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Did the Right lose the terminally online by emphasizing consuming rather than communing?
Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced. You find this on Twitter and Discord. While there’s a fair amount of complaining typical of online spaces, leftist spaces are unique in saturating their mutuals in compliments and praise. There’s an oversaturation of positive feedback, and negative feedback is seen with suspicion. Anything from an uncreative tweet, a poorly conceived thought, an unlikely empowering experience, whatever is usually met with
pats on the backsnaps (sensory issues!) and goodboyspersons. While this oversaturation leads to an over-sensitivity, not to mention some bad behaviors and creations, it also means that the online community forms strong bonds and is only associated with positive emotions.In contrast, Right-oriented spaces are less keen on compliments and engage in more stressful catastrophization. They consume too much news and complain too much about the news. Culturally right online spaces are more socially stressful and have less bonding. They are critical of the liberal-coded heaping of compliments and empathy, and consequently miss out on a lot of the power and energy that’s present in Leftist spaces. There’s also an optimism deferential, with Leftist spaces generally more optimistic despite performative lamentation, and Right spaces more pessimistic, at least since ~2018.
This is a poor example, but imagine watching Contrapoints versus Jordan Peterson. This is a poor example by necessity — the Right does not have any counterpart to Contrapoints. You can watch Contrapoints and come away without any argument or evidence — but then you would be missing the point; the point is that you’re having an endearing and charming parasocial relationship with the person, and the outfit changes and odd social contextual changes simply work to increase the emotional affect, like a dozen playdates in video format.
There’s a phenomenon online where hobby spaces get “taken over” by more progressive mod teams in a variety of domains but especially terminally online spaces (video game modding, illustrations, speedrunning, etc). We see this on Reddit too. One possible reason for this is the uniquely reinforcing culture of online Leftist spaces. Someone becoming a mod on an otherwise unknown speedrunning discord community is something that would be praised in these communities and an earnest mark of reputation. And maybe they are right to do so — in any case the effect is that these small positional advancements can be a source of continual reward for the Leftist enjoying their quasi-lovebombing, while at the same time advancing the cause day after day.
This is completely tangential, but I cannot watch Contrapoints. The Venn diagram of the content I am willing to watch and her videos looks like OO. It's like eating olives: I cannot understand why that taste/presentation is supposed to be appealing.
Lighthearted shower-though about olives, skip this paragraph if not into olives
I'm not a hater of olives, but I am not a lover of then either. If there is anything in the world I am truly neutral about, its olives.
I was lately thinking about how the cuisines of The World would change if certain ingredients would be made to disappear. Some of them will be missed greatly, some not so much. But I think brined olives, not the oil, is just about something that shouldn't exist as a food item at all, its wasted time and resources. Literally not a single person I can think of likes olives. And by that I mean likes them enough over any of the other ingredients that can be used as a substitute, for e.g capers.
A utilitarian could make the argument that the existence of olives are a net negative, because some people really really hate them and some people are indifferent to them. And I wonder how many other products like that exist. I can't think of anything else that I don't at least marginally like.
Edit - Okay I get it, some people like olives !
Not olives / Contrapoints
"Hard" Agree.
I find Contrapoints unwatchable. And that is putting it lightly. I would consider is mild psychological torture if I was made to watch Contrapoints for any length of time. That might be a strong statement and I better at least know from where within me that is coming from, but I have a hard time articulating why I dislike these types of videos so much.
A very surface level intuition I have is that these videos give me the same feeling I had being in a classroom in high school (fucking hated those times). Being TALKED AT not TALKED WITH by some self righteous yet passive aggressive young woman. Contrapoints gives off that same "energy" for lack of better phrasing.
I like olives, but you're right that they don't work well as ingredients. Brined olives are best served alone.
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