I know this is super tangential, but has anyone pointed out to the alt-right that the whole "red pill" metaphor is a full-on tribute to the cinematic work of a pair of trans women?
posted by heatherlogan at 11:07 AM on October 27, 2020 [38 favorites]

Oh I forgot to link the previously comment by heatherlogan in the How to Talk to a Conspiracy Theorist FPP from storybored!
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:11 AM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

has anyone pointed out to the alt-right that the whole "red pill" metaphor is a full-on tribute to the cinematic work of a pair of trans women?

yes
posted by theodolite at 11:19 AM on October 27, 2020 [34 favorites]

I know this is super tangential, but has anyone pointed out to the alt-right that the whole "red pill" metaphor is a full-on tribute to the cinematic work of a pair of trans women?

Yes, literally every time the phrase "red pill" appears in digital or physical print.
posted by sideshow at 11:25 AM on October 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

i read the title as Alt-Height.
posted by wmo at 11:25 AM on October 27, 2020

Back in July I posted a comment about a co-worker who, as I phrased it at the time, "dabbles in various conspiracies." Well, we were away from work for another month after that, but when we returned she showed up at the building without a mask, refused to put one on, barged into the building and ran up and down around three floors of a public library yelling at staff and patrons to take their masks off, calling people sheep, telling them to watch Plandemic, etc., etc.. It took the efforts of three managers to get her out of the building, and then she came back twice the same day and repeated the whole performance, getting kicked out each time. She has, of course, obtained a doctor's note to justify her refusal to wear a mask, but she hasn't been allowed back into the library since that day and is now "working" from home. She also hangs around the outside of the building on occasion and berates staff she sees wearing masks, was emailing a co-worker various conspiracy websites/articles until the other person reported her to HR, and has been seen taking part in at least one anti-mask protest in downtown Toronto.

Anyway, this is relevant to the thread because she was also always into a lot of new-agey health/wellness stuff. I hope she's never allowed back.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:35 AM on October 27, 2020 [67 favorites]

The Card Cheat, I remember your comment from that previous thread. That's a fascinating and horrifying follow-up
posted by treepour at 11:41 AM on October 27, 2020 [9 favorites]

this is just capitalism. one goes where the marks are.
posted by Sauce Trough at 11:44 AM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

A couple of folks in my Burning Man community -- especially one who is super new-agey and into all the wellness stuff -- have started to venture down this path. It's really heartbreaking and frightening. I would bet that this trap has ensnared quite a few Burners and will probably snap up quite a few more.
posted by treepour at 11:49 AM on October 27, 2020 [10 favorites]

spamandkimchi, thanks so much for the excellent post. I hesitate to start listening because of election jitters. Don't feel like I can handle additional depressing topics at the time. Much appreciate the pushback on quacks by this podcast and others. Quack cures have a long and dishonourable history; somehow it is not surprising but still horrifying that the Qanon folks would somehow be a part of the modern mix. (I mean, just, fuck everything. Sorry.)
posted by Bella Donna at 11:59 AM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

One of the unforeseen consequences of the legalization of medical marijuana has been the empowerment of naturopaths.

In Arizona, at least, I've got a choice; I can go to my rotating cast of doctors, and hope that one of them will write a letter certifying that I have a condition that justifies the state not throwing me in jail for ingesting a plant and hope that they agree to it and don't have any personal or political reservations about it, or I can go down to my local weed doctor.

With names like Dr. Reeferalz, Earth's Natural Healing, and Natural Healing Care Center, these offices are populated by naturopaths and attendant staff, who certify an endless stream of customers. You go in, fill out a few forms, get seen by a doctor, and a few days later, you're legal to do things for which hundreds of people are still incarcerated. Oh, yeah, and you pay a couple of hundred bucks, too.

During my visits with the weed docs, they have prescribed such things as acupuncture, homeopathy, and castor oil. For Crohn's disease.

I just smile and ignore them (except the one time with the homeopathy: "I understand it seems counterintuitive..." "Oh, no," I said, "It's terrifying. If homeopathy works, then who knows what effects all the pollution we've dumped into our water supply is having on us?" That ended the session.) but the offices are littered with pamphlets for all sorts of dubious organizations and shelves of all sorts of dubious concoctions for sale.

