"You're in a cult!" "No! You are!"
Hello! First, if you are a paid subscriber and missed it, I recorded an hourlong audio answering your questions here.
Next, ohhhhhh what do I want to talk about. Well, yesterday I posted a tweet:
And I forgot — I never ran an unfollow campaign on twitter, only on instagram. And I haven’t really been using twitter much in the past… year. So, the first response was from “Sarah” who said “You just described yourself.”
Ahhhh, the people who are still mad at me for… I don’t even really know. Disagreeing with them? Seeing the world differently than they do? Being 100% “liberal” before and now not thinking either side has it all figured out?
I replied that I have 100% not figured everything out, but thanks for the kind reply. Blocked her, and I posted the three-tweet back and forth on my instagram, didn’t block out Sarah’s handle, and she had 7 followers so looked like a burner account anyway, and then carried on with my night.
Today, I see more replies. These ones from Amanda.
“It’s shocking how you won’t self reflect here. Many of us have followed you for years watching your transformation in the wellness to qanon pipeline. You repost people who praise Alex Jones. Brag about having germ theory denialists on your pod.”
My reply, “I have never subscribed to QAnon. Super culty. But nice try.”
Which is true… I see both of these sides as extremes. I think QAnon is culty, but I also think this cultural demonization of anything deemed QAnon adjacent has been a way to villify people asking legitimate questions, by lumping them in with people who are asking more out there questions. These harmful conspiracy theorists. These people are all racist! These people believe Jewish people are eating babies. « Actually, that was a real DM that someone sent me a little while back. Something along the lines of hey, you’re sharing things that are aligned with anti-semitism. Some QAnon people share conspiracies about Jewish people eating babies.
Um… so you just lumped me in with that belief because YOU have deemed that whatever I’m saying is QAnon adjacent? So now anything that you deem to be CLOSE to QAnon, is automatically lumped in with the most out there and ridiculous theories spouted by some randos on the internet who claim to be part of QAnon? Or maybe they don’t even, but because we all are talking about “conspiracies,” now we are all in one group? Like… why are you making that my problem? Why are their conspiracies, automatically my conspiracies? I generally comment on the fallout of extreme wokeism and cancel culture, medical mandates and pharma’s lack of informed consent, corruption between big business and the government, and sometimes I dabble in talking about Bill Gates buying up the farmland and pushing plant-based propaganda. Now you are saying I must believe that Lizard people are running the government just because that Lizard-conspiracy guy’s blog also said something about Bill Gates too?
Anyway. It’s annoying.
Today I looked in my work email, and had 3 emails from Sarah, telling me that if I don’t take down her handle on my instagram, she will sue me. I did take it down, but ironically, her public tweet reply that she posted on twitter, with her public twitter handle, is still up, so I …don’t think it would hold up in court. She told me I am sad, pathetic, terrible, toxic, she pities me, her tweet wasn’t even mean, etc. Then her third email was a screenshot of what someone had apparently sent to her in a DM, because of my post.
Man, if they had ONLY just said “you look like a teen mom” and left out the rest, I’d maybe … MAYBE think it was funny. Maybe. I mean it’s not. Sending mean DMs to anyone, even a burner account, is… just… not cool. But turns out it was not a burner account, and she had an instagram with the same handle, and the profile picture was of her and a baby, both with those weird little filters on that make you look like a toddler animal with mouse ears and eyelashes and rosy cheeks — hence: You look like a teen mom. Funny enough, she was already blocked, meaning she had ALREADY come at me on instagram some time before, and then yesterday when she had her chance on twitter… she did it again. So, in a way, Sarah is reaping what she sows, but… I truly wish I’d not left up her handle, because I don’t want to add to any of this ridiculousness.
But here is the crazy thing… ‘cult mentality,’ ie: they are bad, we are good, is so common and so rampant, that someone who follows me thought: I’m going to defend (good) Caroline by DMing (bad) sarah, and telling her she is a whore, because she told Caroline she has cult mentality. NOOOOO! No! We should not be doing this! This is … hypocritical! Ugh.
Anyway, bad day on Twitter. Bad day in my business email. And bad day in Sarah’s instagram DMs.
