I appreciate the comments everybody else left here. That said, most of them miss the forest for the trees. The question itself is incorrect. It's a nice thought exercise, but all of those arguments come up again and again in communist vs. capitalist debates and they don't make a dent.
The reason why those arguments don't work is that you can never (or at least very rarely) logic away ideas that were created by feelings. The reason why the question itself is incorrect is that "normies" do not exist.
Feels over reals
Imagine that you are feeling bad for one reason or another. It might be a mental health issue; it might be some kind of physical health issue; it might be some kind of issue at work; it might be some kind of personal issue that deeply affects you emotionally. When you spend time on algorithmic social media, you are constantly exposed to fringe ideas (like communism). Content creators and regular posters might post something that you empathize with - a meme, a video, a TikTok, a "my boss bad" post, whatever, it doesn't matter. This post registers on an emotional level: "Actually, it's the world that is bad and unfair, and it's not just my personal issue. We live in a society where everyone experiences this". You see that a lot of people are feeling the same way as you did. The thoughts that might go through one's head are:
- It's not that I'm depressed; it's our society that is fundamentally depressing. (The greatest example of this thinking is Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. The author famously refused to try medication for his depression and killed himself)
- It's not that my particular job is bad; all bosses are bad.
- It's not that my health issue made me feel vulnerable and unsafe; it's that our society doesn't care about vulnerable people in a proper way.
After that, the algorithm picks up that you liked this particular fringe idea and feeds you more. Then, you fall into a pipeline, where you are served more content. Maybe you join an online community that posts memes about communism. Gradually, by way of memes, you get inoculated against all of the arguments that people have provided here. Normies start reading effortposts. Normies start reading Marxist/anarchist economics books, which retroactively provide a twisted logic to the emotions they are experiencing. At this point, they have both moral and logical arguments to delude themselves with. One can't logically argue against someone who fell into a fringe ideology pipeline - they have all of the answers they need.
The logical arguments everybody makes here do not make any emotional impact. Try to imagine yourself: which one is a more appealing pattern of thinking for a depressed person, for example?
- I'm feeling bad, but it's normal because society is structured in a way that makes me feel bad.
- I'm feeling bad, but if I try hard enough to improve my life, I'll feel better.
The former is easy. The latter is hard. Thus, it's simpler to continue taking the path of least resistance: more festering in online communities and commiserating, more of trying to find how a magical imaginary society would work that wouldn't make people feel bad in the way that I feel bad. None of those things require hard work to fix your life.
This is why Jordan Peterson resonates with young men so well. His arguments first make sense on an emotional level. Hearing him describe societal challenges young men experience is validating for young men, who then proceed to take his advice on how to fix their lives. The same way, hearing communists describe societal challenges is also validating, but instead of providing actionable advice, the communists rope you into a cult that worships the destruction of society as we know it.
I haven't ever seen libertarians or conservatives or even liberals address the societal challenges in the same way as communists address them: on a feels level. On an emotional level. Instead, we get Pinker, for example, who says that everything is actually good, or at least, much better than it was before. Pinker makes a logical argument directed at someone experiencing an emotional state. Maybe some people can be logic'd out of the emotional state, but it seems like it's not very effective.
Normies do not exist
Memes are ubiquitous. Everybody is online. Spending time on social media is the norm nowadays. The majority of the social media landscape is dominated by algorithmic feeds. Algorithmic feeds have become the default way to kill time for many. Social media algorithms play a crucial role in radicalization: they gradually expose users to more extreme content and potentially push them towards fringe ideas. This process of algorithmic radicalization doesn't discriminate – it affects people across the spectrum, not just a select few. So, the idea of a "normie" assumes a stable, average individual untouched by internet culture. In reality, this kind of individual doesn't exist, and everyone is influenced by online discourse to some degree.
The discourse itself has changed: 4chan's cultural norms have migrated to the internet at large. Hasan Piker is the largest streamer on Twitch. Among progressives, how many do we think are communists who maintain a kayfabe like Hasan? Yesterday's fringe is today's mainstream.
So who are the "normies"? Regular people spending time on the mainstream internet? Just regular people in your life? If that is so, they are already online and probably regularly spend time in a space that promotes a fringe ideology that is appealing on an emotional level, be it MAGA, Blue MAGA, progressivism, trans ideology, or communism. Take this socialist substack series (which is now, unfortunately, paywalled) and see for yourself where 19-year-olds learn their communist ideas. One of the interviewees' answer is Instagram, and I was shocked that even a "normie" platform like Instagram has full-blown socialist, communist, and anarchist communities.
