Comments on “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution”

Hi David,

Really enjoying this recent series.

Do you think it is inevitable that globalised culture will move towards the complete stance? Is this due to cultural continuity allowing gradual assimilation of nebulosity? Could anything halt or reverse this process?

Perhaps I’ve read your thoughts on these questions previously and have forgotten, or perhaps you plan to address them later, so happy to be directed.

Cheers,

Josh

Interestingly, I can see parallels with other areas too. I’ve interacted with dozens of small cliques, & what you say is true. But what you say also relates well to traditional tradespeople. Key cutters were for years independently minded - the geeks, if you were. Same with plumbers and blacksmiths. Now, in the UK at least, these small groups are being ‘rolled up’ by the sociopaths that are big business, exploiting the decades of knowledge made freely available online.

It is a sort of merger of the Gervais Principle & what you are saying here about subcultures.

Thanks for the article.

Thanks, I enjoyed this analysis! A quibble, but perhaps a few illustrative examples would have been helpful.

Star Wars…

I question whether subcultures are dead. Certainly the dynamics are different. Personally I feel too old and out of touch to pass judgement on whether the kids today are doing subcultures right or not.

Or maybe you are positing a rather narrow definition of what subcultures are, if they are limited to a small period of time. As you say later, subcultures still exist but without the same cultural force. Maybe…maybe Facebook has lowered the barriers that grouplets form all the time without much effort or meaning.

I did stick a foot into Burning Man culture recently – which is sort of a conglomerate of hundreds of little subcultures. It used to have a pretty high barrier to entry but that doesn’t stop the mops from showing up (I suppose I am one of them). There’s an active controversy about how to deal with the wealthy moving in : http://blog.burningman.com/2014/12/news/turnkey-plug-and-play-camping-in-brc/

On the same note, I notice that Rave/EDM doesn’t show up in your chart under music – whatever you think of it, it definitely is a subculture (or possibly many).

My experience is that also once the sociopaths get involved, new creators are shut out from the subculture, that also stilts growth. It becomes too Pro for new Creators to involve themselves and only Creators chosen by the Sociopaths are “allowed” in. In effect, it becomes a closed club where only the worthy are allowed in.

The only time I haven’t found that to be the case, is if the original Creators and Fanatics work their butts off to make sure that new Creators are let in in spite of the Sociopaths.

Judi

I’d like to strongly, but respectfully disagree with a broad swath of premise of your analysis. The role of creator, fan, and casual consumer are not sharply defined or fixed. To treat them as if they are some kind of ridged cast structure is a disservice to the people who occupy it.

For example, I have worked in a professional (paid) capacity for a few fairly large geek conventions, I’ve created tons of content consumed by fans, but there are a number of geek curtural artifacts I only consume casually.

Dose having done a couple of variant covers make me a creator? Dose having a relatively short attention span for superhero franchises on television make me a mop?

I think you are discounting a progressive evelioution of involment. People might be introduced casually to subculture, but become more involved over time. They might also become less involved or drift away because of changing circumstances in their life. Or simply because they got bored with the cultural object they were consuming.

I think the idea that there should be any kind of attempt at gate keeping, or even the idea of a true fan offensive. As a creator, fan and consumer I’d like to see the thing I made, enjoy, purchased enjoyed by as many people as possible regardless of their level of involvement. I love that one of costidans at my building has a metal gear solid text alert sound- even if he dosent know who Kojima is. We both like this thing, and it’s a touchstone for us to relate to each other across other social, economic, linguistic and cultural divides. I think that’s rad, even if he never goes back and plays Snatcher.

The notion of the “true” fan leads to some pretty ugly places (gamergate, sad puppies, etc). Let’s be super good to each other instead of having a nerd dick measuring contest.

I suppose it՚s not that scenes and subcultures have inherently changed that much; it՚s that the mainstream culture has fragmented, so it՚s no longer possible to define a subculture by its relationship to the mainstream. Alternative scenes have less to work against, which weakens them.

