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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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politics
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Bunch of people, mostly old dudes, have a fundamental aversion to not being the smartest person in the room. They latch on to whatever gives them the opportunity to be contrarian and in an environment of social media and disinformation they don't fully understand they spiral out into neofash, deluded stances becoming their entire persona.
Rant about something you're wrong about, get the whole internet telling you how dumb that is, get defensive because you can't be the one who's wrong, get radicalized. Welcome to the 21st century.
Source: I can't believe I didn't spiral down that toilet myself. Seriously, I should be one of those assholes. I can't believe I noticed just in time before the Internet weaponized that personality type into the death of democracy.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head. And where does this come from? We all know that guy. He's our dad, or whoever - but we all know at least one. So it's nearly ubiquitous. What I wonder is: what is this a product of? From where does this arise?
Oh, it's me. I'm that guy. I mean, look at my post history here. I invented being that guy, except Maher is older than me, but I'll still argue about it because I'm that guy.
It comes from being somewhat above average in school, and getting a bit of a reputation for being precocious and smart and not really having anything else going on so you may as well double down on it and have a thing. Plus if you ride that wave confidently enough it'll get you a full on career. And once you get validated by sucess, or whatever you personally consider success-adjacent enough, there's no way them kids are gonna show you up. Ever. No matter what. Every hill is worth dying on. Because that self-image. Is. All. You. Have. All you've had for decades now.
Man, I should go hug my dad. I can point at the two or three conversations we had that made me at least try not to be that asshole.
You can also have had a professor for a dad. My dad and his colleagues basically spent any social time they had together trying to play "who's the smartest?"
As a cishet guy I hate hanging around with other cishet guys because they're constantly trying to assert dominance
Deep-seated self-esteem issues. It's the same reason they drive big stupid trucks and why men aged 50-65 consume half the beef in America: They're desperate to feel powerful like men are supposed to be, according to them.