It's been a cash infusion into the absolute worst forms of quackery, and it can't end soon enough. Just legalize the damned plant already.
posted by MrVisible at 12:05 PM on October 27, 2020 [63 favorites]

one of our favorite burners became a hardcore movement libertarian.

some bad offramps off the playa.
posted by Sauce Trough at 12:07 PM on October 27, 2020 [27 favorites]

One of the unforeseen consequences of the legalization of medical marijuana has been the empowerment of naturopaths.

I don't mean to turn this into a derail, but I remember last election when legal marijuana was on the ballot in AZ, one of the largest source of funding against it was the medical marijuana "practitioners". Yeah I bet you're against it! You get $150 for a 10 minute appt. where you pretend to know real medicine, then refer the patient to your mom, who happens to do acupuncture two doors down.

Interesting fact, since the medical marijuana card is issued by the state, it counts as a photo ID for elections. I'm disappointed no one has used it yet when I work the polls.
posted by lizjohn at 12:26 PM on October 27, 2020 [17 favorites]

Bella Donna, I also had similar hesitations about "can I handle the content emotionally??" but found that, at least for me, the three co-hosts' vibes and voices don't give me the jittery anxiety that has pervaded my external and internal worlds. I suspect the fact that I've followed Matthew Remski's writing and journalism for a while also helps, since I already find their work insightful and helpful.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:56 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah it¡¯s usually a pretty chill show. I will say that the recent episode about the Hay house people¡¯s core content quotes were rough because that ideology has nothing of value to offer people affected by discrimination besides victim blaming.
posted by Selena777 at 1:03 PM on October 27, 2020

one of our favorite burners became a hardcore movement libertarian.

some bad offramps off the playa.

What? No. Tech-libertarianism isn't even BM-adjacent, it's right there, baked into the DNA.
posted by The Tensor at 1:11 PM on October 27, 2020 [20 favorites]

Just last night I was noticing that many of the more woo people of my acquaintance are going headlong into Q Anon and COVID conspiracy stuff. It's happening here in NZ too. Someone complained about their massage therapist going on about conspiracies; they had to end the session. (Interestingly, the Druids that I interact with seem mostly immune, perhaps because they are pro-science as a group.)

I wish they did transcripts because I had to nope out of the video after about 20 seconds. Waaaaaay too anxiety inducing.
posted by rednikki at 1:13 PM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

One bummer is that "do your research" has become a hallmark phrase of conspirituality peddlers (per the podcast's keywords compilation). As an academic, I want people to do their research. But if research means just watching everything the Youtube algorithm pulls up, THAT'S NOT RESEARCH!

"Information literacy" should really be understood as research skills -- can you efficiently find/search, identify what is useful and evaluate what's credible from the dreck that is so freely available? It's damn hard. I assigned a chapter of Daniel Russell's The Joy of Search to one class this semester because my sense is that even "digital natives" haven't necessarily learned how to search for and evaluate information. Part of it is cultivating a healthy critical reading capacity but without extending that to blanket rejection of anything you don't like.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:14 PM on October 27, 2020 [32 favorites]

For folks who don't or can't listen to the podcast, the list of press coverage includes some good articles, including this Southern Hemisphere newspaper Brisbane Times: 'Playing with fire': The curious marriage of QAnon and wellness.

rednikki, I totally would love a transcript too, especially as someone learning more about disability justice, and the need for podcast transcripts.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:20 PM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

The fallacy that hippies are left-wing/progressive because they're outside the ¡°straight¡± world is a pernicious one. I can see how the Richard Nixons of this world came to it, seeing those no-good pot-smoking longhairs as goddamn commies because they didn't dress like Eddie Haskell from Leave It To Beaver, go to church and address their fathers as ¡°sir¡±, though that's mostly because the reactionaries who jumped to this conclusion were either as dumb as a bag of rocks or cynically pandering to an audience they assumed to be.

A lot of people drawn to hippie/¡°alternative¡± countercultures are closer to ornery no-step-on-snek libertarianism than organised socialism of any sort, and would not take kindly to a Western European social democracy, let alone any sort of actually socialist society larger or more organised than a drum circle. There's also a lot of the naturalist fallacy in those currents¡ªthe idea that ¡°natural¡± is good, ¡°artificial¡± is evil and one can make a meaningful Manichaean distinction between the two¡ªand that's never that far from some pretty dark ideas such as Traditionalism¡ªthe idea that we've fallen from a golden age, by allowing our purity to be tainted¡ªwhich is already on the threshold of fascism.
posted by acb at 1:26 PM on October 27, 2020 [62 favorites]

And the Just World fallacy is ever-green.
posted by clew at 1:32 PM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

What? No. Tech-libertarianism isn't even BM-adjacent, it's right there, baked into the DNA.

well, yeah, you're right.

