@velartrill I've given it some thought. And by that I mean that pondered about the subject while eating. This is not my area of expertise.

I was not able to find a reasonable explanation but all my approaches were based on imagining post-modernism as an active entity. I was trying to figure out how it could have distorted the mind of people.

It has just recently (today) occurred to me that maybe a better approach would be to look for a hole where post-modernism could fall, by mere accident, and then grow it's root. This hole could be the "social media model".

You seem more versed on the subject than me. Can you think of any other subjective-idealism/social-movement pair in history in which the "ideology fitting a pre-existing hole" pattern appeared and had similar consequences? From there maybe we can find a better explanation.

@compass_straight_edge analogizing to past social phenomena is problematic (heh) here because in those cases there was no real analogue of the internet, which has unique new dynamics and has been so crucial to the development of Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism or whatever we should call it. in that way we're in completely new territory and don't have much in the way of data for making useful predictions.

i suppose you could draw comparisons with the development of the NSDAP or italian fascism, but those took place in such utterly different social conditions (where people would actually, like, read books, and more to the point, signed up to die for what they believed in) that i'm not sure they're really useful. e.g. i doubt the woke brigade will get the point of gassing anyone themselves - they'll just whine and demand that the government do it for them.

@velartrill This "social media model" could be the fact that on the internet everyone has a voice, but not everyone has something to say. So we have people screaming in the void. In the case of the queer community they were screaming about a valid cause, but by virtue of being ignorant and uninteresting they were ignored.

In other times this would never happen, they would never get so much voice on large news papers and magazines. You could always blame the "evil capitalist editors of news papers" for perpetuating your oppressed state.

Now this argument is not so easily made. This leaves people in conflict, "is it my fault that I'm oppressed?".

Post-modernism offers a solution to that conflict, any "narrative" is equally valid, so normies didn't need to break their heads trying to explain that conflict. The fact that is so easy to form mobs online is the cherry on the top of the cake.

@compass_straight_edge yes. ignorant voices have a mechanism they've never before had for being amplified by other ignorant actors, where in the past there was some other form of filter - for good or ill - on speech that could reach mass audiences, and i think this is absolutely crucial to the development of this movement, and particularly to its absolute vapidity and total lack of useful theoretical tools or concrete vision for the future

it occurs to me one factor could be that a lot of the people driving this were and are college students, who could have picked up post-modernist ideas from their professors, tho from my own abortive college education i can certainly attest that postmodernism isn't (or at least wasn't) something you'd find in all universities. it's possible that my impression was skewed because i didn't take any bullshit classes like Womens' Studies or w/e tho

@velartrill Yet another hypothesis is the social grooming one. You see, in primate societies grooming is very important. It alleviates stress and strengthens bonds.

There have been analogues traced with human societies in which gossip takes the role of grooming.

But you have to gossip about something and with the quick information flow of social media that something comes and goes way too fast. Sometimes leaving people without something to gossip about.

With post-modernism you can make something up to gossip about.

The grooming hypothesis also helps explain the formation of mobs but it doesn't say anything about why the left and queer movements specifically got caught on it.

@velartrill pardon the length of my autism
i understand if you don't read it