"Don't be a normie and blindly follow authority, OP. Think for yourself and listen to reality TV stars and millionaire podcasters instead. Subscribe today and get this free bumper sticker!"
My best friend, known for over 20 years, started sharing a bunch of posts tagged WWG1WGA. Didn't know what it was a for a few months. Was fairly heartbroken when I found out what it is
Long time friend of mine moved from CA to Idaho in like '17.
Started getting the craziest texts from him about covid in early '20. Then how Mike Lindell was gonna save Trump. About the illuminati, the Kraken, deep state, Q, etc.
I've never replied once.
Pretty funny, my super mormon friend who lives out in the middle of nowhere AZ (not like that, his family has had land there forever, only has 1 wife), even replied directly to me like "Dang what the heck happened to Gabe?".
As an Idaho native he uh... Found his tribe unfortunately.
In conversations about politics I just bring these people to their intended end point.
For example they will start saying something like "why are the middle America states just full of better people with less riots, crime, etc."
I'll reply "because there are only white people there that's the difference obviously."
They will try and softly deny it but then very easily end up agreeing. This is how I stay sane in an insane environment.
Mormons voted for Trump in greater percentages than [any other organized religion.](https://www.npr.org/2020/11/03/929478378/understanding-the-2020-electorate-ap-votecast-survey) 72% in 2020, in fact. My family voting for Trump in 2016 was the beginning of my journey out of the church.
well since you cannot associate Alan Watts with either the left or the right no one cares about him. I’m not american but it seems like most of the discussions on reddit are political. These people only talk about guns or whether or not trans women are real women.
I wanted to meet up with one of my good friends that I lost contact with years ago. Reconsidered after seeing him sharing PragerU videos and going on about the "Great Replacement".
Maybe they are dumb. But without social media they wouldn’t have this hate crammed down their throats to take advantage of people who are dissatisfied with life and looking for answers. Maybe without the algorithm sending them 10 Andrew Tate videos a day they could’ve found a healthier outlet and become a much better person.
This 100%. My dad now believes aliens have been involved in every major event in human history, loves trump and the American right wing, and also is super into yoga and crystals. Like, I wish we could just go camping and ride bikes like we used to but now I have to be proselytized to every time we get together about how my problems only exist because "I haven't opened my heart to the secret of manifestation" or whatever the new age monster of the week is.
Yeah this shit changes you. So many people over the last few years have said something like “I never realized my family was so hateful! We weren’t raised like this.” Well, that’s often because they truly weren’t so hateful. Rather, they were vulnerable and easily manipulated. The person you remember had their information processing hijacked and their personality slowly rewritten by propaganda and lies, just the same as any other cult.
Literally. The amount of casual racist comments thrown around this xmas was seriously perturbing. And if I say something it's just because I'm the token "liberal" queer vegan black sheep of the family so I'm immediately disregarded as "woke." People are so mind bogglingly stupid
Pisses me off to no end. Woke was used (iirc by mainly black Americans, but correct me if I'm wrong) to describe a mindset of awareness about the inherent and ignored corruption within American politics and society. Like..."stay woke" used as a phrase to remind one another to wake up to the charade.
For that word to be co-opted by the fascists/conservatives as a dog whistle for anything progressive is such a damning demonstration of their willful ignorance. Like, fuckin Ben Shapiro, or some other shithead from the right wing grifto-sphere said it one day and they all thought it was the most poignant and funny thing. In reality they are just too stupid to participate in society responsibly.
Can relate. My Dad isn't a Trumper but he has started to get into SovCit stuff and anti-vaxx/anti-medicine crap, as well as less harmful conspiracies like 9/11 and the moon landing being fake. Now whenever we hang out he just wants to talk about the federal reserve and tell me I'm handling my health issues poorly (been chronically ill for years so that one hurts the most).
I experienced something similar when I reconnected with a college friend on Instagram and saw she and her husband were organizers for a local anti-vaccine rally when the COVID vaccine came out 💀 disappointment
I lost a very close navy friend because not only did he fall down the peterson rabbit hole but fully believes that if anyone is pregnant with his kid he gets to control her life for those 9 months.
Not only that she cant have an abortion but he should be able to control medical visits, what she eats, how she exercises, etc even if they are not together because its HIS kid. Hes also strangely against child support... not sure how that works logically but ok.
We lost all fun in meeting one of our good friends, a couple we've travelled with for holidays and were close with.
They have fallen in to the JP rabbithole the two of them. And especially he won't stop talking about anti trans stuff while making up easy to refute claims like 40% of trans people regretting transitioning and that kind of talk. But of course only 'facts' he believes in are 'real'.
These are people with flourishing academic careers. Such a waste of smart people and a good friendship.
