ROGD offers many things to get kids hooked:
It allays their fears: No, you’re not broken or defective, you’re just trans.
It confirm their suspicions: Yes, people really do want to hurt you because you’re trans. It’s not your fault, it’s their fault because they are evil.
It justifies their failures: The world is actively out to get you because of your trans identity, that’s why you lose at life. It’s the patriarchy’s fault.
It encourages their dreams: With this secret knowledge, you can hatch into a more true version of yourself, and become who you always were.
It helps them throw rocks at their enemies; in the form of crybullying and suicide threats. Anything less than complete, unconditional affirmation is an act of violence that will cause the ROGD teen to kill themselves, and the victimizer will be morally culpable.
With all those factors, it’s very easy for a teen looking for solace to dive in deep. The online hugbox reinforces the delusion, and they get stuck in this pattern of thinking: the world hates you because you’re trans, period. Such people are vulnerable to this kind of emotional reasoning; I feel like I am being harmed/may be harmed, therefore I am harmed. It compliments the victim mentality of the online ROGD movement perfectly.
Like any good cult, they encourage their members to cut out everyone else, further building emotional dependence on the group. Trying to escape or even question the dogma means turning your back on all of the friends you have and having to face your long-buried traumas. So they double down. They compete to be the most "woke". They go from questioning, to queer, to full-blown troon.
It is this schoolyard line of thinking that keeps them emotionally arrested in adolescence, forever immersed in the things that made them feel good. They are also very eager to continue to consume more material that further confirms this world view, which sites like Gawker are happy to supply in abundance. After all, in the attention economy, who has more wealth than someone who spends every waking moment online obsessively? It’s a good deal for the media too, since anything that provokes a reaction of anger tends to be high-engagement and is more likely to go viral. Grifters and con artists as well are happy to join in, since the abundance of Geek Social Fallacies means there’s no way to expel them.
ROGD stems from a need to cope with a damaged sense of self-esteem and blame someone else for your misery. This is why troons don’t want their problems solved. They need the scapegoat. They cannot let their true self ever see the light of day. Which is kind of ironic, given how much troons claim that their transgender self is the true one.