Interesting observation about UST, which I am indeed connected to. I feel like I would like it to be more of a scene, or more something, than it is, even though it wouldn՚t work as anything but what it is. Deeply ironical, as you say.

Ribbonfarm too is a scene and not quite a subculture; there, it deliberately cultivates what Venkat calls “illegibility” as an organizing principle. This is another form of ironism, a way of escaping labels and achieving a kind of fluidity of meaning.

Rationalism and Burning Man are two bigger subcultural worlds I am kind of hovering around the edges of thanks to my current job, which whatever else I can say about it has hooked me up with some interesting younger people.

Both groups demand participation – you can՚t be a passive consumer. Well, you can, but it is discouraged and in some deep sense means you are missing the point. They both provide a template for identity, a set of values, a social milieu, a range of possible projects and ways to earn credit. The people who are into the are way into them.

For me, I find I have strong (if inchoate) desires to be more a part of the scene (or whatever it is) than I actually am, and various competing repulsions, not least of which is my incompatible default world identity as aging family man. So I՚m not exactly a mop vis-a-vis these groups. A mop, I assume, hangs out without contributing and is satisfied with that. My position is that I would really love to contribute, and try in a sort of half-assed fashion, but not sure if I have much to offer. I feel nonetheless that they are scenes, even if they aren՚t quite my scenes.

Hey, thanks for responding. I do think all geek subculture is connected. When you asked if I thought that, I immediately though of a moment on trip to Cali last month where I was eating ice cream late night with a successful vinyl toy designer, a professional cosplayer, and a Capcom executive (visiting from Japan). We were chatting about the merits of marvel subscriptions as scaled to periods of comic nostalgia.

Kotaku (a video game blog) writes about my anime Cosplay photographs, but it’s table top gaming that (barely) pays my rent. I love to read so I hang out with a lot of genre fiction authors. We’re all appearing at the same big tent shows. Sure, there are out croppings and fragments. Toy collectors are kind of on their own little island of pop culture. But the larger activities, the main stays, they’re consumed by the same audience.

Like if you drew a vendigram of people who had seen at least one avengers movie and people who had played at least one assassins creed game the overlap would be pretty deep.

Not that there are no divisions with in geek culture, but I think these are more generational then topic specific.

If you look at the history of fan conventions this is born out on a really trackable way. How worldcon was originally the Mecca of geek culture, but then younger fans (who wanted to stay up late and talk loud) split off into media conventions. These scifi cons started running anime tracks, which eventually reached critical mass of younger (and more female) fans and left to establish their own homes. Video gaming and anime are still linked at many conventions because it’s the same generation consuming them.

The 4th generation is still living with the 3rd (anime) but I think in the next few years we will see internet based fandoms strike out on their own. They’ve already made a few shaky steps. And although they’ve yet to be really successful, I think that’s because the participants are to young/ inexperienced.

So it might be changing forms of media as a content platform that makes it look like different animal. But video games are books you can walk through. Webcomics are TV shows with a very slow broadcast rate.

He’s the one
Who likes all our pretty songs
and he likes to sing a long
and he likes to shoot his gun,
but he don’t know what it means.

LOL mops.

I think you’ve spot on with Geeks and Mops. Some of the commenters on File770 who linked to my blog post insisted that there’s an important distinction between creators and curators, but I don’t find that meaningful; they’re different roles, but they’re the same sorts of people (and there’s often an overlap; many creators are also curators).

What you don’t mention is that it’s possible for Mops to morph into Geeks as they get drawn deeper into a subculture.

Sociopaths, though, I’m not convinced. I recognise that sociopaths are a destructive force in any community (See the damage wrought by Requires Hate in SF fandom), but people like her aren’t necessarily predatory outsiders. In many cases they’re geeks-gone-bad.

Have you got any examples of how outside sociopaths have destroyed subcultures?

“Culture Vultures have always been with us, but now we have Cultural Cannibalism – hipsters who binge on the art and music of others yet don’t do the proverbial homework, resulting in massive amounts of content-less effluvia. There’s a reason why those Man-Purses are so big – they’re colostomy bags.”

http://pungeon.blogspot.com/2008/07/aktion-fnf-kultural-kuru.html

Add a couple decade/cycles of this and the cultural output is the equivalent of Mad Cow.

