Thread by @alexandrosM

Been thinking about the concept of #leperization recently, and it strikes me that there's more than just what is done to the person. Sometimes someone who has been leperized will attach to others on the margin, some of whom are there for good reason, giving even more ammunition

https://twitter.com/RayMcCue/status/1489331309365403653

... to the leperizers. Sometimes going on Alex Jones or Bannon, for instance, may feel like getting access to a huge audience. And it is. But it also is a very specific audience. And the appearance itself will always be used against that person.

The leperized may think "the mainstream is leperizing me, this person is willing to expose my views to millions, all publicity is good publicity". And honestly, it might be. But I'm not sure people are fully evaluating how powerful a weapon they are handing to their opponents.

To make matters worse, the leperized may join the subculture, consume content, make social circles, for all intents and purposes start living on the edge. This starts to shift their aesthetic. It changes what they consider to be the Overton window. Adopting the fringe aesthetic

...makes one unintelligible to the everyday person, and *very easy* to mischaracterize. And yet people need a social circle that will accept them. One can't live alone on the outside forever.

I'm simply trying to articulate a secondary mechanism of leperization where the

... first order cutting off from the mainstream leads the person themselves to attach to subcultures that make it hard for them to ever return, and easy to keep them out, by adopting an aesthetic that is unacceptable to the mainstream.

I'm not in a position to judge those who are socially ostracized for their decisions. I'm not even in a position to say what's good and what's not. All I want to do is highlight the dynamic so it can be discussed.

The mechanics of social control are broad and deep.