45: Theatre of the Transferred

Conspiritualists hide their grifts in mantras. MLMs market themselves as communities, while cults preach freedom. When a research firm spotlights Sayer Ji as a disinformation super-spreader, he calls them a hate group. When Lil Nas X spins a catharsis of gay-goth dreams, he embodies MAGA disgust. It’s an age of misdirection.

It’s also an age of transference. Living and breathing people become memes. The impulse to communicate gets devoured by the need to perform. Drives to justice adopt dominant affects. Real conspiracies get overshadowed by myths. We’re keeping ourselves very busy while the world burns,'

This week we’re releasing a bonus episode into the wild that speaks to a small wedge of the transference game. Matthew contemplates what it means, in both helpful and unhelpful ways, to be named as or reduced to “cis white men”, and how important issues can get lost in the dead zone between culture wars and cults.

Both conspirituality and social media influence are driven by the hot take, the keyword, the avatar, and the speed of emotional reactivity. And cults are glued together by intense, non-negotiable emotional demands on participants. So far we’ve shown how all of these elements degrade our chances to evaluate evidence and resist being conned by charismatics or cult leaders. Our hope is that we contribute to a slower and open-ended exploration of how to balance the rhetoric of social change with the nuance of interpersonal empathy.

In the Ticker, Derek looks at the retraction crisis plaguing scientific research. Julian watches Lil Nas X lap-dance through the MAGA homo-pocalypse. Matthew looks at a new cult scheme for recruiting anti-vaxxers, while the Jab examines the conspiritualist love of contrarian experts with scientific credentials but no evidence for their claims.

Show Notes

Lil Nas X’s ‘Satan Shoes’ trolled some Christians. But ‘Montero’ is about more than that.

Lil Nas X’s unofficial ‘Satan’ Nikes containing human blood sell out in under a minute

Long-retracted papers are still cited in major journals

Retracting publications doesn’t stop them from influencing science

The ex-Pfizer scientist who became an anti-vax hero

A rare clotting disorder may cloud the world’s hopes for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine

Marketplace attended a COVID-19 conspiracy boot camp to see how instructors are targeting vaccine skeptics

ContraPoints on Cancelling

Robin diAngelo defining “white fragility“

“Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege Knapsack“