I know I am really late to the discussion here, but I wanted to suggest that the sci-fi/fantasy geek community is more like a tribe as Scott Alexander discusses at http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-the-movement/. It started as a series of sub-cultures build around New Things. Read the history of TSR for a fine example of your progression of the downfall of a sub-culture. However, the various sub-cultural products (anime, RPGs, video games, etc) have become rallying flags for a tribe whose interests, as Anna points out, have deep overlap. Involvement in the various rallying flags varies:; often, members of the tribe are fanatics for one or two, casuals on several others, and have some they don’t care for. As Scott points out, though , it is the broader cultural and ideological overlap which cements the tribal identity.

Fantastic description of what happened to the ‘rave’ scene (which IMO ended round about 2000AD). As a 90’s ‘rave’ geek, I personally witnessed what is described here, play out. Right on the money (so to speak).

Could it be said that the geeks who were Libertarians and Anarchocapitalists when those were New Things are now moving into the Alt-Right since it is the new cool New Thing?

…that you spent “three months, pretty much full-time, educating yourself about EDM” which is a supreme example of sociopaths having ruined something.
Luckily, house/techno/breaks is a musical passion for enough people and varied enough in terms of regionality and scene that it is able to continuously go back underground and rebuild itself in smaller communities, even if it will never be what the rave scene of the 90s was - primarily due to the quick exposure of new sounds by internet and the general awareness of it.
Which leads to it having become enough of our cultural fabric that sociopaths are just as quickly incorporating the “new” sounds and watering them down into mainstream EDM crap.

sorry, that was a half thought from this morning.
was trying to get to the point that new scenes/subcultures are difficult to foster and grow now more than ever b/c of media - specifically the internet at this moment.
before, scenes were able to really find themselves and let the creatives build their talents and create better and better art (or whatever they are creating) before they were exposed outside of the immediate region of their birth.
now, as soon as something gets the smallest amount of attention it gets exposed nationally, if not internationally - or, at least, it has the opportunity to. And this, as much as sociopaths, waters down that art as people outside of that scene/region take its influences and mesh it with their own or whatever may be more mainstream.

Why do you use the insulting term “geeks”?
Why not a positive or at least neutral term for those who know a subject in depth…like “experts”, perhaps?

Interesting essay, but I do wonder to what extent ‘sociopath’ isn’t just code for ‘people who have skills that I don’t’ eg people skills, marketing skills etc?

1. What are the primary drivers of cultural development, if not subcultures?

2. What about the YouTuber subculture? Would you argue this is atomised? (If so, what does atomised actually mean, when people are referring to the same media content and using the same tropes etc.?) Or not a “way of life”?

3. Will there be no new religions in the world?

4. Is academia a subculture? (Why not if not?)

Why is it that academia seems immune (?) from some of these problems, even as new fields get invented? (E.g. nanotechnology, constructor theory, etc.)

1. Regarding the last paragraph of https://meaningness.com/comment/635#comment-635: Aren’t there plenty of groups that are small yet provide meaning (rationalists, EAs, various types of spirituality and self-development groups, etc.)?

Landmark/est is an interesting example of something that started in the 70s and is going stronger than ever today. (Its original founder is still living, however, so I’d expect it to eventually fade out when he’s no longer around. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were basically entirely run by Sociopaths at this point. Though it does seem to be improving in some ways, like far less pushy these days.) It’s a subculture for people who are really into it, but its lifeblood is mops — in a very obvious way: the fanatics are explicitly and continually encouraged to recruit more mops, and mops often become fanatics by being asked to recruit more mops!

It’s fun to look at the logic of what you describe in this case, because Landmark is so explicit about its functioning, and what counts as recruitment is very transparent (it in fact works based on this principle: if you get it enough to convey its value to others, and they register for the course, you’ve passed ‘mop’ level and qualify as someone who can have “enrolling conversations”, aka a fanatic).