But, back to cults.
For the record, I don’t subscribe to any one belief system or group right now, and maybe never will again. And it’s frustrating and lonely and confusing, but what it’s not, is it’s not cult-mentality. Just because Amanda heard that QAnon is “a cult” (which I agree with, there’s lots of savior-cultiness involved, IMO), now apparently anything deemed to be QAnon-adjacent is cult mentality. No. That’s not how it works.
Let’s review: Cult mentality is not about what you believe, but about the way you believe it. And how you engage with it, and the world and people around you. Cult mentality operates on group-think and black and white thinking. We are good, they are bad. There is often a lack of any doubt, and a desire to evangelize and proselytize. And if someone in the group strays, they’re usually punished or excommunicated. Think Scientology, or … fundamentalist religions. And, that punish and excommunicate tactic is the big comparison to cancel culture. Oh, you said something we deem problematic? Well, apologize. And apologize exactly as we say, or you are bad, and you’re out. No, we aren’t attacking you! We are calling you IN for accountability! BECAUSE WE LOOOVVEEE YOUUUUUUUUUUUU.
Anyway. Cults and informal cults/cult mentality operate this way: We are good, you are bad. We are sure. And if you’re IN our group, and you step out of line? Now, you must repent.
But the funny thing is… the right sees the left as a cult, and the left sees the right as a cult. And, in many ways, the more extreme ends of both really are, because it’s the extremism that makes the “cult.” But NOW a funny thing has happened where the one accuses the other of being a cult in the same conversation.
-You don’t agree with me and my unique and intelligent view! You are bad and harmful! You are only thinking the way you’re thinking because you’ve been brainwashed! You’re in a cult!
And the other side says it right back.
-No you are bad and harmful! You don’t agree with ME and MY uniquer and intelligenter view! You are only thinking the way YOU’RE thinking because you’ve been brainwashed! YOU are in a cult!
And the funny thing is, they’re both right, and they’re both wrong.
Of course, earlier, these twitter fucks were doing this to me, and if I were actually stuck in extreme right group think, like they think I am, they’d be right. They assume I am stuck in extreme right group think and that I’m brainwashed because they don’t like what I am posting about, and, that’s what they’ve been told: the people who question the vaccine are QANON! And QANON IS A CULT! So, they assume I’m not thinking for myself, and that I’m sharing harmful QAnon-adjacent whatevers, because I’ve been swept up in this horrible cult that’s sweeping the “wellness community.”
But instead, I don’t fully believe anyone or anything. I have no group. I have no side. The only think I have, and love, is my garden, and my dog.
One day, I will be so disconnected from social media, that I will not read twitter replies. I will not reply to twitter replies. I will not post twitter reply sass to instagram. I will not read my business emails. No one will tell my trolls that their baby is ugly and that they looks like teen moms and are whores. I will only be out in my garden, reaping what I have sown. And what I have sowed will be tons of sunflowers, and strawberries that the slugs somehow won’t have eaten before I can, and …potatoes. Vines and vines of random vegetables. And it will be lush and beautiful, and social media fights, where everyone is trying to prove that the other is brainwashed and in a cult, will be long behind me.
And that is what I’m going to do now: go out into my garden, water everything, look out for my little seedlings that should be popping up soon, and get bitten by mosquitos.
The only thing that makes full sense to me right now is my silly little garden, and my silly little dirt, and my silly little dog.
__
Edited:
One last thing that I never said in this piece… I really do NOT think I am immune to cult mentality. At all. Though I wouldn’t necessarily call my experience with JONAS/JAKE and RIX/JEX cult mentality on my part. More like: a few days of internalized peer pressure and frustration and not listening to my intuition. But no, I am not immune, you are probably not immune, and Nail Dog is almost definitely not immune either. It is a human condition. As Moody/Crouch Jr said: CONSTANT VIGILANCE.
Also, I blocked Nail Dog (and they’re prob still on my email list, just …hate following. Which is why I put lots of things behind the paywall…)
Now, I’m off to buy more dirt for the two more raised beds that just arrived for me to put together.
we should all just embrace the silly little things that just make the biggest sense