Current status: reading this classic about failure cascades in MMORPGs and thinking about how much of this applies to 2018 America: imperium.news/20-inside-fail…
From the multi-part recipe for bringing down an alliance:
Phase One: Sustained Adversity
Phase One: Sustained Adversity
Phase Two: Failure of Rationalization
Phase 3, nowadays known as "lol nothing matters."
Phase Three: Change in Pilot Identification
The take-home here is that grinding misery, failure, & general suckage makes it difficult for people to sustain the fiction that they're part of something that's winning and worthwhile. This can be usefully compounded by a propaganda war that includes leaks from insider disputes.
Eventually people give up on identifying with what they see as a failed alliance, & they adopt some new identity that lets them feel like a winner. So everything just disintegrates because the shared, anchoring identity becomes toxic.