But when I say "movement libertarian" I mean like the bearfightin' kind. The "New Hampshire is my seastead" kind. The "lets destroy all pre-existing civic organizations in our proximity" kind.

(please pardon the derail, it's just that "bearfightin' kind" is a fun thing to type)
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:39 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

but has anyone pointed out to the alt-right that the whole "red pill" metaphor is

my favorite riff on the red pill thing of late was a Facebook post. "Yeah, I took a red pill, but I didn't take the whole f***ng bottle."
posted by philip-random at 2:43 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

I know someone who went from vegan, to woo woo health to anti-vax, to now full q-anon.

The funny(sad) think about it is her firm's major client is con-agra foods, which is about as far from local natural plat based as you can get
posted by CostcoCultist at 2:43 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Interestingly, the Druids that I interact with seem mostly immune, perhaps because they are pro-science as a group.

rednikki, I'm happy to hear that. I'm Wiccan and my impression is that [actual] Wiccans are largely (though not entirely) immune too. I think it's because these are "Old Age" (*ahem* or at least inspired by Old Age) religious movements with a fairly well-defined conceptual structure and emphasis on experientiality that encourage discernment and actively discourage "guru authority".
posted by heatherlogan at 3:01 PM on October 27, 2020 [7 favorites]

Also QAnon is waaaaay too reminiscent of the '80s Satanic Panic for most Wiccans' comfort!
posted by heatherlogan at 3:03 PM on October 27, 2020 [14 favorites]

I worked at Farmer's Market's from 2005 to 2013 and have been doing yoga since 1990. All in Los Angeles

It's been interesting to see which yoga teachers from that time have become popular and gone off the rails. Many were centered in L.A. at that time.

So I was involved in both environments for many years. While I had my "taste" of many things ( I joke that you can't come to Hollywood and mot have at least one cult experience), I retained the presence of mind (sometimes in painful ways) to keep myself separate from the B.S.

I repped raw milk at the markets from 2005-2010. I was raised on a dairy farm, so for me, the nutritional values were a selling point. I was a cowboy in the beginning touting what I felt was beneficial about milk as the farm I worked for for finding loopholes to state laws and giving the finger to the FDA. Many people who bought were fringe and followed Mercola and Weston A. Price. I became close with a lot of them, 1-2 remain friends and even those are shaky.

With raw milk, it is a fine line as to what it provides nutritionally. Very little has been proven scientifically. Ultimately I came to realize that it was my bias based on my dairy experience as to it's nutritional value. Soon left that world after that. I am so glad to be out. And it is sad to see past friends continue to go off the rails.

How I see it is for them (cults, woo, most yogi's, nutritionists, etc) is that it is all about "purity"

General Jack T. Ripper would be proud

posted by goalyeehah at 3:13 PM on October 27, 2020 [8 favorites]

this is just capitalism. one goes where the marks are.

"Or they give you that P. T. Barnum bit. 'There's a sucker born every minute. You just happened to be comin' along at the right time, you know?' " -Tom Waits, Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)
posted by belarius at 3:36 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine says "There's a fool on every corner"

Another trend I am noticing. Buckminster Fuller is a big influence for me. I am noticing how fringe elements are beginning to show up more and more on sites, threads, and wanting to friend me on IG.
posted by goalyeehah at 3:40 PM on October 27, 2020

Also QAnon is waaaaay too reminiscent of the '80s Satanic Panic for most Wiccans' comfort!

Not to derail, but that's an interesting observation. Is anyone aware of in-depth comparisons between the satanic panic and qanon? Throw in some looking at Reaganism/Trumpism and I feel like there could be something worth analyzing there.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 3:41 PM on October 27, 2020 [8 favorites]

Certain types of drug use seem to be able to make people more conspiracy-minded. Particularly I think psychedelics just make people more open minded and sometimes that means opening your mind to a lot of dumb shit. And stimulants (including prescribed ones, sometimes) can make everything seem very meaningful and important and full of patterns.

