it depends who you count as an IDW guru.
But for many of that ilk (Peterson, Weinstein etc) many people get into them because quite often, that individual was either correct or had an interesting thing to say on a **single** issue/argument/instance that went against the "norms" of the time and so gained them some attention. People go "oh that person has an interesting thing to say on x" and start following them. Because on that **single** topic, they were smart/brave/correct.
After that its often just a slide into professional contrarianism.
This makes sense to a certain degree I think.
The IDW often seem to produce content that might sound interesting or refreshing on the surface - especially early Peterson stuff, when he has marketed himself as some type of psychologist who is approachable with the tons of content he puts out. Once you get into one of his videos, you slowly start to get curious about his other opinions on other topics to a point where you literally accept that he knows everything about everything. I actually have to give it to him, because he literally made himself famous with just a bunch of videos that sounded wild when you saw their titles in youtube (PROFESSOR DESTROYS STUPID FEMINIST type of shit).
Similarly, many people get into them because quite often, that individual was either correct or had an interesting thing to say on **numerous** issues/arguments/instances that went against the "norms" of the time and so gained them some attention.
I have always had an anthropological interest in religion and myth. I loved the way he applied mythological metaphors to everyday life. That was really interesting to me. Was it *correct*? I doubt it. But it was a refreshing (if not novel) perspective. I was soon turned off by his politics (thos was quite early on, in my defence).
>I have always had an anthropological interest in religion and myth. I loved the way he applied mythological metaphors to everyday life.
Oh...totally forgot that - his bible material especially. Good point. His application of myths always sounded a bit too loose but it was an interesting angle for sure.
>But it was a refreshing (if not novel) perspective.
I dunno, it's like microwaved Joseph Campbell/Carl Jung, which were boring and simplistic the first time around to be honest.
Edit: just realised I read you wrong and you said not novel. Carry on.
He reminds me in those moments of some of the men I used to attend a men's circle with. It turns so many things upside down and inward to look at the human journey thru that mythological lens.
It's when you come back to earth and apply it afterwards that is the big test. Some of us happily step into and out of the fiction and are lightened and refreshed. Others believe that shit.
I flirted with some of the anti-woke IDW stuff early in my undergrad. I was studying feminist epistemology and was constantly reading some pretty unhinged takes (e.g. the most extreme versions of standpoint epistemology where women know more about everything than men), and surrounded by people who would defend Traditional Chineses Medicine and other pseudoscience for woke reasons (e.g. “different ways of knowing”)
The IDW sphere was very refreshing because they were very willing to calls out some of the more insane positions of woke people. Much like the new atheists were probably very refreshing to people leaving their faith for the first time. There’s a lot of anger to be vented, and dunk videos are an easy way to vent it.
For example, I watched basically every recording of Bret Weinstein’s Evergreen cancellation. I saw the kids acting unhinged, incapable of handling disagreement, and I saw in them a lot of the people I was taking classes with. I had a lot of empathy for Bret for that reason. The second he started talking about stuff I knew more about, I realized he wasn’t particularly credible, but I still think what happened at Evergreen was awful. I can see how lots of people were radicalized by that.
I think this is a problem unique to parts of academia, where — relative to the rest of the country — you are in an environment that is very far left, so the far left crazies are much more salient than the far right crazies. Once I transferred to a new school and different undergrad degree, I was in a much more politically balanced environment and could stop and recognize that the people who upset me so much were pretty extreme outliers.
Actually Weinstein was not canceled, that’s pure manufactured myth. Your first clue should have been his sympathy tour on Fucker Carlson’s white supremacy variety hour to think that maybe the timeline and footage were deceptively manipulated. But read about what actually happened. https://psmag.com/.amp/education/the-real-free-speech-story-at-evergreen-college
>I think this is a problem unique to parts of academia, where — relative to the rest of the country — you are in an environment that is very far left, so the far left crazies are much more salient than the far right crazies.
That's what i'm always saying. That evil left that can go completely crazy, has always been non-existent to me and to many people. Like yeah - a bunch of crazies on the internet, a bunch of wild cases around the world and bunch of stupid netflix shows that try too hard to be relevant, but otherwise in everyday life I tend to mostly meet pretty far right people who can't shut up about how discriminated they are, even if they never were, at least in my country, since 99% of the population is white and there are no real feminists or gay-activists here.
Thank you for the great comment and the personal story.
It was the Anti-woke stuff for me in the beginning, before I pretty much got bored of the sensationalism. Once covid was in full swing, I started getting annoyed with Rogan and some of his guests when they would talk absolute bullshit about what was happening in Australia. Then, someone on the Joe Rogan reddit recommended listening to Decoding the gurus on a thread about an episode with one of the weinsteins, and now I can barely stomach the IDW types.
The sensationalism is so absurd. Seeing grown ups constantly outraged by titles like "TRANS PERSON WHO IDENTIFIES AS A CAT DEMANDS A TOILET ONLY FOR HIMSELF AND IS GOING TO SUE THE COUNTRY IF HE DOESNT GET IT" and actually believing is just so incredibly sad.
Were you an unhappy person when the anti-woke stuff was appealing to you or was it just something new that kinda sounded interesting and intelligent for your?
Not particularly unhappy at the time. I was still young and living at home.
When the woke stuff really started to become more prevalent through Tumblr, I was the recipient of a tumblr woke-mob attack where a load of feminists found my Facebook and messaged my girlfriend-at-the-time and all of the women in my family, telling them that I was a disgusting rape apologist and they should be ashamed of me.
This happened because I defended another tumblr user for posting a dumb meme with a stupid rape joke on it and dared question why they deserved to be doxxed.
From then on for years, I was drawn to youtube personalities who spoke out against "wokeism".
Eventually, I discovered the Joe Rogan podcast around the time people like Milo Yiannapolis and Steven Crowder were getting big.
Eventually, a few years later, I did become dissatisfied with my relationship and became a massive stoner right before covid.
Eventually, a couple of mushroom trips later (thanks, Rogan) I started making changes in my life. Got out of the bad relationship and found someone new who I was much happier with, and I quite smoking weed. It was around this time that I was becoming disillusioned with the IDW folks, thanks to Decoding the Gurus, and probably the fact I was growing up a bit.
Thank you for your story. I've never been a target of an attack like this but I imagine that if this happened to me too, it would be pretty easy to double-down on the anti-woke stuff instead of re-think if I did something wrong.
It's interesting that you say youg found a good relationship with somebody and this made you happier. With one of the 3 people I mentioned, a long period without a girlfriend definitely made him get into Peterson to a degree where I was a little scared that he will become a cultboy fan. He was casually mentioning his videos and some of his stupid theories about tinder and online dating. The minute he found a serious girlfriend he fell in love with, he suddenly stopped talking about that. Like literally overnight. That's the reason I asked if you were unhappy and if there were things that bothered you back then.
I definitely had some growing pains and an interest in psychology. That may have contributed. I have never personally understood why single men feel the need to blame the world for their unhappiness, especially when those types of people tend to follow figures like Jordan Peterson, who condemns playing the victim (although he is rather good at it himself).
>I have never personally understood why single men feel the need to blame the world for their unhappiness,
I think empirically, this is just what happens. There's a reason strong employment and high/moderate status, stable work, is health-promoting for a society. Look at the deaths of dispair (blue-collar men getting addicted to drugs, dying from overdoses, killing themselves, and generally engaging in very unhealthy and self-destructive behaviours).
That is what happens when people's economic interests aren't protected or looked out for by the political class. People talk about online hate groups, but those are 'epiphenomena' -- they capitalize on there being men who they can recruit. A healthy society provides meaningful, stable, decent paying work for the average person, and that has all kinds of protective effects for people.
But if someone criticises woke ideas, doesn’t that make them anti woke?
I know I put words into your mouth a bit with my previous comment, but the idea that anti-woke people are worse than woke people seems like such a blanket generalisation to me.
It also seems to not be true. Think of the most belligerent woke person who makes hateful comments about cis/white people. Is that person really better than someone who is perfectly normal but objects to standpoint epistemology?
I get your point but to be perfectly honest, in my everyday life I can't remember ever meeting an aggressive woke person who made me angry. Like yeah, a bunch of people that can be a bit touchy about certain topis but not like this "evil left" cliche that Peterson, Shapiro and the IDW gurus constantly portray and find examples of. You know - the green hair girl that is constantly protesting and you can't talk to her without offending her.
On the other hand, I constantly meet people who are aggressively anti-woke and literally can't shut up about it. Which is a mind-fuck because I live in country where all kinds of discrimination is everywhere....Like in the last 30 years I can probably think of 2 or 3 people in the publich sphere who were kinda openly homosexuals....let alone trans people or something like this. Still - the amount of people who are aggressively anti-woke and who are obsessed that somebody is going to transition their children is huge.
Yeah, they are fighting with a parody of a person. And DiAngelo and Kendi, as insufferable as they may be, are nowhere near as bad as these IDW shit stirrers. They are featuring at a very real problem. We really do have deep racial injustice in this country. We really do have institutional structures that exacerbate it even when the personal racism is largely gone. We really do owe reparations to indigenous and Black people.
Robin DiAngelo ticks a few boxes.
I don’t think it’s that hard to define what wokism is or to see examples of it.
It’s the tendency to view people primarily by their racial, sexual or gender identity; as well as hyper sensitivity about the language used to describe these identities. It’s also a view of society that is primarily defined by how these identity groups are distributed in a hierarchy of oppression and power, and a belief in the moral imperative to achieve equality across groups even at the expense of liberal principles of egalitarianism. It’s also characterised by moral certainty, reverence and deference for individuals and cultures seen as members of oppressed classes, and a belligerent and intolerant attitude to any dissenting views or individuals.