Or maybe there’s a small subset of people doing Youtube stuff who are called “Youtubers,” and their work is cohesive as a group?

Years ago I stumbled upon a youtube video of someone complaining about other youtubers not being real youtubers because they don’t even go to the meetups. From this I gather that there is indeed a subset of youtubers who understand themselves as a cohesive group. However while most youtube-creators I follow acknowledge that they upload their videos in the context of youtube virtually all of them are either unaware of or uninterested in this supposed “core”.

I feel like I can understand what you mean when you refer to ‘geeks’ and ‘mops’ (though I do think those are noticeable overgeneralisations), but a ‘sociopath’ as described here feels more vaguely defined. I understand that naming specific examples of people and their actions may be undesirable, but could you give an example of what role one may appear in and what they do to the subculture? I feel like it would help me better understand your point.

The SCP Foundation’s core writing community was destroyed by an invasion of mops followed by the Sociopaths taking over - who, as you chillingly predicted, began exploiting the mops for social and sexual favors. Only recently was there a crackdown on child groomers in positions of power within SCP - general consensus outside of SCP believes this was more an attempt to save face and publicity than to actually punish those sex offenders.

Fittingly enough, “Be slightly evil” has turned out to be the RPC Authority’s (a splinter site of the SCP that intends on producing written content free of Current Year politics) greatest defense against a mop invasion - their politically incorrect environment combined with the SCP Sociopaths’ moral grandstanding about how SCP is “politically correct”, free of “nazis” (a common insult against RPC members) and hence “superior” has helped keep many mops away from RPC as well.

I’d sooner take my chances with a group of potty-mouths over a cabal of pedophiles.

Thank you for the well-written article, and for expertly putting these thoughts into words.

I read this article with interest after hearing about it at saidit, a subculture I was just recently excluded from for daring to question the obviously shifty moderation decisions of its founder. This stuff is very much happening in real time.

Someone like myself, now watching on revvedit as accounts I posted to reddit on for over 10 years are being ideologically trimmed, history erased, my work erased. I fled to soylentnews.org from slasshdot after the microsoft sale, I learned the same apple banana(https://archive.is/SoybE ) style moderation happened there. Then steemit, saidit, now notabug.

The same happened to me IRL, I spent 3 years in hollywood doing free open mics, got invited to a single party at the house of an aging near-extra from caddyshack.

I am an outsider, a nobody, someone who probably should not even exist, and there is a real system that makes it that way. I have heard here and there about SCP, and it is not my genre of writing, but to come across it again in this context and find this culture facing the same....containment procedures on....itself....yeah things have gotten weird.

I recently showed True Romance, Tarantino’s first written feature, he probably sold his soul to get this made now that I look back on how awful he has become, slinging race war propaganda. In the final scenes, Alabama keeps saying Clarence is so cool. So cool. You’re so cool. And Clarence was just trying to impress Elvis.

Maybe you didnt watch the PBS frontline “Merchants of Cool” in the late 90s? You can still find it and torrent it. How woodstock 69 became woodstock 95. How the rainbow gathering still exists, but it is 90% cops entraping people.

That is what Mr. Thompson meant when he saw the high tide of the 60s, and the death of the american dream. Something powerful took over the united states and western civ, and people like me only fully realize how bad it is after we look back over 20 years of failure and realize much of it was fake.

That at least I really did encounter dozens of undercover agents pretending to be civilians, and I never once thought about terrorizing something or using violence to achieve my means.

It is totalitarianism, and not a classic form, a new thing under the sun, or to our history. Every work of intelligence, every intelligent person every group of 2 people, is a threat to this system if not carefully watched. Yet cults of wealthy people like mr. epstein and NXVIM still operate with impunity and then only a handful of people get slaps on the wrist.

“They get anything they want” Julia said to Winston, and somehow everything they said in the woods was recorded. That is where we are at.

I have put a lot of it together, but everyone who is interested in this article should listen further to what I have to say, you do not have to be famous or popular or powerful or rich to have agents mess up your life. The police are not enforcing the law against wealthy or connected(to aipac) abusers.