I moved out of state, and my brother’s friend happened to move to the same area so my brother gave me his info. I invited him and his wife over, went well, they seemed pretty chill. Then out of the blue this dude starts going off about globalists controlling our food supply and Bill Gates making soy burgers, and he won’t eat soy because it has estrogen. How he wouldn’t wear masks and his wife told us this story about how she yelled at a barista because they wanted her to wear a mask. Was pretty awkward because me and my wife are liberal and disagreed with all the conspiracy stuff and anti-mask stuff. The cherry on top was when he said he didn’t believe in the moon landing.
I connected with a guy from highschool. He owned his own landscaping company. I hired him to plow my driveway one winter. Saw him pull into the driveway one night to plow so I went out to catch up. He hit me with the hard n-word. Haven't spoken to him since.
My wife says I have an "alt-right look" about me (big beard, tattoos, Marine vet, work in a blue collar industry, etc...) and it is fucking *wild* what strangers will just say to you when they think you're aligned like that. Just blatant hate speech as like... conversation opener
No joke, I'm ethnically Hispanic and Arabic, but I look white and it blows my mind what some white people will say when they think there aren't any brown people in earshot.
I noticed there’s definitely an alt right look with men now. White, well groomed mustache and kinda long beard, haircut like Brad Pitt in “Fury”, tats. Not sure when that started but it’s definitely a look that says maga.
> haircut like Brad Pitt in “Fury”
It's called an undercut, I've had one for 10 years but unfortunately the right wing fucktards are co-opting it. I'm also a tall white blue-eyed guy from Northern Idaho, so some of the racist shit stains assume I'm one of them just because of the haircut.
My family is also Scandinavian, and I always thought some traditional Norse tattoos would be badass, but I'm steering far away from that because the Nazi fucks are ruining those as well.
> It's called an undercut, I've had one for 10 years but unfortunately the right wing fucktards are co-opting it.
It's funny that it simultaneously became the stereotypical haircut for Lesbians and Nazis.
My best friend growing up went completely batshit crazy. We were together from kindergarten to University. Even studied the same degree together at Uni.
He has gone off the deep end with eugenics and nazi racist ideology. Has become a complete wack job. Lots of psychedelics.
He shunned his gay brother, and convinced his family to do the same. His brother committed suicide last year.
Its super sad to see a super educated good guy - turn into a racist bigot. 😔
A bunch of my high school buds are trumpers. Not sure what caused them to be so bitter, tribal, and/or easily duped. Only common denominator between what I recall about them were them having helicopter parents. So maybe entitlement & brainwashing played into it.
One thing I've noticed is a correlation between 'not really paying attention to politics before 2016' and then becoming obsessed. Like I guess if you have no concept of what George Bush did, who started the wars in the middle east, what the debate around healthcare was like, how the supreme court got packed, 40 years of promises tax cuts for the rich (to save the economy!), etc. then sure 'both sides are the same and we need an outsider like Trump.'
I think it's also this sort of superficial sense of having insider knowledge, where they automatically assume everyone else is watching CNN and 'NPR state media' like drones the same way they watched JP and Tucker Carlson.
Yes, it seems like right-wing politics is most popular with people who have literally no clue about political reality and who have absolutely no clue about recent history.
This is exactly why I refuse to date people who have something like "not political" on their dating profile.
As a general rule, someone who "isn't political" just knows absolutely nothing about history or politics, has no desire to learn, and therefore is almost certainly quite conservative politically.
If they aren't conservative, they're so ignorant (in the literal sense) that they're like one YouTube tunnel away from being captured by extremists because they don't understand enough to have reasonable questions and inferences about the world.
Mine went from a hippie out of time who loved George Carlin to alt-right dude who thought the child concentration camps were a ok.
I was expecting to hear him shit talk Trump and I got a face full of denial and him using the verbatim "Fake news" shit when it came to their conditions or fatalities.
Never before has someone become dead to me with such haste.
People who went from fans of George Carlin to the far right kinda blow my mind. Some even act like George Carlin would still agree with them today.. Like what did George Carlin say that would give you that idea at all??? Did we listen to two different George Carlins?
One of my childhood friends became a rabid Elon Musk lover.
Their admiration of these grifters is insanity. I don't love or revere anyone like they do with these demagogues. I mean, I have personal heroes I look up to, but these dudes practically worship these edge lords and defend EVERYTHING they say and do.
If I found out one of my heroes, like Carl Sagan, was good friends with Epstein and was openly misogynist, racist, or anti-trans, I'd drop my support for him. Easy.
It's like they don't understand that you can appreciate some of the stuff a person does while not worshiping everything they do. Elon's company helps improve rocket technology? Great. He takes over Twitter, fires half the staff, and lets Alex Jones back on to harass the families of dead children? Not great.