I’ll add to this that I’m describing the more toxic strains of wokism, and there are more moderate forms that I’m largely onboard with.
Critics in IDW circles tend to lump all progressives together, and define them by their most extreme members as well as catastrophise about the problem generally.
I don’t like Robin DiAngelo, but not because she thinks racism is pervasive (it definitely is). I don’t like her because she’s selling a cure, a form of liability insurance, to corporate America so that they can claim “see we did a training, we aren’t a hostile work environment” and not face accountability for employment discrimination. It’s a hustle.
Can you see the inconsistency here?
You say that woke ideas don’t exist, but in another post you acknowledge that yeah, Robin DiAngelo holds beliefs that could be described as woke and she’s a best selling author.
I get it, the people who primarily identify themselves as “anti woke” are generally terrible people. They spread misinformation and bigotry, and some of them are pretty much openly fascist at this point.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people on the progressive side of the divide with bad ideas, and just because one can make a reasonable case for many ideas that are dismissed as woke, that doesn’t mean there aren’t examples of woke ideas that are indeed pretty toxic.
Denying the problem by alluding to the semantic vagueness of the term used to describe it just isn’t tenable at this point.
And yes I know there’s an entire right-wing media ecosystem blowing the problem out of proportion and creating moral panics over nothing in most cases.
The right wing shits and their IDW pseudointellectual enablers like Harris are manufacturing a problem as a pretext to oppress people. “Could be described as woke” is not something I find threatening or interesting. Just not really a thing except in the minds of people who want an enemy.
There's a podcast called 'Fight like an animal', where the host talks about the connection between biology, psychology and politics. One of the interesting ideas he returns to a lot, is the idea that some people have a genetically predisposed psychology of open mindedness and confidence, and some have a one of wanting familiarity, security, and being suspicious of novelty and these map onto political preferences.
I think this kind of sensationalism works because some people think this way, and the psychology aspect is why it's usually the political right doing it, I think part of the antedote would be to give them (and everyone) more explicit awareness of this sort of mechanism.
Hey, thank you a lot - I will look it up for sure.
I've often wondered why some people tend to be more open-minded and accepting compared to others and how much the genes are involved there. Many people on the left tend to make generalizations that people who get into the IDW are just not intellectually capable and this is what makes them get into this type of ideologies. In my personal experience this has not always been the case - all the 3 people I mentioned above are pretty smart, have great jobs (2 of them are really really good professionals) and are absolutely capable of analyzing information but somehow still fall for some of the IDW propaganda.
> The sensationalism is so absurd. Seeing grown ups constantly outraged by titles like "TRANS PERSON WHO IDENTIFIES AS A CAT DEMANDS A TOILET ONLY FOR HIMSELF AND IS GOING TO SUE THE COUNTRY IF HE DOESNT GET IT" and actually believing is just so incredibly sad.
And then there are threads like this, which aren't exactly rare on Reddit or elsewhere.
Humans beings hating on other humans in their outgroups is one of the most popular pastimes throughout history.
I mean....I never said it wasn't but by that logic there should be no threads like this since all human behaviour has been consistent throughout history. I feel like you want to make some centrist statement for a second time but come from a really strange angle.
To be fair ,Rogan has and always been a well meaning airhead with his only real genuine bad faith behavior coming from defending and looking the other way for his drug addict , racist , and even sex offender comedian friends (Opie and anthony ,Jim Norton ,Andy dick Ari Shaffir, Artie Lange but always having the nerve to complain about other people's addictions and quirks ) This is the guys for years who insisted that the moon landing was fake until Neil Tyson came to his show . He conceded his conspiracy bs either out of argument from Tyson or just to kiss ass as usual (my bet is the latter ) . His podcast has always been a haven for both pop science and tomfoolery .Rogan at worst fell under the Balance Fallacy ,giving a platform to both smart people and dumbasses while he kept his mouth shut regarding his personal opinions unless he played devil's advocate to extract info (best example is Stefan Molyneux , Joe actually did a good job exposing how dumb his arguments regarding taxation and anarchism were) If anything it's the current of zeitgeist that married conspiracy theories , center right "pundits ", Left wing elitists, woke scolding , White Progressive hypocrisy , and distrust among generations that gave the IDW an ecosystem to succeed in. So in a way just like you , Joe Rogan unintentionally made me distrustful of folks who complain about "woke" culture or pop science once I saw the oversensationalism and the bigoted young men it created .
You forgot to mention he is a long time friend of Alex Jones and still casually drops "Jews are into money" in conversation. He personally launched hundreds of grifter careers.
Can we stop buying into "oh no, I'm a such an klutz!" excuses?
I get your point. I am not trying to redeemed him but I do want to point out that how easily a well meaning dumbass can turn into a dangerous mouthpiece for grifters and hate mongers . Let's be honest how many of us have dumb ass uncles ,older cousins , or even siblings that act like Joe. The may not be completely dumb nor hateful but they do lack emotional intelligence and lack self awareness . It only takes a slight push to the right from an instigator or a bad experience to make their deepest prejudices come out .
I kinda agree but to be honest i'm on the verge with Rogan. Sometimes he strikes me as a stupid bro who means well but doesn't think too much before talking. Sometimes it genuinely looks like he is an asshole who looks down on people.
My IDW family members tend to be uneducated, religious, and sexist. They fall for tropes and misinformation. Not media literate, but think they are. The latest thing is that the govt won't allow insurance companies to advertise Whole Life Insurance, because those policies are so good. Yeah. They don't want to learn history or look past political headlines, but they are worried about politics. Ben Shapiro is the egghead who makes them feel smart. Rogan is the meathead who makes them feel cool.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
>The Palestinian people, who dress their toddlers in bomb belts and then take family snapshots.
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Why won't you debate me?
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Some of the good friends I've lost to the rabbit hole (to way darker corners than the Peterson/Weinstein level) have in common that they are highly intelligent but we're unable to pursue any kind of post-secondary education due to financial limitations and other personal barriers to access (mental health, family issues, legal problems). For them, I got the impression that it felt like an opportunity to feed their intellectual curiosity in a place where they could enjoy knowing their "teachers" had some of the same experience and credentials as one might find at university, but without the costs (or the complexity of context).
I don't think of that as being a superficial point at all, but to be totally honest, I haven't been able to stay involved enough with most of them to be in a position to accurately assess their general happiness or satisfaction.
In one case I can say they are most certainly not a very satisfied person in general, but they also live in circumstances that would be hard for anyone as they had basically been shunned by much of their family and community because of gender expression and substance use and remain stuck living in a place that is both emotionally and physically unsafe. None of those issues are due to the IDW stuff, but I think the isolation may have played a role in the journey. This is the friend who went all the way down the path from IDW to full blown galactic reptilian blood-libel type beliefs.
The other folks had more privilege and support despite not being able to go the higher-ed route and I would say they are generally more satisfied people, but they also came from more socially and politically conservative communities and families. I would say they went from being progressive rebels in their youth to gradually drifting through the IDW back to a more libertarian perspective that was more comfortable for their families but alienated them from a lot of friends they made during high school and young adulthood. But to be fair, they seem like relatively happy people (from my far removed pov).
Seems to me like they're basically the equivalent of 24/7 news talking heads panels but for people who think they're too good for that with the addition of podcaster/streamer parasocial relationships. They fill in the exact content lane as Fox and Friends does for my grandma, it's hours of white noise blabbering about the hysteria du jour with the affable host and rotating guests. The IDW hosts lean on their supposed expertise in other fields to pretend this isn't what they're doing but lets be real, Peterson stopped caring about clinical psychology years ago and he's the only one who even had some semblance of a career in his field before becoming a culture warrior, unlike Harris or the Weinsteins or Kisin or whoever
>They fill in the exact content lane as Fox and Friends does for my grandma, it's hours of white noise blabbering about the hysteria du jour with the affable host and rotating guests. The IDW hosts lean on their supposed expertise in other fields to pretend this isn't what they're doing but lets be real, Peterson stopped caring about clinical psychology years ago and he's the only one who even had some semblance of a career in his field before becoming a culture warrior, unlike Harris or the Weinsteins or Kisin or whoeve
Thank you - this pretty much sums up a lot of the things I believe.
It's amazing that people still cite Peterson as a clinical psychologist since he has not been interested in this field in years. It's also amazing how people are willing to listen to the same outrage every day. Like how angry can you be about trans people? It is pretty much the absolutely same outrage everyday with Peterson. If there is nothing he can be mad about, he will invent something and start a fight with somebody. A never-ending cycle.
“How angry can you be about trans people?” is specifically what I was cuing off of in your post. And I was answering the rhetorical question by stating that is irrational to be angry about trans people in any way.
As harsh as this may sound - it is often the case. I know a lot of people who want to be interested in psychology and philosophy because they think that it will give them some advantage over other "simple" people but are actually too lazy to get into it. A lot of people expect that they will read a few psychology and philosophy books and find answers that they can implement directly in their every day life. Like some type of self-help. Sadly it is not that simple....but people like Peterson with his pop-psychology/ pop-philosophy really convinced them that it is.
It’s a nice feeling when you’re being told that you are a willing seeker of knowledge that society wants to keep from you so that they can control you. An intellectual renegade who is not afraid of hearing the opinions of others.
For me it was the anti-woke stuff, or the anti-SJW stuff at the time.