It is the wild west out here, and it is a crime to throw the youth into this maw of unreality. Maybe that is the point of Catcher in the Rye, that Holden is like “how can things be this messed up?”, like his entire life is a trap. And that is why Phoebe is ready to go with him at the end, she had it worse.

THEY were in their own special containment procedures, I have been in my own special containment procedure, the SCP subculture was put in a SCP. It is, I now realize, a core operational pattern of totalitarianism, a form of governance where freedom cannot exist.

There is a benevolent way to imagine this sort of thing, but given epstein, at least as of this date, I can hardly call the evolution of the United States a success. I would like to be proven wrong. Maybe all of my work is a chance to eek some change out of this thing, or to say at least I will not help build this, whatever it is.

But I have been hurt by it, and I am a real american, and I will try to make America something good or die trying. For what it is worth, and not much, I do not believe the agents doing this are all meanspirited or evil, but they are tentacles of the same beast.

When you set out to contain an entire culture, entire generation, entire species, it seems to me that is where you risk creating the real monster. It seems in some of their efforts to limit themselves, remain unseen, and in rare glimpses behind the curtain(watch The Day Shall Come for some of this), they know the danger of the fire they are playing with and have some sense of moderation.

Perhaps the next generation of agents will not turn it absolutely dystopian but if you are looking to a guy like Kushner to shepherd in some improvement, some freedom, I would give up on that now and live in reality and make some real plans for how a real human being should respond to this elaborate form of bullshit slavery.

At least that is what I am doing. https://archive.is/ws6XQ

The answer is always good writing. The answer is to refuse slavery or die trying. The answer is reality.

Be bold and powerful forces will come to your aid. The prayer of the righeous avails much in the eyes of God. Seek ye out the best books.

If you build it, they will come.

The truth is out there.

Do your work.

https://jmichaelhudson.net/identifying-police-state-infiltration-in-civilian-organizations/ (archive:https://archive.is/u4d69)

msd http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=5666F69751D2A84ECC3C74A2AC9F0C56
memes http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=A10A2F8029E4737BC5188A294D84E953

https://leanpub.com/expandeddefinitions

Chapeau…this is a pretty accurate description what happened to the Goa-Scene. It was extraordinary resistant, so the sociopath takeover took about 10 - 15 years, but now it’s just a shadow of it’s glory days in the beginning and mid 90th, completely striped from it’s fertile creativity.

Cute modern-day sociology essay. Of course, as I read through the nicely laid out analogies and metaphors, I can only see the creators, geeks, mops and sociopaths driven by either greed, envy, selfishness, lust or power; and in some cases all. Then we get to the answer for the issue; the creator should ‘be slightly evil’ or be ‘a bit like the sociopath’. And there you have it…an answer that might actually be worse than the issue. I would rather the answer turn to the Ten Commandments and the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. But, that just aint gonna happen; now is it? Especially when the title of the essay contains the word ‘evolution’ :-)

Watched the last stages of this take hold in the “comics” industry. At that point there were still a few pros keeping their heads down and cashing their checks along with some indies huddled about scraping by month to month. We were constantly having new members join the board and post “look how diverse this is” comics as well as passing around literal “draw comics for change, join Antifa” fliers around. Soon after the last of those capable of going solo jumped to greener pastures and the rest sank with the ship…

I find that mediocrity is accepted by the group. A half assed effort is always accepted by the group.

Put more actual effort into it and you might end up LEADING the group.

Do even more work and you will LEAVE the group behind and no longer need them. But early on in your initial joining of the group you feel comfortable and accepted. That is usually based on the perceived mediocrity, that you feel… ....at your center are better than. Fanatics will find a way to the top, but rarely will stay there.

By the time we reach the top of the mountain, we are already ready to climb the next one, and mostly forget about the last ones. It’s about the journey not the destination or the politics.

As Riddick says, “I’m just passing through!”

Hi David,

The idea (on your twitter) that science is suffering the same demise as subcultures is pretty provocative!

