The histrionic personality style is everywhere. This fraternal sibling to narcissism isn't just found in trans ideology; it's as extreme and deranged among the self-styled friends of Mother Earth.
This week on Disaffected we look in on extreme environmentalists, that is the average Vermont citizen, who want to shut down the airport, ground airplanes in Burlington, banish wood burning for heat, and all in the service of the children.
Then we'll apply amateur forensic psychology to Dunkin Donuts. Why is Angry Girl behind the counter so angry, and why is she opposed to hot sandwiches?
Finally, we'll check back in with our driving neighbors who have abandoned all traffic rules so we can all play a game of round robin and risk getting into a crash or a fist fight because taking turns sucks and etiquette's for like, losers man.
This came up in the show, and I think it's worth pointing out. There are a quite a few popular, persistent conspiracy theories that, sadly, are actually sound and have at least some merit to them. Then there are a few that I am certain are 100% manufactured and seeded into the population. These are:
1. Flat earth;
2. Birds aren't real (this one didn't really catch on);
3. Viruses aren't real (sadly this did catch on).
Flat earth, in particular, is especially suspicious because it rolled out, simultaneously, across a number of different dissident spaces on the internet, like a campaign—0 to 60 in an instant.
My theory: flat earth is AI-assisted disinformation designed to accomplish a few goals:
1. See how many people you can get to believe an exotic thing that isn't true;
2. Cultivate and network a large number of "marks" that demonstrably suggestible, for use in a future program; and
3. Establish a "madness of crowds" type phenomenon you can point to as an analog to other kinds of "science denialism."
As the public is force-fed more bullshit, you're going to have more people peeling off and becoming skeptical of orthodoxy. Many people actually become *more* suggestible when their core, axiomatic beliefs dissolve underneath them—not less. This provides fresh opportunities for the next generation of grifters and demagogues.
If you look through the flat Earth material, and the viruses don't exist material, it is really slick. It's all very complex, sophisticated, detailed, and has the appearance of genuine scientific endeavor. If more of these campaigns roll out, it will become even harder to dissuade true believers in things like climate change because they'll encounter more (para)logical argumentation and come to assume that one can make a really solid argument for anything.
Like I said, I strongly suspect the No Virus / Flat Earth stuff is AI-assisted and that we're going to start seeing a lot more AI-assisted argumentation on the Internet. But this is just an intuition and I don't have any hard evidence to support it.
“Contempt” is exactly the right word for this kind of anger. It’s not resentment, which implies there is a legitimate victim with a justified response. There is no victim here. What there *is* is a whole lot of dehumanizing hate directed at people who somehow embody things that these narcissistic crybabies think should be *theirs.*
I mean, does that not just sum up the motivations of the “gender identity” movement?
That guy with the hat? Pure, unfiltered contempt. The only other emotion he likely felt was excitement over the opportunity to waste everyone’s time with his condescending bullshit.