This + mental illness are something to consider especially when a conspiracy believer is also behaving really erratically -- like when anti-mask people get very confrontational. I really think this is often not the result of malice but of people whose minds have gotten into altered states, one way or another.

This certainly can't account for all conspiracy believers, though, but I suspect it accounts for a lot of the incidents that are weird enough to make the news.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:44 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

Not to derail, but that's an interesting observation. Is anyone aware of in-depth comparisons between the satanic panic and qanon? Throw in some looking at Reaganism/Trumpism and I feel like there could be something worth analyzing there.

Hooooo boy are you gonna love the podcast "You're Wrong About"!
posted by kaiseki at 3:46 PM on October 27, 2020 [10 favorites]

Forbiddencabinet, here's a Behind the Bastards episode on just this very subject (Pocketcast link.. you can search for a more direct link to the episode). Just came out today, I think.
posted by flamk at 3:47 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

After I got diagnosed with cancer a few years back, I was out with a bunch of folks for drinks and nosh, including my friend and her spouse, who'd recently gone through a major life change and no longer was eating meat, going vegetarian (dairy and seafood okay) like my friend had been all her life. I adore my friend, and she's always been a smart, fascinating, talented woman, but I was completely taken aback when she told me that she'd recently watched two documentaries, and one of them talked about a study where they injected vegans' blood into nonvegans who had cancer and their cancer was cured. I just had no idea what to even say to that (another friend I told that to later suggested, "That's interesting, I'll look into it!"), and then later others at the table started in on the blaming of foods or lifestyle eating choices for cancer, like I wasn't sitting there.

They've both become hard-core vegans since then, in that really condescending, self-righteous, quoting-bullshit-propaganda way, making large gatherings we had in the before times unpleasant because we always have to listen to the talking points for every bite of non plant-based food we take. And I love my friend so much, but I'm so afraid they'll slip into this arena, even though they're lifelong lefties. I already feel like we won't be able to go out if that is ever an option again, or travel where there aren't a lot of vegan options the way we used to. I don't know that my friend's spouse won't get sucked into this, pulling her along, because the spouse has always had a tendency toward being really admiring of anyone "entrepreneurial" including a lot of really awful folks, just because they were successful businesspeople.

I'm probably worried about nothing, but...I see how readily they've accepted snake oil propaganda, would they be able to see through to the conspiracy stuff if their yoga teacher or naturopath led them there? I just don't know and I don't want to lose my friend any more than I already have.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 3:49 PM on October 27, 2020 [10 favorites]

I am definitely seeing a terrifying Bermuda Triangle of connections forming around the wellness folks, the COVID deniers, and QAnon-ish talk about pedophiles. Some in a more right wing evangelical mode (from folks in that world) and some in ostensibly left-wing modes.

Common thread? Ant-vaxxers.
posted by feckless at 4:01 PM on October 27, 2020 [8 favorites]

Perhaps the only thing I've been appreciative of during the reign of the fuckhead, is how his populism has managed to drive home the flakiness of some ideas that had long been solidly associated with left leaning folks. Ideas that often had not been very well examined simply because they were generally left-ish or left-adjacent.

The downside is that those ideas have a tenacity seemingly capable of breaking brains into conspiracy world. As many of us here know, people are often very reluctant to jettison ideas that they feel are part of their very identity. The path of righteousness has a seductive power often unparalleled, even when it leads to objectively bad outcomes.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:11 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

This doesn't surprise me. Most of the alt-right figureheads got their start as part of the Seduction Community and Self-Help shit for shitty white guys. This is a natural evolution
posted by SansPoint at 4:24 PM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

When (and why) right-wing conspiracy theories converge with faux-progressive wellness utopianism

If you wear your mask and wash your hands and do your social distancing, COVID-19 is not the only respiratory disease you won't catch this year.

If you put in the work you need to do to learn to think a bit critically, QAnon is not the only delusional horseshit you won't buy into this year.
posted by flabdablet at 4:25 PM on October 27, 2020 [10 favorites]

The website and the podcast (the 3 episodes I've heard so far) are excellent. Thanks, spamandkimchi.
posted by kingless at 4:52 PM on October 27, 2020

My thanks to kaiseki and flamk for the podcast suggestions.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 5:15 PM on October 27, 2020

I would bet that this trap has ensnared quite a few Burners and will probably snap up quite a few more.