On the question of why mathematics doesn’t have an equivalent of the reproducibility crisis in psychology, let me offer the example of the four colour theorem. Now, of course, we still think the theorem is true. But there was a whole succession of alleged proofs that turned out to not be proofs, until George Gonthier did a machine checked proof.

You may know it, but this article is on an text book for students. Oxford consider include your piece for his English B for International baccalaureate book

It was a nice essay but I found myself unable to tell if it was true or not seeing as it didn’t have any examples. I believe most social group forms are driven by communication technology anyway; you don’t need to make an exclusive friend group keeping out the local normies if you can do it online - or, more importantly, access to social media as a kid means you’re not the kind of unsocialized nerd who needs to be in a subculture as an adult. This has blessedly eliminated some unhealthy cultures like SF fandom (where we started anime fandom to get away from them after we noticed they were incapable of having fun or attracting women, and just wanted to argue about con bylaws and write horrifyingly unfunny things like “filk”.)

Slightly amusing to read the above comments claiming things like SCP and comics have been taken over by left-wing trans pedophiles. This is, as expected, not true. These things are going fine and nobody cares about some minor revenge forks.

Sorry to the SF fandom people. I did try interacting with them back in the day, but in my experience it was a pretty unhealthy culture and their events weren’t that fun. (as an example, if you propose a panel at an SF con about a topic you’re an expert on, some of them will just assign random celeb guests to sit on it as well and talk over you - never mind if they’ve heard of the subject.)

I guess to generalize, you don’t always have a “good” fan/creator and “bad” sociopath model. Rather if you’re too invested in the subculture, creators won’t have sufficient perspective won’t be able to create good new things, and fans will try to get all their socialization from the small community and are open to exploitation by, eg, sociopath SCP discord mods. Unfortunately, if you’re starting a fork because of “too much politics” that might mean you’re the one lacking perspective - sometimes normies just have more politics than you.

I found the article interesting, and I was referred via a trusted source. I suppose I can understand the logic behind the article but it is somewhat disheartening to see the only proposed solution to the theoretical issue is to either build a big wall or learn from sociopathic tendencies.

Perhaps it’s rather a dearth of ambition in the article, as the solution is obviously clear - if the author doesn’t like negative invaders in their personal space, they ought to contribute to building the sub culture that the theoretical sociopaths can take part in.

In this instance, the sociopath is not a negative actor, but someone looking to fit in who covers their intellectual feelings of inferiority with flash outfits. If the antagonist in this instance is not understood, then you will end up being an antagonist, and that’s no fun.

Hi David,

Have you heard of “Five Geek Social Fallacies” by Michael Suileabhain-Wilson? It’s relevant to what you wrote on how “Geeks need to… get better at ejecting true sociopaths” (and why they struggle to do so).

https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies

The fallacies, summarized, are:
1. Ostracizers Are Evil: most geeks come from a background of ostracism and to inflict that upon another, for any reason, is inherently wrong.

1. Friends Accept Me As I Am: any criticism of another’s behavior, for any reason, is inherently wrong and a sign that they must not be true friends.

2. Friendship Before All: the circle of friends is king and to prioritize anything above it, for any reason, is inherently wrong. This often leads to people sacrificing work, family, and romantic obligations to appease their friends.

3. Friendship Is Transitive: all your friends can and should be friends with each other. Any idea of incompatibility due to conflicting interests, subcultures, and/or politics is inherently wrong.

4. Friends Do Everything Together: everybody should be invited and included in every gathering. To not attend an event or suggest somebody shouldn’t be invited due to logistics or conflicting interests is inherently wrong.

(Summary is from https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Geek_Social_Fallacies.)

You can see how this touches on what you’ve written elsewhere, like how monism/leftism idealizes total acceptance of everyone.

And how agreeable communities can foster abuse:
“Agreeableness increases the risk of predation by bad guys, so highly-agreeable people try to form closed communities in which everyone can be nice to each other. Consensus Buddhism, obviously, is one of those. This works up to a point, but such communities are easy pickings for psychopaths. This is the pattern of Buddhist sex scandals: it usually turns out that many people knew, for many years, what was going on, but no one was willing to take a firm stand against the perpetrator.” (From https://vividness.live/buddhist-ethics-is-advertising.)
(Indeed, this is the pattern of all sex scandals.)

