and Communists now infecting America demands we pour crazy cash and unearned advantage on groups and individuals that have likely disadvantaged themselves by shunning education, personal responsibility, and hard work while embracing mind-altering substances, promiscuous sex, and self-pity.”

Selling Self-Loathing And Insanity To The Masses

One of the most effective and well-known marketing techniques is as simple as it is nefarious: Make your target audience feel bad about them

[definitlynotdwr]

We’ve Been Living the Asch Experiment - "Progressive Coercion from Transactivists"

Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments were brutally simple. One person sits with a unanimous group. Two lines of obviously different lengths appear. The group confidently gives the wrong answer. Around 75% of participants conformed at least once. On the critical trials, they went along with the false answer roughly one-third of the time. In the control condition, with no group pressure, errors…

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[insideout-black]

CONDITION #725 - SLAVE JOY

Joy, you have to make Riley HAPPY or all this would be of NOTHING!

(Riley had a really really bad day at work and Anxiety has to make sure Riley can keep her job……at ALL COSTS.)

A breakdown of the concept:

Joy is wearing shoes, a tight belt and a hair tie. This represents restrains, a.k.a. being socially conformed

Two pegs to force a smile, as Joy is too exhausted to smile again (for both herself and Riley)

Chain of Shame and Memory Orb of Guilt: to ensure Joy remembers why Riley need to keep her smile at work

Anxiety dresses like a bossy woman for you know why

Joy’s new dress is no longer joyous but you can still see some vague flowery patterns. So maybe there are still some hope left? Meaning meaning…

TLDR: Joy is enslaved by Anxiety as she is the only emotion that can make Riley feel engaged at work. Will Joy (and even Riley) ever be able to recover from this extreme exploitation?

[faramirsonofgondor]

Mike Wheeler Is Traumatized

I know a lot of people equate Mike distancing himself from Will & the rest of the party to him just being an asshole, growing up, or internalized homophobia, but I think it has to do with his trauma SO MUCH. A lot of people ignore that by the end of season 2/the beginning of season 3 Mike is probably the only child who has seen so much gore (besides El, and possibly Will). Like even Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan did not have to see what Mike saw in the lab. While I’m not trying to say Mike has more trauma than the rest of the kids, he definitely has a lot different trauma.

In Season 1, all the of the kids (I’m including Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve as a part of the kids because they’re still teens during seasons 1 & 2) have seen the demogorgon but they don’t really have to see the aftermath of what it does. They know on some level that their life is in danger, but they don’t know exactly what the demogorgon is capable of, just that it took Will & killed Barb. Although Nancy & Jonathan do see the deer getting eaten, it’s not really the same thing as a human. El is really the only one with the knowledge of what the demogorgon is and what it can do, and even then she doesn’t really have all the full facts. I’d say that the goriest thing the kids experience by the end of S1 is El killing the agents and even then it probably wasn’t as impactful because they probably saw those agents as bad guys (because they were). So maybe the goriest thing was Will’s body, but again, they only saw it from afar and then found out that Will was still alive not even 24 hours later. While Wild’s experience in the upside down was definitely traumatic I’m not entirely sure if it can be classified as gory because we don’t know the full extent of what Will experienced.

Then we get to Season 2. All of the younger kids on some level witness Will’s possession, but Mike is the only one who gets to see the full extent of it, and he’s consistently the one who finds Will first during his episodes. He’s the one who witnesses Will’s seizure while Bob, Hopper, and Joyce are still on their way out of the tunnels. He’s also privy to a lot more information than anyone else regarding Will’s experiences with the Mind Flayer. I think Mike himself wasn’t even aware of this fact, because when speaks to Joyce it almost seems like he’s under the assumption that Will told her about the Mind Flayer, when in reality she pieced it together herself. Will also gives Mike insight into his worries about being controlled by the Mind Flayer, but he doesn’t seem to tell anyone else. Now back to Will’s seizure and subsequent hospitalization, when Mike is first presented with idea that Will might forget him, it’s a lot to handle, because it’s not something Mike can fix, but then Will does remember Mike and Mike is relieved. And it’s Mike who Will turns to, who Will tells that he has an idea on how to stop him. It’s Mike who realizes a little too late that it had all been a trap and that there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

Somehow, miraculously, Mike, Will, Joyce, Bob, Hopper, and Dr. Owens make it to safety. But not before Mike has witness thousands of demodogs eating people alive, tearing them apart - people who were only trying to help Will, people who probably had friends and family of their own. And now they’re all stuck, and it’s only a matter of time before the demodogs get to them. Yet, somehow, they make it out, and they’re only waiting for Joyce and Bob when Mike hears her scream. Can you imagine how horrifying it would be? To be the only kid in a situation like that? Mike probably didn’t even know if Joyce was okay or not until she got outside. Can you imagine what was going through Mike’s head? Not to mention, had Joyce actually been hurt, then Hopper would’ve been the only adult left in that situation- and he went back inside. Those few moments must have been so fucking terrifying, because if Hopper died, then who was left to protect them?

I also honestly think in part that Hopper leaving them might’ve been a contributing factor to Mike’s blowup at Hopper - obviously Mike was upset that Hopper hid El, but his breakdown seems to be deeper than that. Hopper has been telling Mike since Season 1 not to get involved, that he’ll handle it, etc. but then Hopper and Joyce leave the kids at the end of S1 and the party ends up losing El, so when confronted with the fact that Hopper had abandoned them again, even momentarily, probably made Mike lose so much of his trust/belief in Hopper to keep him and the party safe. Finding out about El was just the final nail in the coffin.

Anyways, back to Will’s possession. Mike was also the only party to be there when they were trying to get through to Will in the shed. Mike had to witness Will scream that Mike was lying, to let Will go, etc. I think that all of this combined is what really causes Mike to distance himself from Will and the others, not only the fact that he had witnessed such brutality and gore, but also that he feels partially responsible for it. He truly had lost his innocence in a way the rest of the party hadn’t experienced, and the only one who understood on some level was El (because she felt partially responsible too) and that’s why they latched into each other so hard. I also think that’s the reason why Mike insists of ditching his childhood in Season 3, because it was D&D that had sort of started this whole thing to begin with, and it was Mike childlike belief that they would make it out okay, that supporting Will would be enough to stop the Mind Flayer, that made Mike feel like he should’ve done more in the aftermath of Season 2.

However, I would also like to point out that Mike seems to have other trauma that’s not related to the Upside Down that contributes to this behavior as well. Mike has been punished multiple times for not conforming or for acting out throughout the series. When Mike stands up for Will during the assembly in Season 1, he’s pushing back against idea that Will’s alleged queerness should be met with violence and bigotry. While this may have felt rewarding in the moment, this eventually leads to the Quarry scene in which Mike is forced to essentially jump to his death. Despite El saving him, I think this impacted him more than the show lets on. While I don’t El or Dustin fully grasped the implications of this scene, I think for Mike it cemented the belief that any having any perceived queerness was a threat to both his and Will’s safety. And it wasn’t just about him being queer - really it was about Will’s perceived queerness. I think that’s why after this scene we see Mike pushing so hard for romance between himself and El AND for romanced between Will and other girls (pushing him to dance with a girl despite seeming unhappy about it, trying so hard push the whole ‘teen summer romance’ and getting girlfriends thing during season 3). When it comes to sexuality Mike doesn’t just see conformance as a way to stop bullying or as the way he would actually like to behave, he sees it as necessary to protecting both his and Will’s life, because its really saying something that the closest Mike’s been to death wasn’t because of the Upside Down but because of two bigoted preteens. Not even full grown adults. Mike probably already knows some of what Lonnie was like, so the idea that the rest of the town might start to catch on, that someone older might try to hurt them probably plagued his mind at least a little.

