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Love PG's writing, always a good read. First - his example of the 'hater of the pop singer' I think is wrong. Someone likely 'hates' the pop singer because th
by jariel 7y ago
Love PG's writing, always a good read.
First - his example of the 'hater of the pop singer' I think is wrong.
Someone likely 'hates' the pop singer because their popularity is not justified, i.e. lacking talent or authenticity.
They don't 'hate' an obscure pop singer, because there's no point.
This is not arbitrary disdain.
I think a better example would be the comments section in HuffPo or Breitbart on politics. It's just pure political identity and nothing else: all actions of the opponent must be bad.
Second - I think his characterisation of 'loser' might be very wrong as well. A lot of very rich dudes got that way by being obsessively competitive, sometimes full of arbitrary rage at 'the other guy'. 'Vendetta' is not a word we usually associate with losers, I think it comes from the same place.
It just might be that anger is a little stickier and motivating than other things?
- speedplane 7y ago> I think a better example would be the comments section in HuffPo or Breitbart on politics. It's just pure political identity and nothing else: all actions of the opponent must be bad. I don't actually think this is a better example. People have a lot on their plate, they can't be expected to investigate every issue to extreme depth. They rely on institutions. Many people join Breitbart politics because they trust Breitbart, even if they know little about it's underlying reasoning. Similarly, many people trust the national academy of sciences, even if they know little about the underlying science. Even a critical reader can't know everything, and so they must trust people and institutions to represent them.