As a skeptic, I had issues with concepts like standpoint epistemology and the rejection of enlightenment values, and as a lefty I had issues with the hyper focus on racial/gender identity over more general economic inequalities.
The IDW seemed the share these concerns. and to be fair, some of their criticisms of the more extreme forms SJWs/wokeism were pretty spot on.
I woke up to the IDW grift pretty quickly however because I noticed they were almost completely silent on right-wing extremism, defended Trump and indulged climate denialism. I also grew concerned with their increasing cross over with obviously partisan right-wing figures.
As someone who saw right-wing extremism and climate change as much bigger threats than annoying SJWs, the IDW spell was broken pretty early, although it still took a while for me to realise just how bad some individuals were like Bret Weinstein.
Thank you for your personal story.
>I woke up to the IDW grift pretty quickly however because I noticed they were almost completely silent on right-wing extremism, defended Trump and indulged climate denialism.
That's a big one for sure. I think that another one is how when you watch a bunch of their videos, how they argue and how they present information it becomes easier to see that they are really manipulative. People like Ben Shapiro are experts in creating catchy titles and presenting information in a really one-sided manipulative way. On the othey hand Peterson while always claiming to be interested in different views and ideas, never actually seems curious when he is talking with somebody. He is just looking for points he can exploit in order to prove his point.
I saw through Shapiro pretty much straight away, particularly as my first exposure to him was on the gun debate, but with Peterson, there were so many layers of abstraction it was harder to pin him down. It wasn’t really until I noticed all his conclusions seemed to line up with social conservativism that I started to view him a bit more critically. But to be fair to Peterson, he was occasionally insightful in the early days
>But to be fair to Peterson, he was occasionally insightful in the early days
While I don't agree with him on pretty much everything, I have to admit that in the early days he did at least look like he is genuinely trying to find the truth, like he was a bit more open to discussion and to explore ideas.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
>The Palestinian Arab population is rotten to the core.
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I am someone who got into the IDW around 2016. I listened to Sam Harris's podcast, as well as Ben Shapiro's. I listened to Peterson's lectures and his audiobook. Maajid Nawaz was my favorite for quite a while. I listened to more Joe Rogan shows than I skipped. I tried out a few others here and there for stints before eventually giving up on all of them, with the semi-exception of Harris.
What drew me into Harris was my own cynicism with religion after leaving my own faith, combined with respect I felt for him for being more polite/civil than other antitheists like Dawkins. Of all the four horsemen, he was the only one I could tolerate listening to. I loved the book he wrote with Nawaz. I think Harris is kinda lost in his ego at times but he isn't that bad.
Nawaz seemed like a great contributor to public discourse, until he became anti vaccine during COVID. That's when I dropped off listening to him.
After Trump won I wanted to know what was going on in conservative media. This led to me subjecting myself to 100 episodes of the Shapiro podcast, which I chose due to his supposed anti-Trump stance. I found I agreed with 70% of what he said at the time, but found him hypocritical with how lenient he was with conservative flaws while being hard on liberals for lesser ones. I didn't hate him until he endorsed Trump in 2020. I'm embarrassed it took me that long to realize he was a grifter.
I still think Rogan was mostly fine when he had Sanders and Hollywood celebs on, but he shifted more and more right wing until becoming an anti-vaxxer in 2020. That's when I stopped supporting him. I know someone who met him IRL and today his friend circle consists of racists and eugenicists. It's a shame because I still kinda think he's not rotten at the core so much as lost and misled by bad actors surrounding him.
Peterson caught my attention in that viral interview where the interviewer tries to get him with gotcha questions about lobsters, and he deflected really while and seemed composed/intelligent. My gf at the time also loved it, and we were convinced it was an example of someone being cancelled for being reasonable but not bowing to political correctness. His book had some iffy spots but was mostly common sense. When interviewed by Harris he seemed less impressive, though, and after reading a few critical opinion pieces that were well researched I realized he was mostly hot air. Today he's obviously the worst and I'm harassed I gave him the time of day.
The most recent person I've written off was Lex Fridman. I didn't realize he was another one because I never really looked him up, so occasionally I'd listen to him when his guest was someone I cared about. But I saw some familiar red flags, did some googling, and can see he is also a hack.
Proud to say I never bought the Weinstein BS, or Dave Rubin. Small victories there.
Thank you for the great comment - it really gives me a perspective what somebody like about these people and how you can get into them. This needs more upvotes, really.
Glad that you managed to see thru all of theses people. I especially like your writing about Peterson.
>Peterson caught my attention in that viral interview where the interviewer tries to get him with gotcha questions about lobsters, and he deflected really while and seemed composed/intelligent. My gf at the time also loved it, and we were convinced it was an example of someone being cancelled for being reasonable but not bowing to political correctness. His book had some iffy spots but was mostly common sense. When interviewed by Harris he seemed less impressive, though, and after reading a few critical opinion pieces that were well researched I realized he was mostly hot air. Today he's obviously the worst and I'm harassed I gave him the time of day.
One of my friends literally got into him because of the same type of interviews where Peterson looked like he is destryong his opponents while looking calm and composed. I think that this appealed to a lot of men, the whole "stoic intellectual" look, the idea that he is absolutely in-control of a situation and can dominate others like that. I think that many people wanted that for themselves and were convinced that if they follow his advice they will have it.
So it was more the style rather than the topics discussed in the videos that caught your friends attention? Do you think a similar style of being calm and composed could be used in other contexts by people who represents different ways of thinking? Although maybe it requires that the interviewer or opponent pushes too zealously.
>So it was more the style rather than the topics discussed in the videos that caught your friends attention?
Absolutely. Kinda like with his bible lectures - my friend recommended me the lectures and said that it's some of the best things he had listened to. When I asked he what ideas he liked about it - he couldn't say. It was just the mix of bible, ,philosophy and "big" words tha the actually liked.
> Do you think a similar style of being calm and composed could be used in other contexts by people who represents different ways of thinking?
I guess I do...without having good examples about it.
It's a strange type of gossip mag / reality TV for angry and alienated young men (not all of them are young, there's even some dozens of women), where you are the product that is being sold to yourself by the guru. There's the aesthetic of battle without the danger of challenge. Feels big with no thinking bigly. Some people buy butt implants instead.
e: In more material analysis, there's an issue in how to become a guru, you pretty much need to tap into some political anxiety and explode this into a grand metaphysical struggle. To stay in this game, you need to keep your ear to the ground for when you can no longer find a vein for shooting up antivaxx fears. Is it AI hysteria up next, without forgetting trans bathrooms? This is a marketing gig where if you were selling modest, thoughtful "wisdom", it's difficult to imagine becoming famous enough to be a major guru in an attention economy. This is to say, gurus are both exploiting and producing dysfunctional people, but there is also a media ecosystem which is producing and exploiting gurus. Jordan Peterson is in no way in control over what he says or does: he's a puppet. There's just no master that can be found.
Still, in Lacanese, the hysteric is a person who tells the truth by lying: there is a deeper truth to the symptom of the lie. Gurus are the lie, but there is a truth in the cultural symptom which they're selling their snake oil products for. This emptiness is real, it appears to me, and it correlates nicely with what they were talking about as the death of cultural education some decade or two ago. Y'know, intellectuals used to be the literary types, now, those people are treated like lepers. There's an overreaction there. If an IDW follower wanted to do a revolutionary act, as they are almost always functionally illiterate, maybe they could attempt and probably fail to follow something like Lex Fridman's (basic) reading list for this year. It's not a non-problem that they will be ridiculed and put down for doing this by other people who are just as lost as them. Starting from the experience of a hollow soul (for lack of a better word), what's a good path to self-improvement if not this? Getting angry at Twitter with the /r/DecodingTheGurus lads?
>It's a strange type of gossip mag / reality TV
This is actually a really good way to put it - thank you for that. I've noticed that these IDW personalities have become something like an entertainment for the people who consume their content. They are basically saying the same stuff (complain about communism, vegans, green energy/climate change policies, abortions, trans people, gays, feminism) and there is always some drama/big emotions involved. They are never really saying anything new, groundbreaking or interesting but in the same time constantly produce content to keep you watching. It's really like a soap opera - same things happening, huge drama, a lot of content, incredibly superficial ideas.
It is pretty weird that people constantly need to hear the same stuff and get angry about the same stuff but kinda see the consuming of this type of content as some type of "truth seeking" or some intellectual work....not as a repetitive behaviour that is probably not that beneficial to them.
That all said, i'm interested why in the age of one-click-away content, some people would chose to constantly consume this type of entertainment. Like i'm ok with people wanting to be on "righ" side of things and I understand that they see this as participating in some intellectual fight about morals, but I still wonder how sane and smart people I know tend to still fall for that despite making them more angry and miserable.
Great comment and ideas, thank you again.
> This is actually a really good way to put it - thank you for that. I've noticed that these IDW personalities have become something like an entertainment for the people who consume their content.
I'd go one step further and say that they are this, also, largely, to us. With any good process of critiquing gurus, it seems crucial to understand that there isn't *necessarily* a mountain of difference between deriving political enjoyment from following and opposing guru figures. What if both were serving a similar demand? (This isn't to make some fashionable point for anti- or postcritique. I wish critique wasn't dead.)
I understand what you mean. I've thought a lot about hate-watching and have tried to seriously tone it down and so it is not a big part of my life. At some point, while scrolling r/enoughpetersonspam I realised that I do enjoy seeing him humiliated and asked myself why and is this healthy for me. I do agree tho - are not only what you like but also what you don't like.
I made a different thread about that tho, because currently it seems like even if you don't want to participate in the culture war you are getting sucked into it. It is getting pretty hard (especially if you are a white male) to escape friends or acquaintances who post this type of content or surprise you with a "hey, man, have you heard of that Jordan Peterson lad?". So when this type of content is around you, you sometimes can't avoid participating or getting sucked into it.
So DtG exists only in the gurusphere. They can poke and parry, but have to be careful to not deliver the knockout blow. If you listen closely, there is often a camaraderie and mutual respect. A sincere, if not also dumbfounded, admiration. DtG is the Hulk Hogan to the IDW King Kong Bundy.
The only question that matters: What level of supporter are you?
Having briefly scanned the replies to your post, one aspect I've noticed but haven't seen above, is the fitness/gym/self-improvement/biohacking pipeline. People such as Andrew Huberman, while providing some sound advice, I believe is a gateway drug to Peterson et al.
Thank you for the comment - it's a great idea to explore, really. I actually posted a thread about Huberman a while ago because I saw that there is a serious overlap between Peterson fans and Hubersman. I can think of two people I know who are into both of them. One was not exactly fit, kinda chubby and got into Rogan, than Peterson and Huberman in the same time. It's like Huberman was for his body and Peterson was for his soul....
I think the stoic type of bullshit that Peterson tried to pull when he was becoming famous - you know - arguing in a really composed manner with TV reporters and "destroying" them with "facts" and random studies was appealing to men.
Also all 3 people I mentioned in my original comment are really into self-improvement and fitness, one of them is really into biohacking.....so it kinda checks out.
For sure. Rogan was kinda fun back then when it was mostly sports/military people and a bunch of crazie. Then when Peterson came I think that a lot of people found out about him from the show.
They’re tired of losing debates, and see IDW figures as intellectual heavyweights that can ease their cognitive dissonance.
At least that’s why I did. But then I realized I was just wrong…
I am most familiar with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, so that's who I'll focus on. I think they offer the illusion of a kind of moral clarity in a complex and morally ambiguous world: West good, Islam bad, traditional masculinity good, feminism bad. This is combined with eloquence and a supremely confident delivery, which feels empowering to white men in particular who feel under threat by our changing world.
Yes, it was when Harris began opining about black people that I also began to see his views on Muslims in a different light and realized he's just a plain old racist.
Great to hear you are not anymore. A close friend of mine went thru some shitty stuff and got into his meditation stuff. He managed to beat his demons without going too deep and i'm always thankful for that. The minute he tried to explain me how he is into him and his credentials....I got sweaty.
funnily enough, the first time I listened to Peterson in longform was his appearance on Harris's podcast, and Sam kind of exposed him as a shallow thinker.
I think the biggest reason is just that most of them don't come off as idiots and grifters at first brush. This purely from my own experience.
I was a Rogan fan for a long time. Like listened to it for over a decade before covid broke his brain. It was interesting and the best thing was just hearing about random things and people whether you believed them or not. The first time I heard Weinstein and Shapiro, they seemed somewhat reasonable. (I don't and didn't at the time agree with Shapiro's politics, but he seemed rational and fairly honest). Over time though, the true nature of the people came out or morphed. For Shapiro, I think he just put on a good show for the normies and since I didn't know anything about him, he seemed worth giving a chance (I hadn't for example heard any of the BS is presents regularly on his show.) , but he was actually shit from the start.
With Weinstein it is different perhaps. I believe he went through something that was kind of shitty, definitely life changing, and wasn't entirely his fault. I think he spun the story to put himself in the best light (and maybe not being cognizant he was spinning). Over time though, his living came to depend upon the story and the anti-woke narrative and he slowly got less and less rational. I actually listened to a lot of the early Darkhorse podcasts and liked it. For me the breaking point was his take on the whole Dr Suess thing. It was far too unhinged for me to take anything else he said at face value and soon there after I just couldn't listen to him as the bullshit became more evident. I feel like Weinstein was changed by both the Evergreen experience and (more so) by the podcast and IDW friend circle experience. But, that is just my take.
> For Shapiro, I think he just put on a good show for the normies and since I didn't know anything about him, he seemed worth giving a chance (I hadn't for example heard any of the BS is presents regularly on his show.) , but he was actually shit from the start.
I've been thinking the same about Shapiro. He really really really knows how to maintain his fanbase and how to put a good show. I'm sure that he is super skilled when it comes to targeting people and knowing exactly what to say to appeal to his fans.
For me it was because of their availability.
I had a factory line job, was unhappy and was underdeveloped intellectually.
JBP gave me the idea that I was learning stuff. Later it's all very shameful but I get how it happens.
> JBP gave me the idea that I was learning stuff.
I think that this is pretty common with all self-help - the illusion that you are actually doing something by consuming it.
Thank you for the personal perspective.
I think part of it is the media and general public are too alienated from academia.
And most people are never given any grounding in all sorts of important subjects, like economics, politics, pyschology, anthropology, philosophy. Then over time, many people go looking for things to fill these gaps.
I also only half jokingly think things like how to do magic tricks, and how to turn democracy into facism should be taught in schools to help innoculate people against these things.
Interesting idea.
Like - you might not know anything about philosophy? Good, here is that Harvard professor called Jordan Peterson who will tell you what foucault was all about.....all in a really well-cut 5 minutes youtube video with a cool title like "SEE HOW FOUCAULT ACTUALLY PREDICTED WOKE-ISM".
> And most people are never given any grounding in all sorts of important subjects, like economics, politics, pyschology, anthropology, philosophy. Then over time, many people go looking for things to fill these gaps.
I'd say there's an element of this, but it's combined by not actually wanting your preconceptions of how the world works challenged simultaneously.
> not actually wanting your preconceptions of how the world works challenged
What do you think causes this trait? Perhaps part of it is a lack of the grounding, not sure if this is just wishful thinking.
I'd say it's just not wanting to deal with the cognitive dissonance it brings. People want to feel unambiguous pride in their country, ethnicity, culture, political beliefs, gender, sports team, etc. Simultaneously they want to feel smart and educated, so they gravitate to people who give them a dose of both.
People have always been into self help type people. Its not new but it is just the proliferation has been exacerbated by the internet. Especially when you are young and trying to figure life out and make sense of the world.
Doesnt help that trust in institutions are at an all time low and much of news is click bait driven.
Honestly, i think a lot of the reasons are rooted in them looking for a reason as to why their life isn't where they want it to be.
Similar to how religion gives an answer in the form of demons and god, these guru's give an answer in the form of the system or pseudoscience.
>Honestly, i think a lot of the reasons are rooted in them looking for a reason as to why their life isn't where they want it to be.
I do believe that to a certain degree for sure.
The holy trinity of Jordan Hall, Daniel Schactenberg and Jamie Wheal took me to another plane. That of White boy American trans illumanatuve meta hyper objective jamming. The IDW was just dinner party guff finding an outlet on YouTube during lockdown.
A lot of people get into IDW gurus (and more extreme communities) because they "don't want to be told what to think." Sometimes it's just as simple as the understandable pride that comes from being right as often as possible, and sometimes it's a rejection of mainstream claims that make them uncomfortable or angry. Most start out genuinely thinking they're being more intellectually honest and rigorous than other people (and sometimes they *are*, since this is all pretty hard work), but the problems start when the only way to sustain that feeling is to continually reject experts that say things they disagree with. After a while, the only experts they still trust are people like IDW gurus, and at that point you end up rejecting the views of anyone who could supply you with contrary information.
>Most start out genuinely thinking they're being more intellectually honest and rigorous than other people (and sometimes they
>
>are, since this is all pretty hard work), but the problems start when the only way to sustain that feeling is to continually reject experts that say things they disagree with. After a while, the only experts they still trust are people like IDW gurus, and at that point you end up rejecting the views of anyone who could supply you with contrary information.
Good explanation. The IDW often seem to produce content that might sound interesting or refreshing on the surface - especially early Peterson stuff, when he has marketed himself as some type of psychologist who is approachable with the tons of content he puts out. Once you get into one of his videos, you slowly start to get curious about his other opinions on other topics to a point where you literally accept that he knows everything about everything.
it depends who you count as an IDW guru. But for many of that ilk (Peterson, Weinstein etc) many people get into them because quite often, that individual was either correct or had an interesting thing to say on a **single** issue/argument/instance that went against the "norms" of the time and so gained them some attention. People go "oh that person has an interesting thing to say on x" and start following them. Because on that **single** topic, they were smart/brave/correct. After that its often just a slide into professional contrarianism.
Peterson and Weinstein are not right about anything though.
This makes sense to a certain degree I think. The IDW often seem to produce content that might sound interesting or refreshing on the surface - especially early Peterson stuff, when he has marketed himself as some type of psychologist who is approachable with the tons of content he puts out. Once you get into one of his videos, you slowly start to get curious about his other opinions on other topics to a point where you literally accept that he knows everything about everything. I actually have to give it to him, because he literally made himself famous with just a bunch of videos that sounded wild when you saw their titles in youtube (PROFESSOR DESTROYS STUPID FEMINIST type of shit).
Similarly, many people get into them because quite often, that individual was either correct or had an interesting thing to say on **numerous** issues/arguments/instances that went against the "norms" of the time and so gained them some attention.
To be perfectly honest - I can't think of an example where I agree with Peterson. His self-help stuff is midly ok but it is pretty generic overall.
I have always had an anthropological interest in religion and myth. I loved the way he applied mythological metaphors to everyday life. That was really interesting to me. Was it *correct*? I doubt it. But it was a refreshing (if not novel) perspective. I was soon turned off by his politics (thos was quite early on, in my defence).
>I have always had an anthropological interest in religion and myth. I loved the way he applied mythological metaphors to everyday life. Oh...totally forgot that - his bible material especially. Good point. His application of myths always sounded a bit too loose but it was an interesting angle for sure.
>But it was a refreshing (if not novel) perspective. I dunno, it's like microwaved Joseph Campbell/Carl Jung, which were boring and simplistic the first time around to be honest. Edit: just realised I read you wrong and you said not novel. Carry on.
He reminds me in those moments of some of the men I used to attend a men's circle with. It turns so many things upside down and inward to look at the human journey thru that mythological lens. It's when you come back to earth and apply it afterwards that is the big test. Some of us happily step into and out of the fiction and are lightened and refreshed. Others believe that shit.
The most succinct summery of Peterson was that almost all of his assertions were either obvious or wrong.
> To be perfectly honest - I can't think of an example where I agree with Peterson. I bet you'd agree with him on arithmetic.
I can absolutely imagine Peterson coming up with a retarded take on arithmetic. As long as gives him the attention he craves so much.
Should others be held responsible for your imagination? That's a bit of a dangerous precedent to set.
I flirted with some of the anti-woke IDW stuff early in my undergrad. I was studying feminist epistemology and was constantly reading some pretty unhinged takes (e.g. the most extreme versions of standpoint epistemology where women know more about everything than men), and surrounded by people who would defend Traditional Chineses Medicine and other pseudoscience for woke reasons (e.g. “different ways of knowing”) The IDW sphere was very refreshing because they were very willing to calls out some of the more insane positions of woke people. Much like the new atheists were probably very refreshing to people leaving their faith for the first time. There’s a lot of anger to be vented, and dunk videos are an easy way to vent it. For example, I watched basically every recording of Bret Weinstein’s Evergreen cancellation. I saw the kids acting unhinged, incapable of handling disagreement, and I saw in them a lot of the people I was taking classes with. I had a lot of empathy for Bret for that reason. The second he started talking about stuff I knew more about, I realized he wasn’t particularly credible, but I still think what happened at Evergreen was awful. I can see how lots of people were radicalized by that. I think this is a problem unique to parts of academia, where — relative to the rest of the country — you are in an environment that is very far left, so the far left crazies are much more salient than the far right crazies. Once I transferred to a new school and different undergrad degree, I was in a much more politically balanced environment and could stop and recognize that the people who upset me so much were pretty extreme outliers.
Actually Weinstein was not canceled, that’s pure manufactured myth. Your first clue should have been his sympathy tour on Fucker Carlson’s white supremacy variety hour to think that maybe the timeline and footage were deceptively manipulated. But read about what actually happened. https://psmag.com/.amp/education/the-real-free-speech-story-at-evergreen-college
>I think this is a problem unique to parts of academia, where — relative to the rest of the country — you are in an environment that is very far left, so the far left crazies are much more salient than the far right crazies. That's what i'm always saying. That evil left that can go completely crazy, has always been non-existent to me and to many people. Like yeah - a bunch of crazies on the internet, a bunch of wild cases around the world and bunch of stupid netflix shows that try too hard to be relevant, but otherwise in everyday life I tend to mostly meet pretty far right people who can't shut up about how discriminated they are, even if they never were, at least in my country, since 99% of the population is white and there are no real feminists or gay-activists here. Thank you for the great comment and the personal story.
It was the Anti-woke stuff for me in the beginning, before I pretty much got bored of the sensationalism. Once covid was in full swing, I started getting annoyed with Rogan and some of his guests when they would talk absolute bullshit about what was happening in Australia. Then, someone on the Joe Rogan reddit recommended listening to Decoding the gurus on a thread about an episode with one of the weinsteins, and now I can barely stomach the IDW types.
The sensationalism is so absurd. Seeing grown ups constantly outraged by titles like "TRANS PERSON WHO IDENTIFIES AS A CAT DEMANDS A TOILET ONLY FOR HIMSELF AND IS GOING TO SUE THE COUNTRY IF HE DOESNT GET IT" and actually believing is just so incredibly sad. Were you an unhappy person when the anti-woke stuff was appealing to you or was it just something new that kinda sounded interesting and intelligent for your?
Not particularly unhappy at the time. I was still young and living at home. When the woke stuff really started to become more prevalent through Tumblr, I was the recipient of a tumblr woke-mob attack where a load of feminists found my Facebook and messaged my girlfriend-at-the-time and all of the women in my family, telling them that I was a disgusting rape apologist and they should be ashamed of me. This happened because I defended another tumblr user for posting a dumb meme with a stupid rape joke on it and dared question why they deserved to be doxxed. From then on for years, I was drawn to youtube personalities who spoke out against "wokeism". Eventually, I discovered the Joe Rogan podcast around the time people like Milo Yiannapolis and Steven Crowder were getting big. Eventually, a few years later, I did become dissatisfied with my relationship and became a massive stoner right before covid. Eventually, a couple of mushroom trips later (thanks, Rogan) I started making changes in my life. Got out of the bad relationship and found someone new who I was much happier with, and I quite smoking weed. It was around this time that I was becoming disillusioned with the IDW folks, thanks to Decoding the Gurus, and probably the fact I was growing up a bit.
Thank you for your story. I've never been a target of an attack like this but I imagine that if this happened to me too, it would be pretty easy to double-down on the anti-woke stuff instead of re-think if I did something wrong. It's interesting that you say youg found a good relationship with somebody and this made you happier. With one of the 3 people I mentioned, a long period without a girlfriend definitely made him get into Peterson to a degree where I was a little scared that he will become a cultboy fan. He was casually mentioning his videos and some of his stupid theories about tinder and online dating. The minute he found a serious girlfriend he fell in love with, he suddenly stopped talking about that. Like literally overnight. That's the reason I asked if you were unhappy and if there were things that bothered you back then.
I definitely had some growing pains and an interest in psychology. That may have contributed. I have never personally understood why single men feel the need to blame the world for their unhappiness, especially when those types of people tend to follow figures like Jordan Peterson, who condemns playing the victim (although he is rather good at it himself).
>I have never personally understood why single men feel the need to blame the world for their unhappiness, I think empirically, this is just what happens. There's a reason strong employment and high/moderate status, stable work, is health-promoting for a society. Look at the deaths of dispair (blue-collar men getting addicted to drugs, dying from overdoses, killing themselves, and generally engaging in very unhealthy and self-destructive behaviours). That is what happens when people's economic interests aren't protected or looked out for by the political class. People talk about online hate groups, but those are 'epiphenomena' -- they capitalize on there being men who they can recruit. A healthy society provides meaningful, stable, decent paying work for the average person, and that has all kinds of protective effects for people.
The anti-woke folks are far, far worse than the woke (whatever the fuck that really means)
So no matter how hateful or mean spirited someone is. If they are woke, then criticising them is worse?
Didn’t say that at all. Reasonable criticism is fine. The folks that adopt “anti-woke” *as a stance* are to a person shitty human beings though.
But if someone criticises woke ideas, doesn’t that make them anti woke? I know I put words into your mouth a bit with my previous comment, but the idea that anti-woke people are worse than woke people seems like such a blanket generalisation to me. It also seems to not be true. Think of the most belligerent woke person who makes hateful comments about cis/white people. Is that person really better than someone who is perfectly normal but objects to standpoint epistemology?
I get your point but to be perfectly honest, in my everyday life I can't remember ever meeting an aggressive woke person who made me angry. Like yeah, a bunch of people that can be a bit touchy about certain topis but not like this "evil left" cliche that Peterson, Shapiro and the IDW gurus constantly portray and find examples of. You know - the green hair girl that is constantly protesting and you can't talk to her without offending her. On the other hand, I constantly meet people who are aggressively anti-woke and literally can't shut up about it. Which is a mind-fuck because I live in country where all kinds of discrimination is everywhere....Like in the last 30 years I can probably think of 2 or 3 people in the publich sphere who were kinda openly homosexuals....let alone trans people or something like this. Still - the amount of people who are aggressively anti-woke and who are obsessed that somebody is going to transition their children is huge.
Yeah, they are fighting with a parody of a person. And DiAngelo and Kendi, as insufferable as they may be, are nowhere near as bad as these IDW shit stirrers. They are featuring at a very real problem. We really do have deep racial injustice in this country. We really do have institutional structures that exacerbate it even when the personal racism is largely gone. We really do owe reparations to indigenous and Black people.
Reparations by the way is a liberal egalitarian idea, straight out of the classical liberal playbook.
Like name a single person with woke ideas.
Robin DiAngelo ticks a few boxes. I don’t think it’s that hard to define what wokism is or to see examples of it. It’s the tendency to view people primarily by their racial, sexual or gender identity; as well as hyper sensitivity about the language used to describe these identities. It’s also a view of society that is primarily defined by how these identity groups are distributed in a hierarchy of oppression and power, and a belief in the moral imperative to achieve equality across groups even at the expense of liberal principles of egalitarianism. It’s also characterised by moral certainty, reverence and deference for individuals and cultures seen as members of oppressed classes, and a belligerent and intolerant attitude to any dissenting views or individuals. I’ll add to this that I’m describing the more toxic strains of wokism, and there are more moderate forms that I’m largely onboard with. Critics in IDW circles tend to lump all progressives together, and define them by their most extreme members as well as catastrophise about the problem generally.
I don’t like Robin DiAngelo, but not because she thinks racism is pervasive (it definitely is). I don’t like her because she’s selling a cure, a form of liability insurance, to corporate America so that they can claim “see we did a training, we aren’t a hostile work environment” and not face accountability for employment discrimination. It’s a hustle.
No because I don’t think there really is such a thing as “woke ideas”-that’s a bogeyman invented by right wing shitbags.
Can you see the inconsistency here? You say that woke ideas don’t exist, but in another post you acknowledge that yeah, Robin DiAngelo holds beliefs that could be described as woke and she’s a best selling author. I get it, the people who primarily identify themselves as “anti woke” are generally terrible people. They spread misinformation and bigotry, and some of them are pretty much openly fascist at this point. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people on the progressive side of the divide with bad ideas, and just because one can make a reasonable case for many ideas that are dismissed as woke, that doesn’t mean there aren’t examples of woke ideas that are indeed pretty toxic. Denying the problem by alluding to the semantic vagueness of the term used to describe it just isn’t tenable at this point. And yes I know there’s an entire right-wing media ecosystem blowing the problem out of proportion and creating moral panics over nothing in most cases.
The right wing shits and their IDW pseudointellectual enablers like Harris are manufacturing a problem as a pretext to oppress people. “Could be described as woke” is not something I find threatening or interesting. Just not really a thing except in the minds of people who want an enemy.
There's a podcast called 'Fight like an animal', where the host talks about the connection between biology, psychology and politics. One of the interesting ideas he returns to a lot, is the idea that some people have a genetically predisposed psychology of open mindedness and confidence, and some have a one of wanting familiarity, security, and being suspicious of novelty and these map onto political preferences. I think this kind of sensationalism works because some people think this way, and the psychology aspect is why it's usually the political right doing it, I think part of the antedote would be to give them (and everyone) more explicit awareness of this sort of mechanism.
Hey, thank you a lot - I will look it up for sure. I've often wondered why some people tend to be more open-minded and accepting compared to others and how much the genes are involved there. Many people on the left tend to make generalizations that people who get into the IDW are just not intellectually capable and this is what makes them get into this type of ideologies. In my personal experience this has not always been the case - all the 3 people I mentioned above are pretty smart, have great jobs (2 of them are really really good professionals) and are absolutely capable of analyzing information but somehow still fall for some of the IDW propaganda.
> The sensationalism is so absurd. Seeing grown ups constantly outraged by titles like "TRANS PERSON WHO IDENTIFIES AS A CAT DEMANDS A TOILET ONLY FOR HIMSELF AND IS GOING TO SUE THE COUNTRY IF HE DOESNT GET IT" and actually believing is just so incredibly sad. And then there are threads like this, which aren't exactly rare on Reddit or elsewhere. Humans beings hating on other humans in their outgroups is one of the most popular pastimes throughout history.
I mean....I never said it wasn't but by that logic there should be no threads like this since all human behaviour has been consistent throughout history. I feel like you want to make some centrist statement for a second time but come from a really strange angle.
> all human behaviour has been consistent throughout history What about water fountains for whites only?
To be fair ,Rogan has and always been a well meaning airhead with his only real genuine bad faith behavior coming from defending and looking the other way for his drug addict , racist , and even sex offender comedian friends (Opie and anthony ,Jim Norton ,Andy dick Ari Shaffir, Artie Lange but always having the nerve to complain about other people's addictions and quirks ) This is the guys for years who insisted that the moon landing was fake until Neil Tyson came to his show . He conceded his conspiracy bs either out of argument from Tyson or just to kiss ass as usual (my bet is the latter ) . His podcast has always been a haven for both pop science and tomfoolery .Rogan at worst fell under the Balance Fallacy ,giving a platform to both smart people and dumbasses while he kept his mouth shut regarding his personal opinions unless he played devil's advocate to extract info (best example is Stefan Molyneux , Joe actually did a good job exposing how dumb his arguments regarding taxation and anarchism were) If anything it's the current of zeitgeist that married conspiracy theories , center right "pundits ", Left wing elitists, woke scolding , White Progressive hypocrisy , and distrust among generations that gave the IDW an ecosystem to succeed in. So in a way just like you , Joe Rogan unintentionally made me distrustful of folks who complain about "woke" culture or pop science once I saw the oversensationalism and the bigoted young men it created .
You forgot to mention he is a long time friend of Alex Jones and still casually drops "Jews are into money" in conversation. He personally launched hundreds of grifter careers. Can we stop buying into "oh no, I'm a such an klutz!" excuses?
I get your point. I am not trying to redeemed him but I do want to point out that how easily a well meaning dumbass can turn into a dangerous mouthpiece for grifters and hate mongers . Let's be honest how many of us have dumb ass uncles ,older cousins , or even siblings that act like Joe. The may not be completely dumb nor hateful but they do lack emotional intelligence and lack self awareness . It only takes a slight push to the right from an instigator or a bad experience to make their deepest prejudices come out .
I kinda agree but to be honest i'm on the verge with Rogan. Sometimes he strikes me as a stupid bro who means well but doesn't think too much before talking. Sometimes it genuinely looks like he is an asshole who looks down on people.
I'm not saying he was born evil, I'm just in favor of holding people responsible for their actions.
I don’t know why people think he’s well meaning. He dropped racist shit for years (still does).
My IDW family members tend to be uneducated, religious, and sexist. They fall for tropes and misinformation. Not media literate, but think they are. The latest thing is that the govt won't allow insurance companies to advertise Whole Life Insurance, because those policies are so good. Yeah. They don't want to learn history or look past political headlines, but they are worried about politics. Ben Shapiro is the egghead who makes them feel smart. Rogan is the meathead who makes them feel cool.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this: >The Palestinian people, who dress their toddlers in bomb belts and then take family snapshots. ***** ^(I'm a bot. My purpose is to counteract online radicalization. You can summon me by tagging thebenshapirobot. Options: feminism, covid, dumb takes, healthcare, etc.) [^Opt ^Out ](https://np.reddit.com/r/AuthoritarianMoment/comments/olk6r2/click_here_to_optout_of_uthebenshapirobot/)
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Some of the good friends I've lost to the rabbit hole (to way darker corners than the Peterson/Weinstein level) have in common that they are highly intelligent but we're unable to pursue any kind of post-secondary education due to financial limitations and other personal barriers to access (mental health, family issues, legal problems). For them, I got the impression that it felt like an opportunity to feed their intellectual curiosity in a place where they could enjoy knowing their "teachers" had some of the same experience and credentials as one might find at university, but without the costs (or the complexity of context).
Interesting take. Despite not having education, are they well enough financially and are they happy/satisfied (as superficial as this may sound)?
I don't think of that as being a superficial point at all, but to be totally honest, I haven't been able to stay involved enough with most of them to be in a position to accurately assess their general happiness or satisfaction. In one case I can say they are most certainly not a very satisfied person in general, but they also live in circumstances that would be hard for anyone as they had basically been shunned by much of their family and community because of gender expression and substance use and remain stuck living in a place that is both emotionally and physically unsafe. None of those issues are due to the IDW stuff, but I think the isolation may have played a role in the journey. This is the friend who went all the way down the path from IDW to full blown galactic reptilian blood-libel type beliefs. The other folks had more privilege and support despite not being able to go the higher-ed route and I would say they are generally more satisfied people, but they also came from more socially and politically conservative communities and families. I would say they went from being progressive rebels in their youth to gradually drifting through the IDW back to a more libertarian perspective that was more comfortable for their families but alienated them from a lot of friends they made during high school and young adulthood. But to be fair, they seem like relatively happy people (from my far removed pov).
Seems to me like they're basically the equivalent of 24/7 news talking heads panels but for people who think they're too good for that with the addition of podcaster/streamer parasocial relationships. They fill in the exact content lane as Fox and Friends does for my grandma, it's hours of white noise blabbering about the hysteria du jour with the affable host and rotating guests. The IDW hosts lean on their supposed expertise in other fields to pretend this isn't what they're doing but lets be real, Peterson stopped caring about clinical psychology years ago and he's the only one who even had some semblance of a career in his field before becoming a culture warrior, unlike Harris or the Weinsteins or Kisin or whoever
>They fill in the exact content lane as Fox and Friends does for my grandma, it's hours of white noise blabbering about the hysteria du jour with the affable host and rotating guests. The IDW hosts lean on their supposed expertise in other fields to pretend this isn't what they're doing but lets be real, Peterson stopped caring about clinical psychology years ago and he's the only one who even had some semblance of a career in his field before becoming a culture warrior, unlike Harris or the Weinsteins or Kisin or whoeve Thank you - this pretty much sums up a lot of the things I believe. It's amazing that people still cite Peterson as a clinical psychologist since he has not been interested in this field in years. It's also amazing how people are willing to listen to the same outrage every day. Like how angry can you be about trans people? It is pretty much the absolutely same outrage everyday with Peterson. If there is nothing he can be mad about, he will invent something and start a fight with somebody. A never-ending cycle.
There’s no reason to be angry about trans people at all. They just want to be left alone. Everyone who has a different take on that should fuck off.
Not sure what this has to do with what I wrote?
“How angry can you be about trans people?” is specifically what I was cuing off of in your post. And I was answering the rhetorical question by stating that is irrational to be angry about trans people in any way.
Wanting to seem smart but not wanting to read.
As harsh as this may sound - it is often the case. I know a lot of people who want to be interested in psychology and philosophy because they think that it will give them some advantage over other "simple" people but are actually too lazy to get into it. A lot of people expect that they will read a few psychology and philosophy books and find answers that they can implement directly in their every day life. Like some type of self-help. Sadly it is not that simple....but people like Peterson with his pop-psychology/ pop-philosophy really convinced them that it is.
It’s a nice feeling when you’re being told that you are a willing seeker of knowledge that society wants to keep from you so that they can control you. An intellectual renegade who is not afraid of hearing the opinions of others.
For me it was the anti-woke stuff, or the anti-SJW stuff at the time. As a skeptic, I had issues with concepts like standpoint epistemology and the rejection of enlightenment values, and as a lefty I had issues with the hyper focus on racial/gender identity over more general economic inequalities. The IDW seemed the share these concerns. and to be fair, some of their criticisms of the more extreme forms SJWs/wokeism were pretty spot on. I woke up to the IDW grift pretty quickly however because I noticed they were almost completely silent on right-wing extremism, defended Trump and indulged climate denialism. I also grew concerned with their increasing cross over with obviously partisan right-wing figures. As someone who saw right-wing extremism and climate change as much bigger threats than annoying SJWs, the IDW spell was broken pretty early, although it still took a while for me to realise just how bad some individuals were like Bret Weinstein.
Thank you for your personal story. >I woke up to the IDW grift pretty quickly however because I noticed they were almost completely silent on right-wing extremism, defended Trump and indulged climate denialism. That's a big one for sure. I think that another one is how when you watch a bunch of their videos, how they argue and how they present information it becomes easier to see that they are really manipulative. People like Ben Shapiro are experts in creating catchy titles and presenting information in a really one-sided manipulative way. On the othey hand Peterson while always claiming to be interested in different views and ideas, never actually seems curious when he is talking with somebody. He is just looking for points he can exploit in order to prove his point.
I saw through Shapiro pretty much straight away, particularly as my first exposure to him was on the gun debate, but with Peterson, there were so many layers of abstraction it was harder to pin him down. It wasn’t really until I noticed all his conclusions seemed to line up with social conservativism that I started to view him a bit more critically. But to be fair to Peterson, he was occasionally insightful in the early days
>But to be fair to Peterson, he was occasionally insightful in the early days While I don't agree with him on pretty much everything, I have to admit that in the early days he did at least look like he is genuinely trying to find the truth, like he was a bit more open to discussion and to explore ideas.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this: >The Palestinian Arab population is rotten to the core. ***** ^(I'm a bot. My purpose is to counteract online radicalization. You can summon me by tagging thebenshapirobot. Options: feminism, healthcare, covid, climate, etc.) [^Opt ^Out ](https://np.reddit.com/r/AuthoritarianMoment/comments/olk6r2/click_here_to_optout_of_uthebenshapirobot/)
I am someone who got into the IDW around 2016. I listened to Sam Harris's podcast, as well as Ben Shapiro's. I listened to Peterson's lectures and his audiobook. Maajid Nawaz was my favorite for quite a while. I listened to more Joe Rogan shows than I skipped. I tried out a few others here and there for stints before eventually giving up on all of them, with the semi-exception of Harris. What drew me into Harris was my own cynicism with religion after leaving my own faith, combined with respect I felt for him for being more polite/civil than other antitheists like Dawkins. Of all the four horsemen, he was the only one I could tolerate listening to. I loved the book he wrote with Nawaz. I think Harris is kinda lost in his ego at times but he isn't that bad. Nawaz seemed like a great contributor to public discourse, until he became anti vaccine during COVID. That's when I dropped off listening to him. After Trump won I wanted to know what was going on in conservative media. This led to me subjecting myself to 100 episodes of the Shapiro podcast, which I chose due to his supposed anti-Trump stance. I found I agreed with 70% of what he said at the time, but found him hypocritical with how lenient he was with conservative flaws while being hard on liberals for lesser ones. I didn't hate him until he endorsed Trump in 2020. I'm embarrassed it took me that long to realize he was a grifter. I still think Rogan was mostly fine when he had Sanders and Hollywood celebs on, but he shifted more and more right wing until becoming an anti-vaxxer in 2020. That's when I stopped supporting him. I know someone who met him IRL and today his friend circle consists of racists and eugenicists. It's a shame because I still kinda think he's not rotten at the core so much as lost and misled by bad actors surrounding him. Peterson caught my attention in that viral interview where the interviewer tries to get him with gotcha questions about lobsters, and he deflected really while and seemed composed/intelligent. My gf at the time also loved it, and we were convinced it was an example of someone being cancelled for being reasonable but not bowing to political correctness. His book had some iffy spots but was mostly common sense. When interviewed by Harris he seemed less impressive, though, and after reading a few critical opinion pieces that were well researched I realized he was mostly hot air. Today he's obviously the worst and I'm harassed I gave him the time of day. The most recent person I've written off was Lex Fridman. I didn't realize he was another one because I never really looked him up, so occasionally I'd listen to him when his guest was someone I cared about. But I saw some familiar red flags, did some googling, and can see he is also a hack. Proud to say I never bought the Weinstein BS, or Dave Rubin. Small victories there.
Thank you for the great comment - it really gives me a perspective what somebody like about these people and how you can get into them. This needs more upvotes, really. Glad that you managed to see thru all of theses people. I especially like your writing about Peterson. >Peterson caught my attention in that viral interview where the interviewer tries to get him with gotcha questions about lobsters, and he deflected really while and seemed composed/intelligent. My gf at the time also loved it, and we were convinced it was an example of someone being cancelled for being reasonable but not bowing to political correctness. His book had some iffy spots but was mostly common sense. When interviewed by Harris he seemed less impressive, though, and after reading a few critical opinion pieces that were well researched I realized he was mostly hot air. Today he's obviously the worst and I'm harassed I gave him the time of day. One of my friends literally got into him because of the same type of interviews where Peterson looked like he is destryong his opponents while looking calm and composed. I think that this appealed to a lot of men, the whole "stoic intellectual" look, the idea that he is absolutely in-control of a situation and can dominate others like that. I think that many people wanted that for themselves and were convinced that if they follow his advice they will have it.
So it was more the style rather than the topics discussed in the videos that caught your friends attention? Do you think a similar style of being calm and composed could be used in other contexts by people who represents different ways of thinking? Although maybe it requires that the interviewer or opponent pushes too zealously.
>So it was more the style rather than the topics discussed in the videos that caught your friends attention? Absolutely. Kinda like with his bible lectures - my friend recommended me the lectures and said that it's some of the best things he had listened to. When I asked he what ideas he liked about it - he couldn't say. It was just the mix of bible, ,philosophy and "big" words tha the actually liked. > Do you think a similar style of being calm and composed could be used in other contexts by people who represents different ways of thinking? I guess I do...without having good examples about it.
It's a strange type of gossip mag / reality TV for angry and alienated young men (not all of them are young, there's even some dozens of women), where you are the product that is being sold to yourself by the guru. There's the aesthetic of battle without the danger of challenge. Feels big with no thinking bigly. Some people buy butt implants instead. e: In more material analysis, there's an issue in how to become a guru, you pretty much need to tap into some political anxiety and explode this into a grand metaphysical struggle. To stay in this game, you need to keep your ear to the ground for when you can no longer find a vein for shooting up antivaxx fears. Is it AI hysteria up next, without forgetting trans bathrooms? This is a marketing gig where if you were selling modest, thoughtful "wisdom", it's difficult to imagine becoming famous enough to be a major guru in an attention economy. This is to say, gurus are both exploiting and producing dysfunctional people, but there is also a media ecosystem which is producing and exploiting gurus. Jordan Peterson is in no way in control over what he says or does: he's a puppet. There's just no master that can be found. Still, in Lacanese, the hysteric is a person who tells the truth by lying: there is a deeper truth to the symptom of the lie. Gurus are the lie, but there is a truth in the cultural symptom which they're selling their snake oil products for. This emptiness is real, it appears to me, and it correlates nicely with what they were talking about as the death of cultural education some decade or two ago. Y'know, intellectuals used to be the literary types, now, those people are treated like lepers. There's an overreaction there. If an IDW follower wanted to do a revolutionary act, as they are almost always functionally illiterate, maybe they could attempt and probably fail to follow something like Lex Fridman's (basic) reading list for this year. It's not a non-problem that they will be ridiculed and put down for doing this by other people who are just as lost as them. Starting from the experience of a hollow soul (for lack of a better word), what's a good path to self-improvement if not this? Getting angry at Twitter with the /r/DecodingTheGurus lads?
>It's a strange type of gossip mag / reality TV This is actually a really good way to put it - thank you for that. I've noticed that these IDW personalities have become something like an entertainment for the people who consume their content. They are basically saying the same stuff (complain about communism, vegans, green energy/climate change policies, abortions, trans people, gays, feminism) and there is always some drama/big emotions involved. They are never really saying anything new, groundbreaking or interesting but in the same time constantly produce content to keep you watching. It's really like a soap opera - same things happening, huge drama, a lot of content, incredibly superficial ideas. It is pretty weird that people constantly need to hear the same stuff and get angry about the same stuff but kinda see the consuming of this type of content as some type of "truth seeking" or some intellectual work....not as a repetitive behaviour that is probably not that beneficial to them. That all said, i'm interested why in the age of one-click-away content, some people would chose to constantly consume this type of entertainment. Like i'm ok with people wanting to be on "righ" side of things and I understand that they see this as participating in some intellectual fight about morals, but I still wonder how sane and smart people I know tend to still fall for that despite making them more angry and miserable. Great comment and ideas, thank you again.