I have fifteen mutual friends with Mikki Willis on FB, all through burner/dance music connections.

There has been a huge rift lately in my social groups. Qanon / anti mask / "plandemic" bs popping up way too much.

People are also getting dropped socially left and right by sensible people. It's going to be a different landscape when we get back to events.

Too many people already have, of course.
posted by flaterik at 5:20 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

Both Qanon and the wellness folks appeal to the allure of hidden knowledge

Part of the reason Qanon maps have more than Hillary is Evil and the child abuse because for plenty of people the Northwoods documents (and a whole bunch of other things) are "hidden" to them. The Franklin Scandal and Dynacorp are older events but Epstein makes the abuse issue more front and center.

The wellness folks will point out things old mainstream positions are wrong (ulcers and stress) or a gem like Selenium and ask you to go into the local farm supply and read the feed bags. Selenium and cancer/animal health is well documented but its like the Northwoods documents - just not known to most people.

Go look at what's been said about Vitamin D in the past. As a time capsule there is the MP3 of Steve Gibson on the topic. And now go look at Spain and its study. Now if someone tells you there is no money to be made so there won't be studies or recommendations - is that believeable with what you know or just feel about the economic system?

At some point the hidden but "real" moves into speculative and outright lies to motivate action. And outright lies to motivate has been rebranded as public relations as the old branding was abandoned. Outright lies features things like Gulf of Tonkin or Iraq Yellowcake.

By being able to show past deception it becomes far simpler to sell the message one is being lied to about X now.

The path out has been stated - Sunlight is the best disinfectant. But that's hard as official positions give one legal cover so they get leaned into.
posted by rough ashlar at 8:03 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think these groups are being specifically targeted, because they are closed communities that all recirculate the same content from each other and are open to alternative facts. Probably they start out organically and once they get big enough the alt right infowars folks slither in.

Similar to how a higher than average number of anti-vax tweets are by bots and trolls, and wouldn't you know it, the anti-vaxxers show up at those reopen America rallies alongside the proud boys, gun nuts, and other conspiracy theorists. There's an organic compnent to this, an online echo chamber component, and also (I think) a deliberate push.
posted by subdee at 9:34 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/21/1002105/covid-bot-twitter-accounts-push-to-reopen-america/

https://mediamanipulation.org/case-studies/distributed-amplification-plandemic-documentary

Now I realize this tendency to connect dots also makes me a conspiracy theorist, but there is a lot of false health stuff being purposefully spread my malicious actors - or sometimes amplified by SEO bots peddling in controversy for a few cheap clicks - and these woo groups, these alternative groups, must be such a tempting target. All the marks already gathered in one place.
posted by subdee at 9:45 PM on October 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

this is interesting. probably not something the qanon grifters ever originally imagined would be their target demo. i think what they were going for originally is a classic right wing "i know you are but what am i"-ification of the debate, a "you're the puppet" move so to speak, since their alltime hero had a well known sexual interest in his own daughter.

but to ensare health/naturalism social media too must've been quite a bonus. just goes to show, when you create targets and scapegoats, people come from all around to assign whatever they hate to it, all on their own. kind of like an online wicker man where people can put their hate...
posted by wibari at 12:34 AM on October 28, 2020

Throw in some looking at Reaganism/Trumpism

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce
posted by acb at 2:06 AM on October 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've seen mention that QAnon started as a thing mostly for men who were interested in the government conspiracy aspect and then shifted to being mostly for women who wanted to play at saving the children. I file this under "shit happens" rather than looking at it as showing some deeper problem, except that a lot of people don't have good mental immune systems.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:29 AM on October 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

Have been knocked sideways recently hearing con-theorists using talking points re: signs of fascism/authoritarianism against Democrats. It's creepy. There is some sort of hook to this...using your own "words", "phrasing" "sentence structures" against yourself.
posted by goalyeehah at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

One bummer is that "do your research" has become a hallmark phrase of conspirituality peddlers (per the podcast's keywords compilation). As an academic, I want people to do their research. But if research means just watching everything the Youtube algorithm pulls up, THAT'S NOT RESEARCH!

