I follow a guy on insta I used to know a decade ago but who has long since gone around the bend into volkish post-PUA manosphere land. He& #39;s kind of a useful gauge of what& #39;s happening with various fringe ideological formations—sometimes you can spot a new signifier floating around
A strange thing I& #39;ve noticed lately is the proliferation of the phrase (often hashtagged) "critical thinking not critical theory." It& #39;s very weird to me that "critical thinking" has become a totem for people obsessed with Jung, powerlifting, and cultural marxism!!
He& #39;s not a dumb guy, he& #39;s read a lot, used to be an anarchist. It& #39;s so hard to get my head around coming to see Jordan P*terson as some kind of sage, and having a Cernovichian level of understanding of like, the Frankfurt School, when you used to write an anarchist theory zine!
A buddy from my PhD has a similar ex-friend. I was talking about this guy once and my buddy was like "oh yeah a guy I used to play D&D with in high school who was really into Scandanavian metal went full redpill a few years ago." It& #39;s wild
On some level I think I get how this happens to alienated, 14-year-old boys, maybe even high schoolers, but there& #39;s something truly inscrutable to me about people who do this as adults