Thread by @JokingAmaror

Back in the days of gamergate I used to have a small phase where I was really into YouTube "rationals" and anti-feminists. I didn't really support GG in any other ways, but looking back at this time gave me an theory for the habit of JP supporters to backpaddle. A thread.

Jordan Peterson is a philosophy professor from Canada who recently gained popularity online for talking about the good of theist conservatism. But when confronted with the things he says a often heard line is "That's not what he meant" or "That's taken out of context".

Back in the GG days I had less solid political ideas, but I was already leaning clearly left politically. I was lured into the rationals videos by the scary strawman of the evil feminazi that hates all men. In started by watching youtubers who only talked about that.

Through YouTube I spread out after a time. I got recommended other videos who talked about similar things, but they also talked about other things that I was less comfortable with. For example I am a vegetarian and quite a few of those rationals hate vegetarians and vegans.

But the strange thing was that that didn't stop me. There were more and more instances were my morality clearly wasn't compatible with the people I was watching and I mostly ignored it. Because I was in. My brain had already decided that this was a group I belonged to.

And so it blocked all information that might ruin that. I know we are communal animals and have a natural need to feel a membership to a group and looking bad at those days proves that to me. The strongest, most obvious instance were that happened was with a specific show.

"The factual feminist" is a video series of small five minute videos were a woman sums up standard anti-feminist talking points. But it's on a channel called PragerU, which is a republican think tank. Even back then I hated republicans as every bad position was the republican one

And so I was pretty surprised to see a channel I thought would agree with, support every policy I despised. Normally there were small hints that the rationals supported bad policies, but it wasn't too obvious and easily ignored. But with PragerU it was undeniable.

I looked at the channel, first surprised, then confused. And the I closed the channel and ignored it. This should have thrown my support for these youtubers right out of the window and yet it didn't.
I got out of that for various reasons. One crack in my armor was PragorU.

Another was a forum poster who just straight up called me out:"I know how it is, being angry and watching rationals. You'll grow out of it". And another thing was checking the sources and seeing how often they were wrong and misrepresented the facts.

But that's why I think JP supporters backpaddle so often. They don't want to see it. They ignore the implications of what he says because they want to keep belonging. Either they have one or two points that they strongly agree with him on and that keeps them engaged.

Or more likely they just really hate a group that he also disagrees with, the evil strawman feminazis and sjws. So what can you do? Keep calling them out. It's frustrating because you will most likely never see them change their mind. But it will leave cracks.

Every time they have have to confront the horrible opinions that their hero holds will leave a crack. And at some point those cracks will shatter, like they did for me, and get them out. It will happen in quit contemplation and you will never know that It did.

Thanks for reading my rant, if anyone even does. I hope it was informative.

Rereading the thread I want to add for clarity that it took me quite some time to get out after the PragerU incident. But the cracks slowly added up over time. So you will never see someone realize their mistake. They will get it eventually, but it takes time.