The solution is to accept reality and learn boundaries. I don’t know how to explain boundaries simply, but it involves these ideas: “Everyone is responsible for their own feelings.” “Feelings don’t cause actions.” “All feelings can be accepted, but some actions must be limited.”

As Suileabhain-Wilson says:
“[An antidote to the fallacies is] ‘Your Feelings, Your Problem’. YFYP carriers deal with other people’s fallacies by ignoring them entirely, in the process acquiring a reputation for being charmingly tactless. Carriers tend to receive a sort of exemption from the usual standards: ‘that’s just Dana’, and so on. YFYP has its own problems, but if you would rather be an asshole than angstful, it may be the way to go.”

More practically, Jennifer Peepas, aka advice columnist Captain Awkward, has tons of specific solutions. One way to expel a sociopath is in “My friend group has a case of the Creepy Dude. How do we clear that up?”

https://captainawkward.com/2012/08/07/322-323-my-friend-group-has-a-case-of-the-creepy-dude-how-do-we-clear-that-up/

Anyway, I know you said you don’t want to get into specifics (“Specific strategies for sociopathy are outside the scope of this book”). I’m just leaving this comment because the way I see it, these strategies are intertwined with the main point of your book.

Denial of reality is crucial for believing incomplete stances and perpetrating/permitting abuse. When you fight abuse, you fight people’s delusions–so in a way, combatting the one (sociopathy) is combatting the other (incomplete-stance beliefs).

Yay! Glad you liked it

Hey, I am a Spanish boy so I do not write well in Englsih, but I just wanted you to know I loved your aryicles, they are awesome

I was linked to this article by a Twitter comment claiming that this is what has happened or is happening in the Cryptocurrency space… I completely agree! I myself am a MOP for sure though 🤷🏽‍♂️…

I have witnessed this in other subcultures too. Hip Hop being one of them. As a kid I was definitely a fanatic and I guess I still am fan of some of the older stuff, and maybe a of some of the new stuff that more closely resembles the original…

In one hand I appreciate that it has gained more mass adoption, but at the same time I feel like it has been diluted and somewhat ruined.

I do love to see that some of the original creators have also become the “sociopaths”… hats off to DR Dre and Jay-Z

I was linked to this article by a Twitter comment claiming that this is what has happened or is happening in the Cryptocurrency space… I completely agree! I myself am a MOP for sure though 🤷🏽‍♂️…

I have witnessed this in other subcultures too. Hip Hop being one of them. As a kid I was definitely a fanatic and I guess I still am fan of some of the older stuff, and maybe a of some of the new stuff that more closely resembles the original…

In one hand I appreciate that it has gained more mass adoption, but at the same time I feel like it has been diluted and somewhat ruined.

I do love to see that some of the original creators have also become the “sociopaths”… hats off to DR Dre and Jay-Z

This is a very useful model. Thank you.

I understand why some stumble over the term sociopath. Perhaps it’s too emotive a word to be effective. Though, in context, the concept is not hard to understand.

I would class a sub cultural sociopath as anyone purely interested in making capital from the New Thing, consequences to creators, geeks, mops, or the thing itself, be damned. Their lack of concern for wider interests gives them an unfortunate competitive edge in this concern.

I think the terms hack, cynic or carpetbagger could be employed as a synonym here.

Synthwave & Vaporwave

Have you ever heard of philosopher Mark Fisher? I think his ideas would interest you. There’s a youtube channel that has a cool video about his theory that cultural development has basically slowed down. The video is called ‘Hauntology, Lost Futures and 80s Nostalgia’ by Jonas Čeika - CCK Philosophy. (link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVg)

Maybe it’s a little boring at the start but then it gets really interesting.

A common synonym for MOPs in certain subcultures.

The problem is the access of normies to internet through computers and phones, which are geeky devices themselves. This started around 2012 in my country and by 2015 it was unbearable. It’s not even social media, because internet social media existed before: myspace, vampirefreaks, fotolog, lots of different chats and forums, online games, geeky conventions, etc.