I haven't seen The Social Dilemma yet, but I totally agree and I've been thinking about this. I think "doing your research" is essentially finding people who agree with whatever it is you're searching for. My BiL showed me a "ground-breaking" video about how the migrant caravans from the Northern Triangle were made up; they couldn't be true. I think the video was a few years old, and he showed it to me in April maybe. And then he said, "look, I've done the research. I found these photos, they are real photos from CNN, who obviously took the bait, because no one could walk from el Salvador in flip flops." I asked him if he went to the border, or talked to immigrants from those countries, or to anyone who had documented (or gone and found nothing instead of caravans) and his answer was no. I tried to point out that THAT is doing research, but he wasn't hearing it. He's into letting youtube algorithms do the research for him. Sigh.
posted by Snowishberlin at 11:04 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

In a health-woo meets conspiracy-theory-woo thread, this phrase is a bold choice...
posted by prismatic7 at 1:27 PM on October 28, 2020 [13 favorites]

I think that we are living in an era that is a highly fertile ground for conspiracies in general and alt-right stuff in particular, that conspiracies absorb many of this era's innovative paradigms that have a solid basis, like the new spirituality of our time.

People have always looked for a connection with God, but could only access it through religions, but contemporary spirituality offers something different.
Since our era is offering human rights and equality in ways that were never available before, people that are seeking a connection to God and believe in a higher power are not willing to accept religious dictations anymore on how this connection should be.

So this awakening of spirituality includes a lot of BS that is riding it, like new-age pseudo gurus, wannabe wellness 'experts', and alt-right stuff as well. The need, for spiritual connection, has always existed, it is just that now it is changing its nature so you have a lot of nonsense and background noise that is all over it.

As always, natural selection will eventually pave the way towards where the value lies, and people will follow the things that are providing real value and are really contributing.
posted by JoeD Crunching at 3:15 AM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

don't know if I agree with that last sentence. Just read some H.L. Mencken* if you need reminding that cynicism and stupidity always seem to manage to find each other again in the political and religious arenas, often on pretty much the same polluted ground.

* "As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart¡¯s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
posted by philip-random at 9:28 AM on October 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

There is some sort of hook to this...using your own "words", "phrasing" "sentence structures" against yourself

That's just DARVO. Standard abuser move. Frequently driven by projection. Both the tactic and strong evidence of the driver are very very common in right-wing discourse, especially online. Either provides a completely sound reason to disengage. Being gaslit leaves wounds.
posted by flabdablet at 4:46 AM on October 31, 2020 [3 favorites]

I realised with horror the other day that Trump is actually what Zaphod Beeblebrox would be in real life. Though obviously Zaphod was less narcissistic and more compassionate.
posted by Grangousier at 6:49 AM on October 31, 2020 [3 favorites]

So the recent episodes discussing cancel culture (with the caveat that it's not a phrase one of the hosts wants to use because it's "low resolution" and not very definable) have been frustrating for me.

The most recent episode includes a host (Beres I think) talking about how he stops reading criticism about the podcast when the criticizer brings up that the three of them are all white cis men because he feels like it's a conversation stopper that makes it pointless to engage.

Remski gently pushes back on the notion that "identitarian" politics are counterproductive, bringing up his own lack of awareness about the gendered experience of safety in urban spaces. He's pointing out that his experiences as a white cis man have bracketed his knowledge and it's valuable to be called out on that limitation.

The other host's rejection of arguments that hinge on identity (theirs/his) struck me as unyielding as the criticism he rejects. And the part that frustrated me the most is his own invocation of personal/familial experiences of oppression and the progressive political commitments of all three hosts as a rejoinder to criticism of their privilege as white cis men. ? He also goes on to say criticism could be better phrased or framed to open up conversation, and says that every time he brings this up he's chastised for tone-policing. ?

Our good intentions and overarching political allegiances don't inoculate us from cluelessness and defensiveness. (Ask me about Asian settler colonialism and my very slow understanding of indigenous sovereignty movements!).

It's fine to not engage with people you think won't be able to hear you because they have already written you off as a lost cause. But I think including that segment only reinforced my (heretofore unspoken) concerns about how having a podcast hosted by three white dudes can result in a limited perspective, even if the Conspirituality podcast does do a reasonable job of inviting a range of guests. Saying start your own podcast if you don't like ours is ignoring the reality that the three of them have already built a platform and are holding a (small) megaphone.

Anyway, I understand that I'm never going to find total alignment with people's work, and I can still appreciate the great work Conspirituality has and continues to do. But I'm still bummed.
posted by spamandkimchi at 2:14 PM on November 20, 2020 [3 favorites]