Like Black Bloc/Antifa there are leaders of a sort; they are pop-up, localized leaders, who rise by dint of being the ones with the cachet and money to organized a group. They are also the ones who are basically cannon fodder and become "martyred" by being jailed or cancelled for some perceived heresy. Then another will rise up like a fart bubble in a bath tub, and gather up the remnants of the cult members, rinse and repeat. If done effectively, it is kept to small cells, that quickly organize and just as quickly, dissipate.
Going too far into this would powerlevel me very badly - and I don't think it's a yet time to go Ultra Instinct on Kiwi Farms - but I've spent all but one year of my adult life dealing with literal cults, and this absolutely follows the same patterns that cults do. To toot my horn with a bunch of elder 1.0 internet faggots and eldritch /b/tards from back in the day and show my age:
- Love bombs. That's how one gets drawn in. Troons are erstwhile incels; both are so bereft of contact, affection, or really any other positive interactions with other people that they're suckers for this. Generally an incel is hatched and then troons, but someone trooning due to the current state of medical practice could get sucked into the cult afterward.
- Transformation. Troonsitioning is going beyond induction into the mysteries of the 'religion' (cult) and even past initiation, or mere castration, and this is now a total change of self. New name, hatred of the old name; new identity, hate of the old identity; radical changes in behavior and appearance, and so on.
- Isolation and milieu control. Troons break away from old relationships, most often as a result of inane demands for pronouns and preferential treatment, or people just ending relationships once the trooning out begins. This leads to them depending on the cult more and more as they're irreversibly separated from their old lives both by how badly the relationships and because of their irreversible trooning. By milieu control, I'll lean on wikipedia since this is actually a great synopsis and hasn't been censored yet. I'll expand on this later in the post.
- Struggle sessions, aka mind control aka brainwashing. This only happens once you're hooked on the love bombs, isolated from your old life, and milieu controlled, since otherwise you might punch someone in the neck, run away, or whatever. You'll note that I use terminology from communism and mid century radical leftist groups, because it is the exact same god damned motherfucking bullshit. The group collectively humiliates, accuses, verbally and emotionally attacks, breaks down, and of course love bombs, group members to reinforce the groupthink and keep everyone in line, while reinforcing how different they are from the outgroup. To expand further, breaking weak males so much they desperately want to be a woman since women aren't inherently bad probably explains a lot of troonsitioners. I think Fire (the goon) being beat down for being a man by twatter lesbians as much as the offsite LF splinter forums contributed in no small way.
Milieu Control is something that seeps into any fucked up group dynamic, to some degree or another. If you're stuck somewhere, or heavily pressured to stay, and the way you communicate through language control, social pressures, neologisms, proscribed speech - whatever - it is the foundation of groupthink and an us vs them mentality. So, yes, I'd say that to a degree a lot of social media has milieu control: Facebook cutting you off from family and family pictures for wrong think is non trivial pressure for sure. Losing your friends for speaking out is bad be it in a shitty discord or a sub reddit or whatever. Reddit burying opinions that are not group approved counts too, in a way, since it pressures you into conforming to be seen or noticed at all.
This should not be mistaken with having rules at all. What I'm talking about is what happens when one is overly isolated from the outside world. When it's about controlling thought and bullying people into serving the hivemind, that's when it's pathological.
Kiwi Farms is the kind of place that actively stops Milieu Control from springing forth because we're all secretive of our real selves (except Null, I guess?) and use this as a speakeasy or scuttlebutt more than our social space - we're here to vent - and we're all collectively happy to disagree with someone or even stand alone for what we believe in, and we don't tie our
'self' into what we do or say here. Indeed, we tend to mock people who gayop or brigade (outside of attacking someone for fucking kids or dogs or whatever) and have standing rules to not do the fucked up shit that breaks people down and makes them into thoughtless drones.
So, yes, if you read this far, "from thought and speech control comes groupthink." I said it. I mean it, and that's why I give a shit and use my big book learnin' college words on this fucking website. Troons are a fucking goddamn cult.
Other, related social pressures, but not to the same degree, are responsible for people 'supporting' troons. They're used as props, to be blunt, a way to look better for being seen having good opinions. Given how harrowing it is to even openly
question, never mind disagree with the group on trooning, I'd say this is too a mild form of milieu control. It is pushed upon us by companies running social media and even fellow individuals due to messaging in the media as much as how people are silenced or disappeared and removed from online social spaces, and the ever present fear of "twitter trannies got mad."
It should now be obvious why I put up a Cruelty Squad pfp. I hope this shit hits a high water mark soon.
Edit: All this shit could be applied, albeit in a much less severe way, to 'political echo chambering'. It is terribly unfortunate that right now you can't talk about that without talking about troons, but here we are. The aristocrats. Maybe after the election dies down I can write up some shit about that and talk philosophy more on kiwi fucking farms.
Double Edit: This does mean Liz, for all intents and purposes, is victim as much as perpetrator. That's the sickest part of cults and this kind of batshit. The group tears everyone up, yes, but then when it's everyone else's turn, any given individual is part of the group doing the abusing themselves. I'm not asking for anyone to give Liz a pass for this shit, no, or even feel particularly empathetic or sympathetic. I am saying we need to understand that this system of thought control and social pressure
makes people into monsters.
T-T-TRIPLE EDIT: A helpful birdie dropped this in my ear:
bgp.tools