Once normies enter into a geek subculture, it’s over in a few years. Most of the time the sociopaths don’t even show up, or they are a ridiculous minority who get mocked at by everyone because they’re cringy.

But maybe this is my point of view, since I don’t live in the USA. I suppose each country lives the dead of subcultures at a different pace.

The problem is the access of normies to internet through computers and phones, which are geeky devices themselves. This started around 2012 in my country and by 2015 it was unbearable. It’s not even social media, because internet social media existed before: myspace, vampirefreaks, fotolog, lots of different chats and forums, online games, geeky conventions, etc.

Once normies enter into a geek subculture, it’s over in a few years. Most of the time the sociopaths don’t even show up, or they are a ridiculous minority who get mocked at by everyone because they’re cringy.

But maybe this is my point of view, since I don’t live in the USA. I suppose each country lives the dead of subcultures at a different pace.

I wasn’t familiar with the term MOP, so I looked it up on urbandictionary. I’d recommend it! (I’d use the term ‘mundanes’ instead.)

A parallel might be fandom/fans/gatekeepers, or otaku/fans/gatekeepers in the case of anime fandoms. Maybe a difference is that the object is a commercial product (movies, tv series) rather than something more organic like bands in a developing genre.
Fandom/Otaku are the ones that actively engage- they write blogs, participate in online discussions, create costumes, etc. Pretty much like your Geeks category.
Fans are passive- they might like Star Wars and go to every movie, and hit ‘like’ when they see a Star Wars meme, but they don’t create. They mostly lurk online, so I don’t think they have the same power as your subculture MOPs to dilute things. The fandom/otaku try to convert them by making recommendations. Sometimes it works if they’re smart about it.
There isn’t a lot of money to be made for the sociopaths, so they generally take the form of gatekeepers. They try to gain influence and reputation by attacking both the fandom and fans. They’ll tell the fans what they like is trash, or that they can’t possibly call themselves a fan if they haven’t seen an obscure and unobtainable show from the 80’s.
They also attack the fandom/otaku people because they need to tear down in order to build themselves up. Sometimes it devolves into their engaging in pointless “water isn’t wet” arguments.

There’s a lot of talk about the damage gatekeeping is doing, but I don’t think a distinction is made between ‘experts’ and ‘self-styled experts’.

I haven’t noticed an atomization/descent into meaninglessness for anime, despite there being a bewildering array of genres. You could get 20 anime fans together, and it would be entirely possible that they have watched entirely different genres with no overlap. One might watch the typical shows made for teen boys, another the relaxing ‘healing anime’, and another shows about cooking and mixology. And others concentrate entirely on the artistic side, talking about storyboarding and artistic issues. And they’ve all got their own communities. Maybe the diversity of source material makes it easier for people to select what they’re most interested in, so it doesn’t become a cultural mishmosh?

Thanks for this article. It made my experience make much more sense. You put some words to it and it also makes sense why I am so protective of my community. I think sociopath is apt, even in the clinical sense, for the extreme cases. Maybe “Grifter” would be a good word for them too…

I have a psychedelic therapy training program and we assess for this sort of thing as well as we can before we accept folks into our program. They can be so damaging. I appreciate what you said about becoming more like them as a defense mechanism… Jung called shadow work (owning all your parts) an Inoculation against evil. It helps to have choice through being able to discern what is happening and not be naive.

Over the nearly a decade since this analysis was posted, I find myself revisiting it every once in a while to both admire and bemoan its accuracy. Subcultures are truly dead, and the internet killed them.

Wondering if you ever revisited the topic? Not sure what meat is left on the bone beyond collecting your deserved flowers for predicting the (largely failed) attempts at “virtuous gatekeeping” - and perhaps elaborating on how the internet has drastically sped up the cycle to the point where MOPs overwhelm a proto-subculture before the geeks can fully establish it. But the insight on display here is one of my all time favorites and I felt compelled after this most recent re-read to leave an appreciative comment