I’m honestly a little scared for Season 5 because while I do think Mike started rejecting conformity in S4, Eddie’s death and the whole mob mentality towards Hellfire might set back into his Season 3 mindset of trying to fit in as much as possible. I guess I’ll just have to find out when S5 comes out and I pirate it which won’t be for a while.

Anyways pushing past Mike’s conformity towards sexuality, Mike also does get punished for acting out in S2 and he has to get rid of a bunch of his childhood toys. So Mike may associate getting rid of his childhood with punishment. So maybe when Mike tries to push away from his childhood in S3, it’s really because he feels like he has to be punished (for not saving Will on time, for not warning anyone fast enough, for not seeing through the Mind Flayer’s plot, for being a child and having hope only to see that it’s dangerous to hope, that life can be so harsh and unforgiving).

Anyways, if y’all want me to talk more about this (I have ideas about how this connects more in S3 and S4) or anything else just lmk!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of gender as a constituted social temporality. Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief."

“If gender attributes, however, are not expressive but performative, then these attributes effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal. The distinction between expression and performativeness is crucial. If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction. That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality.”

-- Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity”

[As an aside, it’s no wonder Judith Butler was the winner of the Bad Writing Award in 1998. She’s an astonishingly terrible writer.]

Queer Theory itself tells us that “non-binary” is just a political performance. Basically the “cool” kids trying to make the squares feel square and want to join and conform with the cool kids, as they “complicate” and mess with society. Its entirely contrary nature is no more obvious than the fact it’s defined entirely by what it isn’t, rather than what it is. Being “non-conformist” in a predictable, socially acceptable, conformist kind of way. Hippy, grunge, emo, goth... every non-conformist conformed.

https://oxsci.org/anti-conformity-creates-a-new-conformity/

Despise anything that is “too mainstream”? Want to make a countercultural statement with an alternative style? Your one-of-a-kind look often ironically ends up pretty much the same as your counterculture peers. Intrigued by this counterintuitive phenomena, mathematician Jonathan Touboul at Brandeis University in Massachusetts breaks the problem down by studying how transmission of information through society influences people’s behaviour.

Time is needed for each individual to detect changes in society and react accordingly. While the propagation delay varies among individuals, it is crucial. Touboul’s research focuses primarily on a society with conformists copying the majority and anti-conformists rebelling against it. He then creates a computer model that stimulates how these agents interact. Start out acting randomly, anti-conformists then always undergo a phase transition into a synchronised state,  with each other in opposing the mainstream. Depending on how the anti-conformists interact with the mainstream, the behaviour can become extremely complex. Nonetheless, it is an inevitable result of large populations to create some kind of conformity, even when you set out to go against the norm.

So much for teasing hipsters and e-girls, this research has more than mere meme value. Delays in the propagation of information play an important role in many other areas, such as understanding synchronisation of nerve cells, investment strategies in finance, or emergent dynamics in social science.

Bonus:

“Gender: The socially prescribed and enforced roles, behaviors, and expectations that are assigned to us at birth. These roles determine how you are ‘supposed’ to feel and act based on your body.”

-- Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, “Is Everyone Really Equal?”

Translation:

[brownthoughtsrainbowperception]

I don't want but I need

The lens coursing through me

The divine a pure vine of rhythmic rhyme

The eye the portal to the place seldom known

Do I wait as I am engulfed within my own rising storm

This is the need I have always born

And my wants bleed into its being sustaining its meaning

There are microscopic fillements of thought lost upon the bursting red of the heart

And my definition ebbs and flows as my intellect lets go just to hold a bit more

If I am bold will my soul mold to the conformity social order denotes

Or will I rise above a chaos marked by looming doubtful thought

This is the apple in the eye erupting with a molten sty

Is your vision to the right as your perception dives too high and concepts drift remorsefuly by

Your want is the lie as your need slowly conforms to whither and die

[mememan-the-memehero]

It's too bad society's racial conformity is going to turn Lil' T. Cheddar to the streets instead of letting him live to his full potential as a successful business man.