Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard - both for starting this, and for covering the previous week. We should get a bot to automate this...)
He describes textbook insane cult stuff, but still feels the need to say stuff like:
There was the same dynamic in the writing of the ex-leverage member that got posted here a few weeks ago. She also felt the need to emphasize the "good" parts. Is the cult programming that hard to break? Is it some form of sunk cost or rationalization or need to claim something positive about the experience?
I don't think you have to be hypercritical of that part. Sure, rose-colored glasses could play into it but he calls the bad stuff bad and doesn't justify it via the good stuff.
Also the stuff he describes seems plausibly achievable through buddhist spiritial practice:
This Soryu figure seems fairly well accredited in that department. He just also happens to be a megalomaniacal control freak.
(Also, why does he have to share a name with Asoka? I'm dying a little.)
edit: I knew I spelt megalomaniacal wrong...
I'd say it's all of that, plus the fact that a lot of the cult stuff are also present in how organised rationalism works in general so you need to believe that such a tradeoff can be mostly worth it, otherwise it's time to really get packing.
Although a more charitable read could be that the intended audience are people still under cult influence who need to be communicated to (in the most non-judgemental way possible so as to not trip any cult induced outgroup-o-phobia) that it's entirely possible to feel you are in a situation with positive and productive elements that is also a fucking cult that is eating you alive.
The extended framing of how 'high-control literature' applies to the MAPLE situation probably also caters to those sensibilities, most other readers probably already got that it's a cult as soon as stuff like dear leader halting his daily two-hour speech when someone almost nodded off to make everyone stand up and stare at them in silence for ninety minutes started being mentioned. Or the constant surveillance and brainwashing. Or keeping everyone within a hair's width from collapse from exhaustion at all times. Or the isolation retreats where your only human contact is a few minutes per week of getting told off by dear leader. Or .
Having said all that, the positive aspects of MAPLE the author manages to come up with seem to amount to providing life structure and long term goals, which really doesn't seem like much: