I'm an atheist married to a Catholic. I love horror movies and he absolutely hates them. I was watching the latest Exorcist movie earlier this year and I watched this with this gender craze going on in the real world and as I was reading about the history of hysterics in the late 1880s, it really hit me that demon possession movies were really just stories about girls going through puberty. I told my husband and he thought it was hilarious and said that I may have just desensitized him to those movies with that observation because once you see it you can't unsee it.
Seriously though, as a lifelong skeptic who loves reading ghost stories, people have noted that stories of homes haunted by supposed poltergeists usually are homes with teenagers who are acting out and parents who are unconsciously enabling it. You can see the elements in The Conjuring movies for instance. You also see this with the Amityville horror, where the brutal murder of a family was blamed on demonic possession, but when you read the real history of this family it becomes apparent that personality disorders and intergenerational abuse were factors that led to such a horrific act of violence.
I also wonder if social media made it easier for people with personality disorders to amplify their voices and therefore confuse the general public to the difference between helping someone and enabling someone. I knew someone in college (she was not able to finish college) who I would say was BPD. She was physically abusive and would physically attack people for disagreeing with her (she was tiny and she would always target large men who wouldn't press charges or hit back and get away with it). Me and a lot of people in the group set a lot of firm boundaries with her, but I did hear from people who kept in contact with her through social media that she had mellowed out. When I got on FB I reluctantly friended her and figured that since she'd moved so far away she couldn't do too much harm. She had developed a large social media following and was spreading a lot of the ideas that took hold in the far left, especially those that confuse helping with enabling. And she came off a lot better online than she did in the real world, which I think is crucial to understanding this phenomenon. People who are very disordered can sound very good online, ironically.
She jumped on the trans bandwagon (enby to trans man to genderfluid to god knows what else) and grew more extreme and got to a place where she wasn't able to keep up appearances basically. Still, people still continued to enable her. At a certain point I got tired of shenanigans and unfollowed her (but not before I saw her argue that people with personality disorders aren't abusive and others need to enable their maladaptive behavior as an example of how extreme she went), and from what I hear she can barely support herself anymore and has lost a lot of her following...but not all.
She was never able to hold down a job. So early in the days of social media she had a lot of free time to devote to learning the social trends, developing a following, and capitalize on it. I think of my sister in the trans cult who radicalized during a time when she wasn't able to hold down a job or stay in college and was also an early proponent and spreader of these ideas that confused helping with enabling back in 2009 (that said, I don't think she has a personality disorder, I think she has OCD). And so I wonder if these ideas spread like wildfire on social media because the people who had the time to build mass followings and spread these ideas were not mentally well, but despite this were articulate and erudite and able to spread bad ideas, and meanwhile the general public at large was eager to help but...didn't think it through.
And now here we are.
Fascinating episode as always. Let us hope that in 10 years we will be talking about this in the past tense!
I'm an atheist married to a Catholic. I love horror movies and he absolutely hates them. I was watching the latest Exorcist movie earlier this year and I watched this with this gender craze going on in the real world and as I was reading about the history of hysterics in the late 1880s, it really hit me that demon possession movies were really just stories about girls going through puberty. I told my husband and he thought it was hilarious and said that I may have just desensitized him to those movies with that observation because once you see it you can't unsee it.
Seriously though, as a lifelong skeptic who loves reading ghost stories, people have noted that stories of homes haunted by supposed poltergeists usually are homes with teenagers who are acting out and parents who are unconsciously enabling it. You can see the elements in The Conjuring movies for instance. You also see this with the Amityville horror, where the brutal murder of a family was blamed on demonic possession, but when you read the real history of this family it becomes apparent that personality disorders and intergenerational abuse were factors that led to such a horrific act of violence.
I also wonder if social media made it easier for people with personality disorders to amplify their voices and therefore confuse the general public to the difference between helping someone and enabling someone. I knew someone in college (she was not able to finish college) who I would say was BPD. She was physically abusive and would physically attack people for disagreeing with her (she was tiny and she would always target large men who wouldn't press charges or hit back and get away with it). Me and a lot of people in the group set a lot of firm boundaries with her, but I did hear from people who kept in contact with her through social media that she had mellowed out. When I got on FB I reluctantly friended her and figured that since she'd moved so far away she couldn't do too much harm. She had developed a large social media following and was spreading a lot of the ideas that took hold in the far left, especially those that confuse helping with enabling. And she came off a lot better online than she did in the real world, which I think is crucial to understanding this phenomenon. People who are very disordered can sound very good online, ironically.
She jumped on the trans bandwagon (enby to trans man to genderfluid to god knows what else) and grew more extreme and got to a place where she wasn't able to keep up appearances basically. Still, people still continued to enable her. At a certain point I got tired of shenanigans and unfollowed her (but not before I saw her argue that people with personality disorders aren't abusive and others need to enable their maladaptive behavior as an example of how extreme she went), and from what I hear she can barely support herself anymore and has lost a lot of her following...but not all.
She was never able to hold down a job. So early in the days of social media she had a lot of free time to devote to learning the social trends, developing a following, and capitalize on it. I think of my sister in the trans cult who radicalized during a time when she wasn't able to hold down a job or stay in college and was also an early proponent and spreader of these ideas that confused helping with enabling back in 2009 (that said, I don't think she has a personality disorder, I think she has OCD). And so I wonder if these ideas spread like wildfire on social media because the people who had the time to build mass followings and spread these ideas were not mentally well, but despite this were articulate and erudite and able to spread bad ideas, and meanwhile the general public at large was eager to help but...didn't think it through.
And now here we are.
Fascinating episode as always. Let us hope that in 10 years we will be talking about this in the past tense!
Asmongold blamed today’s problems on Karens. I guess he was spot on