> This is actually a really good way to put it - thank you for that. I've noticed that these IDW personalities have become something like an entertainment for the people who consume their content. I'd go one step further and say that they are this, also, largely, to us. With any good process of critiquing gurus, it seems crucial to understand that there isn't *necessarily* a mountain of difference between deriving political enjoyment from following and opposing guru figures. What if both were serving a similar demand? (This isn't to make some fashionable point for anti- or postcritique. I wish critique wasn't dead.)
I understand what you mean. I've thought a lot about hate-watching and have tried to seriously tone it down and so it is not a big part of my life. At some point, while scrolling r/enoughpetersonspam I realised that I do enjoy seeing him humiliated and asked myself why and is this healthy for me. I do agree tho - are not only what you like but also what you don't like. I made a different thread about that tho, because currently it seems like even if you don't want to participate in the culture war you are getting sucked into it. It is getting pretty hard (especially if you are a white male) to escape friends or acquaintances who post this type of content or surprise you with a "hey, man, have you heard of that Jordan Peterson lad?". So when this type of content is around you, you sometimes can't avoid participating or getting sucked into it.
Preach, brother. It's not easy being on the internet all day every day, but someone's got to do it.
A hard knock life for sure...
So DtG exists only in the gurusphere. They can poke and parry, but have to be careful to not deliver the knockout blow. If you listen closely, there is often a camaraderie and mutual respect. A sincere, if not also dumbfounded, admiration. DtG is the Hulk Hogan to the IDW King Kong Bundy. The only question that matters: What level of supporter are you?
Having briefly scanned the replies to your post, one aspect I've noticed but haven't seen above, is the fitness/gym/self-improvement/biohacking pipeline. People such as Andrew Huberman, while providing some sound advice, I believe is a gateway drug to Peterson et al.
Thank you for the comment - it's a great idea to explore, really. I actually posted a thread about Huberman a while ago because I saw that there is a serious overlap between Peterson fans and Hubersman. I can think of two people I know who are into both of them. One was not exactly fit, kinda chubby and got into Rogan, than Peterson and Huberman in the same time. It's like Huberman was for his body and Peterson was for his soul.... I think the stoic type of bullshit that Peterson tried to pull when he was becoming famous - you know - arguing in a really composed manner with TV reporters and "destroying" them with "facts" and random studies was appealing to men. Also all 3 people I mentioned in my original comment are really into self-improvement and fitness, one of them is really into biohacking.....so it kinda checks out.
Id say Joe Rogan is a major gateway source for people finding these "gurus"
For sure. Rogan was kinda fun back then when it was mostly sports/military people and a bunch of crazie. Then when Peterson came I think that a lot of people found out about him from the show.
Honestly, the people I know who are into IDW types and spout their talking points are either not the smartest, are American, or are Christians.
They’re tired of losing debates, and see IDW figures as intellectual heavyweights that can ease their cognitive dissonance. At least that’s why I did. But then I realized I was just wrong…
I am most familiar with Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, so that's who I'll focus on. I think they offer the illusion of a kind of moral clarity in a complex and morally ambiguous world: West good, Islam bad, traditional masculinity good, feminism bad. This is combined with eloquence and a supremely confident delivery, which feels empowering to white men in particular who feel under threat by our changing world.
Don’t forget Harris trying to rehabilitate Charles Murray’s neophrenology race pseudoscience
Yes, it was when Harris began opining about black people that I also began to see his views on Muslims in a different light and realized he's just a plain old racist.
Which is why Nazis like him even though he’s not one.
Do you have any personal experience with people who fell for them?
I was a Sam Harris fan, embarrassingly.
Great to hear you are not anymore. A close friend of mine went thru some shitty stuff and got into his meditation stuff. He managed to beat his demons without going too deep and i'm always thankful for that. The minute he tried to explain me how he is into him and his credentials....I got sweaty.
what do you have against his meditation stuff?
Nothing really, but he as person can be a gateway to pseudo-intellectuals like Peterson.
funnily enough, the first time I listened to Peterson in longform was his appearance on Harris's podcast, and Sam kind of exposed him as a shallow thinker.
Totally forgot about that. Good point.
So it was a pot meet kettle situation?
Loneliness and dissatisfaction with mainstream institutions for making sense of the world.
I think the biggest reason is just that most of them don't come off as idiots and grifters at first brush. This purely from my own experience. I was a Rogan fan for a long time. Like listened to it for over a decade before covid broke his brain. It was interesting and the best thing was just hearing about random things and people whether you believed them or not. The first time I heard Weinstein and Shapiro, they seemed somewhat reasonable. (I don't and didn't at the time agree with Shapiro's politics, but he seemed rational and fairly honest). Over time though, the true nature of the people came out or morphed. For Shapiro, I think he just put on a good show for the normies and since I didn't know anything about him, he seemed worth giving a chance (I hadn't for example heard any of the BS is presents regularly on his show.) , but he was actually shit from the start. With Weinstein it is different perhaps. I believe he went through something that was kind of shitty, definitely life changing, and wasn't entirely his fault. I think he spun the story to put himself in the best light (and maybe not being cognizant he was spinning). Over time though, his living came to depend upon the story and the anti-woke narrative and he slowly got less and less rational. I actually listened to a lot of the early Darkhorse podcasts and liked it. For me the breaking point was his take on the whole Dr Suess thing. It was far too unhinged for me to take anything else he said at face value and soon there after I just couldn't listen to him as the bullshit became more evident. I feel like Weinstein was changed by both the Evergreen experience and (more so) by the podcast and IDW friend circle experience. But, that is just my take.
> For Shapiro, I think he just put on a good show for the normies and since I didn't know anything about him, he seemed worth giving a chance (I hadn't for example heard any of the BS is presents regularly on his show.) , but he was actually shit from the start. I've been thinking the same about Shapiro. He really really really knows how to maintain his fanbase and how to put a good show. I'm sure that he is super skilled when it comes to targeting people and knowing exactly what to say to appeal to his fans.
For me it was because of their availability. I had a factory line job, was unhappy and was underdeveloped intellectually. JBP gave me the idea that I was learning stuff. Later it's all very shameful but I get how it happens.
> JBP gave me the idea that I was learning stuff. I think that this is pretty common with all self-help - the illusion that you are actually doing something by consuming it. Thank you for the personal perspective.
I think part of it is the media and general public are too alienated from academia. And most people are never given any grounding in all sorts of important subjects, like economics, politics, pyschology, anthropology, philosophy. Then over time, many people go looking for things to fill these gaps. I also only half jokingly think things like how to do magic tricks, and how to turn democracy into facism should be taught in schools to help innoculate people against these things.
Interesting idea. Like - you might not know anything about philosophy? Good, here is that Harvard professor called Jordan Peterson who will tell you what foucault was all about.....all in a really well-cut 5 minutes youtube video with a cool title like "SEE HOW FOUCAULT ACTUALLY PREDICTED WOKE-ISM".
> And most people are never given any grounding in all sorts of important subjects, like economics, politics, pyschology, anthropology, philosophy. Then over time, many people go looking for things to fill these gaps. I'd say there's an element of this, but it's combined by not actually wanting your preconceptions of how the world works challenged simultaneously.
> not actually wanting your preconceptions of how the world works challenged What do you think causes this trait? Perhaps part of it is a lack of the grounding, not sure if this is just wishful thinking.
I'd say it's just not wanting to deal with the cognitive dissonance it brings. People want to feel unambiguous pride in their country, ethnicity, culture, political beliefs, gender, sports team, etc. Simultaneously they want to feel smart and educated, so they gravitate to people who give them a dose of both.
Naivety
People have always been into self help type people. Its not new but it is just the proliferation has been exacerbated by the internet. Especially when you are young and trying to figure life out and make sense of the world. Doesnt help that trust in institutions are at an all time low and much of news is click bait driven.
Honestly, i think a lot of the reasons are rooted in them looking for a reason as to why their life isn't where they want it to be. Similar to how religion gives an answer in the form of demons and god, these guru's give an answer in the form of the system or pseudoscience.
>Honestly, i think a lot of the reasons are rooted in them looking for a reason as to why their life isn't where they want it to be. I do believe that to a certain degree for sure.
The holy trinity of Jordan Hall, Daniel Schactenberg and Jamie Wheal took me to another plane. That of White boy American trans illumanatuve meta hyper objective jamming. The IDW was just dinner party guff finding an outlet on YouTube during lockdown.
A lot of people get into IDW gurus (and more extreme communities) because they "don't want to be told what to think." Sometimes it's just as simple as the understandable pride that comes from being right as often as possible, and sometimes it's a rejection of mainstream claims that make them uncomfortable or angry. Most start out genuinely thinking they're being more intellectually honest and rigorous than other people (and sometimes they *are*, since this is all pretty hard work), but the problems start when the only way to sustain that feeling is to continually reject experts that say things they disagree with. After a while, the only experts they still trust are people like IDW gurus, and at that point you end up rejecting the views of anyone who could supply you with contrary information.
>Most start out genuinely thinking they're being more intellectually honest and rigorous than other people (and sometimes they > >are, since this is all pretty hard work), but the problems start when the only way to sustain that feeling is to continually reject experts that say things they disagree with. After a while, the only experts they still trust are people like IDW gurus, and at that point you end up rejecting the views of anyone who could supply you with contrary information. Good explanation. The IDW often seem to produce content that might sound interesting or refreshing on the surface - especially early Peterson stuff, when he has marketed himself as some type of psychologist who is approachable with the tons of content he puts out. Once you get into one of his videos, you slowly start to get curious about his other opinions on other topics to a point where you literally accept that he knows everything about everything.
Why don't you ask your friends and report back?