Truman Capote would be a god-tier shitposter. The world would not be prepared for the damage he could do.

Well yes. Sadly I will not be in the running for "surest proof that money can't buy you taste" on Twitter.

"Goddamn it I have to go to the grocery store, this means I need pants."

Damn, I didn't even get the choice. I just got the "these will give you night terrors!" option without being warned that they gave night terrors until I spent my first night in Tanzania jet lagged and seriously considering hiding under my bed b/c nobody told me it was bush baby mating season.

It's always fascinating to me that 80% of these "men are in crisis!!!" polemics always come down to "and despite it having brought us here and left people feeling lost and alienated, the answer is to MAN EVEN HARDER THAN BEFORE"

Minus the Labubus this is like my "I wasn't expecting to have to go outside and interact with people today, fuck" outfit

Oh yeah, the why is secondary at best to the harm. But to my (admittedly, cis and straight) mind, understanding the why can help create multiple opportunities for blunting or (ideally) preventing harm & ways to diminish capacity to cause harm at scale.

Problem is, we don't live at scale.

But if there's an off-ramp AND they've had counter-examples AND the group's dogma is less reinforced AND they feel like the consequences for leaving won't be as bad as they fear... they're much more likely to take it.

But it's hard to arrange that at scale.

Getting people to change is in part reducing the reinforcement, part providing counter-arguments but also making the consequences of leaving *less* bad than the consequences of staying. If someone's afraid to leave, even unconsciously, they won't. They'll rationalize staying instead.

Cults (and cult-like orgs and communities) use the threat of exile and having nowhere to go to keep people in line. Warnings that other people will never forgive or accept them or will seek to punish them, etc. So it's less scary to try to force the crack shut, usually by doubling down on The Rules.

Most of the time when someone leaves a cult, it's because they said "uh, WTF" and bounced. But it's harder to do that if you've been isolated from others and now the cult is your entire community. So you rationalize why you're staying, giving reasons besides "I have nowhere to go".

Think of a cult like Scientology or NXVM. Part of the reason why cult membership expands to take over all aspects of your life is to isolate you from dissenting voices and counter-examples. You don't get someone saying "actually it's fucking WEIRD to do this" which might create a crack in that wall.

When our community has certain rules, we tend to adopt those rules to stay within that community. But sometimes exposure to outside voices causes us to notice that maybe some of those rules don't make sense or the rewards for following them aren't what we were promised. And that creates a crack.

The big thing, in my opinion is that much of it is the Normalcy Bias in as much as "what most of the people around you do defines what's normal". We're social creatures and we fear exclusion, and we look to the people around us for clues of what is Accepted Behavior and adopt those to fit in.

With less reinforcement and exposure to other influences that contradict the narrative they’ve been sold, a lot of folks end up de-radicalizing themselves.

It’s not fast and it’s hard to do deliberately, but it happens. It’s how most folks leave 4chan or the manosphere, f’rex

It can’t just be offered is the thing. They have to think it was their own idea and decision to leave. Otherwise they’ll resist.

But sometimes, often, even, just cutting down or limiting exposure will make a huge difference. The regular reinforcement is a part of it.

It’s one of the reasons why groups like manosphere punters and incels get all crabs-in-a-bucket. If other people leave and succeed, then it means they could have left at any time. The fear of humiliation and consequence is mighty indeed.