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Bernt's avatar

Great article. Always enjoy reading about the quackery of Bret Wienstein. His trajectory has been fascinating to watch with morbid curiosity. Sadly I thought he was an interesting thinker when I first heard him early on in the pandemic. He is well spoken and comes across so reasonable until you actually start to understand what he saying. Everything is always dressed up in metaphors and jargon it can just kind wash over you and you can just think he is just another intellectual. Although now a days he more or less just sounds crazy.

Decoding the gurus pod has had a lot good coverage of both the Wienstein's. They had them pegged from the get go, when so many others were still thinking of them as reasonable. Highly recommend giving them a listen if you're interested in analyzing rhetoric and conspiratorial thinking

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Harley "Griff" Lofton's avatar

A few years ago Weinstein was an unknown teacher in a second tier academic institution. Today he has a following and a platform. Can we see and compare his income tax returns from before and after the controversy that catapulted him into the pantheon of Xitter influencers? Jordan Peterson owes his own social media success to the transgender people he demonizes. Doesn't that define him as a parasite?

Same with many of these "firebrand" attention whores who are probably making a good living off their celebrity. Many of them are well educated and could have entered professions that contribute to society but that take time and hard work. So much easier to be come a social media celebrity to make quick riches and lots of adulation and hate which becomes a form of adulation. There is no bad publicity that cannot be made profitable.

The irony is that they believe THEY are the real victims in the social media Kulturkampf.

Conspiracy theories are a revenue stream for some, entertainment for others, and a symptom of mental illness in others.

I am no fan of Ayn Rand, but she was not afraid to say, when asked what she thought of her critics, "But I don't think about them." The best way for me to not think of these people is not to go where they go in social media platforms.

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