https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/july-web-only/russell-moore-steve-bannon-atlantic-jan-6-america-avatars.html

This guy has an interesting thesis, that people want to be somebody bigger than they are IRL. So they join a message board or comment section and become somebody there, same as a l33t player in a MMORPG.

Quote:

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"Some preacher from a church or some guy from a funeral home who's never met him does a 10-minute eulogy, says a few prayers. And that's Dave," Bannon says. He contrasts this boring, real-life Dave from accounts payable with Dave's online gaming persona: Ajax. Ajax is tough and warlike. When he dies in the fantasy, there's a funeral pyre and thousands of people come to mourn Ajax the Warrior.

"'Now, who's more real?' Bannon asks. Dave in Accounting? Or Ajax?" Senior writes. Bannon realizes that "some peopleparticularly disaffected menactively prefer and better identify with the online versions of themselves."

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So people on both sides are weaponizing the message boards to get commenters to do something IRL.

It's a new angle on an old idea. Get participants to feel like they're part of a much bigger thing and that their thoughts and actions really are important.

Quote:

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This is hardly new and isn't limited to any one point on the ideological spectrum. Almost every "red diaper baby" account about what drew their American parents or grandparents to the Communist Party during the Depression or the postWorld War II era includes something along the lines of how David Horowitz described his parents' neighborhood Communist Party cell meetings in their basement:

It was in this subterranean activity that the romanticism of their youth finally got to express itself. Here they lived outside the norms of other mortals, breathed the intoxicating air of a world revolution, and plotted their impossible dreams. In the cell, they were given secret names for the day when the Party would go underground and the illegal business of the revolution begin--as they all believed it would.

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Worth a read.

You get that the FBI already does this

They find disaffected losers, set them up to commit a violent crime by pretending to be an ally and then turn them lose. They then use these violent incidents they created to justify their expansive anti-terrorist budgets and demand they receive even more

Why do so few people choose to role play as successful hard working citizens?

Role play by showing up to jobs on time, studying, don't do drugs, organize your life. That's the role playing people should be doing.

Jordan Peterson makes a great point that the lefties can't escape. It is this - the best way to improve the world, is to start with your own.

I play a dude named Ag with kids on the internet...I'm really good at it.

Most people that hate JP do so becuase he's an amazing intellectual who, why not exactly religious himself, recognizes the obviousness of God and creation

He's certainly not the only intellectual of the highest tier who concludes this - but he's one of the best known. That is very dangerous to the anti-God crowd.

I'll save you a 2,000 word read.

When people who aren't qualified obtain power, most of them get drunk on the power and abuse it.
Case in point - March 2020 until today in California.

The parallel I see in the entertainment world is when actors and musicians start believing their own BS. Once they achieve some amount of fortune and fame and don't know how to handle it. Start believing that there is something special about them, chosen by "The Universe" to have others worship them. That's when they become terrors.

The good news is that entertainers have a small sphere of influence. Politicians on the other hand, can ruin our lives and if enough of them get together they can break the entire institution.

People do behave differently when they believe they are safely anonymous enough, and may adopt a persona somewhat different than their personal or identifiable public one. That's a fairly new phenomenon for the general public outside of fictional writing or editorial writing. Now everyone can comment on anything and they don't have to be discreet or tactful or even honest because they may not be held accountable in a way that has real world consequences. It does make for a type of competitive hierarchy for status or recognition of various types on public forums. It could be likened to a game in a way, but it seems there are real world consequences that have been unanticipated.

I know a few educators who are only in this "business", because it's the only time in their lives they have some semblance of control.

techno-ag said:

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https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/july-web-only/russell-moore-steve-bannon-atlantic-jan-6-america-avatars.html

This guy has an interesting thesis, that people want to be somebody bigger than they are IRL. So they join a message board or comment section and become somebody there, same as a l33t player in a MMORPG.

Quote:

---

"Some preacher from a church or some guy from a funeral home who's never met him does a 10-minute eulogy, says a few prayers. And that's Dave," Bannon says. He contrasts this boring, real-life Dave from accounts payable with Dave's online gaming persona: Ajax. Ajax is tough and warlike. When he dies in the fantasy, there's a funeral pyre and thousands of people come to mourn Ajax the Warrior.

"'Now, who's more real?' Bannon asks. Dave in Accounting? Or Ajax?" Senior writes. Bannon realizes that "some peopleparticularly disaffected menactively prefer and better identify with the online versions of themselves."

---

So people on both sides are weaponizing the message boards to get commenters to do something IRL.

It's a new angle on an old idea. Get participants to feel like they're part of a much bigger thing and that their thoughts and actions really are important.

Quote:

---

This is hardly new and isn't limited to any one point on the ideological spectrum. Almost every "red diaper baby" account about what drew their American parents or grandparents to the Communist Party during the Depression or the postWorld War II era includes something along the lines of how David Horowitz described his parents' neighborhood Communist Party cell meetings in their basement:

It was in this subterranean activity that the romanticism of their youth finally got to express itself. Here they lived outside the norms of other mortals, breathed the intoxicating air of a world revolution, and plotted their impossible dreams. In the cell, they were given secret names for the day when the Party would go underground and the illegal business of the revolution begin--as they all believed it would.

---

Worth a read.

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It's really not worth a read though. Notice how Moore went back decades for communists instead of talking about the blm riots or branch covidians saving lives by wearing a mask. He's latched on to bannon and j6. That's because he's a concerned moderate who sees himself as critiquing the right from inside it (which he's not).

bmks270 said:

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Why do so few people choose to role play as successful hard working citizens?

Role play by showing up to jobs on time, studying, don't do drugs, organize your life. That's the role playing people should be doing.

Jordan Peterson makes a great point that the lefties can't escape. It is this - the best way to improve the world, is to start with your own.

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Would add another. Improve the present, don't judge the past, erase it, or put it on trial. That's a futility and you just make your existence a net negative for the productive part of society.

I think the intended targets for this article are conservative Christians willing to take a political stand.

I agree that a Christian's identity is in Christ, but that doesn't mean you shrink away and allow evil to triumph.

The author was among those using their influence to attack Trump while enabling the significantly greater evil to further corrupt our nation.

I expects yall to play some Boyz 2 Men vids and pour out some Mickeys