Ignoring all of the above is ignoring the social reality: our logical arguments will be drowned out by the sea of emotion that your average normie is exposed to from a very early age.
If logic doesn't work, what does? Just spitballing ideas, so no concrete suggestions:
- Create a community that answers emotional needs, but leads down the pipeline that teaches critical thinking and rationalism. The downside is that the memes are antithetical to what rationalism is, to an extent.
- Use relatable narratives. Change "My boss sucks, so we need to destroy the society as it exists" to "My boss sucks, and here's how to improve the situation"
- Community should emphasize personal responsibility, but in a positive and supportive way, which is seemingly what "normies" want.
E:
- Defining categories of who we are targeting might also help. "Normies" is abstract. For example, teaching kids the values of being self-sufficient and how current system encourages the best in human nature is much more doable
teleoplexy
11mo ago
They actually took a stance against doing that. Vlad is CEO and responding to arguments in that thread.
Most relevant:
The very basic question of what do you police (or don't) next is not answerable. For example 'how to kill an animal?', 'how to rob a bank?', 'how to hack a computer?' - although objectively less impactful than the original example, would eventually draw attention from sufficently large groups of people who will passionately call us out on not doing something about these queries on the same moral grounds. And again this never ends, you end up being in the business of pleasing everyone. Good luck with that.
Thus the best option for us is to simply refuse to make the first precedent no matter what the pressure is and stick to search being search. Perhaps one day Kagi may become your 'assistent' with personalised biases, but for now it is just a search engine.
teleoplexy
11mo ago
If you haven't tried Balatro yet, you should give it a shot
teleoplexy
11mo ago
I'd venture to say that it's a simplistic lens to view the current election, considering the history of Russia. The process of depoliticization has its roots in Stalin's purges, the threat of Gulags silencing any political dissent, the culture of snitching and secrecy. Russian people retreated from the sphere of politics into their own lives because their lives depended on it. The parallels do not seem convincing to me, and I'm not sure if there are any.
I'm not entirely sure what your comment is meant to highlight.
The comment I responded to says that Russian liberals failed because Russian people "don't buy it".
I said that Russians don't follow/believe liberals because they are depoliticized to a point where the majority of people don't believe any politician at all, not just liberal politicians.
The depoliticization aspect is unique to Russia. American society is deeply political. Both states are cultivated by propaganda.
teleoplexy
11mo ago
The lack of success by the Russian liberals should be attributed to the general depoliticization in the Russian society. It’s not that the Russians just don’t care about politics, the apathy comes from being disconnected with their country and the world in general. Why watch the news if you can’t tell what the truth is? “What’s truth anyway?” is a common way to think. If there’s no way of telling there truth from lies, there’s no meaningful way to act.
This mental state is not only dominant, but also deliberately cultivated in Russia by its government.
Yeah, not being a party member certainly was a career barrier, but it’s not the case that you had to become a true believer if you became a party member. In fact, in the book author describes a guy who became a party member just so that he had more leverage to do really important things in his profession (sorry I’m fuzzy on details, read it a while ago) and privately even condemned the party. That’s also the case for the people in my life.
teleoplexy
11mo ago
What separated us from the Soviets during the Cold War was you didn't have to be an activist to do things like medicine.
I highly recommend reading “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation” by Alexey Yurchak. You can fully ignore Yurchak’s own postmodernist ranting, but at the same time he collected a fascinating account of what it was like to live in post WWII Soviet Union. In short, it’s a myth that you had to be an activist or even a believer. Regular people despised both true believers and open critics of Soviet Union. This sentiment is even more true for the STEM professions.
teleoplexy
11mo ago
Lenin didn't say that
Although it is now overshadowed by his later work, Keynes wrote a brilliant and enduring book in 1919, in the aftermath World War I, titled The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In it, he states:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
… Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Given the unambiguous parallels between this passage and Ronald Reagan’s quote, it seems Reagan read Lord Keynes (or at least, read someone who had read him), and somewhere between 1919 and 1974, what Keynes interprets Lenin as saying became a direct quote from Lenin, which was later embellished and merged with other powerful imagery about inflation and taxes circulating at the same time (grinding millstones crushing the middle class and the bourgeoisie).
"Normies" as defined by "not rationalist/everybody else" isn't obvious to me. In general, the word is used differently in different contexts and for me the default meaning is "a normal person who isn't too online". This is useless for the context of trying to convince people to accept that communism is bad because everybody is online.
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