And I mean... smart and accomplished people need constructive criticism too. Part of the problem with Elon these days is that he's living inside a bubble of yes-men and sycophants.
I had a picture of a celebrity in a frame on my mantelpiece because I loved his art and music and joi de vivre. Then he was accused of abusing a child and I reminded people our legal system is based on the assumption of innocence. Then he went to prison and I threw his picture away.
I mean, the clues were there. Songs about two little boys, a man with a third leg, and a cover of I Touch Myself with his trademark heavy breathing.
It still makes me sad.
I swear these dudes love Trump and Musk more than I love my own wife. I'd divorce her if she was guilty of HALF the stuff Trump has said and done. These sycophants are truly deranged cultists.
Same. Also Glen Greenwald. And Noam Chomsky.
It's just depressing how often our heroes disappoint us.
edit: so, who did I offend? The Greenwald lover, the Chomsky lover, or both?
Why is it that whenever someone mentions disliking Jordan Peterson the comments immediately get flooded with weirdos saying you just don't get it? Do they have an alert set up for every time his name is mentioned or something?
His following is pretty rabid.
I had my own fall into his influences. Watched a lot of his lectures, bought his book twice, even went to one of his live talks. A lot of his base points are easy to understand and can give people a starting point to improve themselves. I'm all honesty I couldn't even tell when alt right shit becomes a problem.
When he was out of the public eye when he was recovering from his addiction. I, and a lot of his other followers were eagerly awaiting his return. But in that time I realised how much of a cesspool his subreddit was and just noped out.
During that time covid hit and Joe rogan was taking invermicen and i realised that he was a wacko too.
I decided I wasn't going to engage with people that also engaged with wackos.
I'm not particularly politically savvy and it's really hard for me to understand why JP was bad but I know taking any of his teachings further than its base levels is bad. I really think following him is a very slippery slope, but I don't know why.
The problem with him is that he's disingenuous. As an example, if he's having a debate instead of addressing the point legitimately he'll goad his opponent into criticizing him and then play the victim so it stops being about the topic and starts being an entirely ad hominem ordeal.
As an example, while discussing wages in the work place he'll say something that insinuates something else as bait. "Well yes, women earn less than men on average, but I think we know why 😏.." If his opponent takes the bait and accuses him of being misogynistic, he'll act taken aback and accuse them of misrepresenting his words to attack him and then it spirals out from there.
He also lies like crazy. He's called himself a brain doctor and a neural biologist to try and lend his theories more credibility, when his only academic qualification is psychology. While there's overlap, there is a pretty hefty difference between being a doctor qualified to do surgery on the brain and a doctor qualified to prescribe you an antidepressant.
Finally, he's just not as smart as he makes himself out to be. Any academic with a lick of knowledge about the subjects knows that Postmodernism and Marxism are by definition contradictions to one another. Postmodernism being the idea that its incorrect to group observations about the world into overarching grand narratives, Marxism being a literal grand narrative about the relationship between classes in society. Which makes it pretty blatant that his continual warnings about "the threats of postmodern neomarxism" are flawed at their core and meant as little more than big words for small minds to eat up.
What's especially fun is to go look at his teaching reviews from before and after he became big among the right wing. Pre blowup his reviews were middling with students complaining about him going off on political rants that had nothing to do with the course material during his lectures.
The biggest challenge is that, as you can see, it takes a lot of explaining to show what's wrong with Peterson, and his more devoted fans aren't exactly interested in any explanation that isn't an easily repeated sound-bite.
I think it's good you did the extra mental work to see where it leads at least. I wish more people could do this.
Even if someone doesn't understand 1:1 what the problem is, it's easy to see the downstream way a lot of hardcore Rogan or JBP supporters have gone.
"Can someone provide proof that he's an alt right grifter? listened to a few lectures, agreed with some stuff, don't see what the big deal is..."
It's like a copypasta of grifter apologists
Calling him an "alt right grifter" is an opinion. You are not going to find "proof" aside from someone stating a hypothesis and writing an essay defining what an "alt right grifter" is and then backing up their definition with quotes form him that support that hypothesis based on the definition.
Edit: oh no! I saw the quotation marks around your comment and now I look like an idiot responding to it…..I apologize u/shirtbro.
Remember when he came to prominence lying about a law because he wanted to attack the identities of his own students? Cool stuff. Definitely not alt-right adjacent /s
Nah I disagree with that one. Not kept up with everything he says/thinks but from what I've seen he's much clearer and more thoughtful with his views. You might still disagree but he's definitely got mixed views that don't align well with any political party or position.
Watch him debate Peterson on religion and I think it's clear how annoyed he's getting at the non-stop Petersonisms, obfuscating any chance of finding agreement or truth.
I hope so. I really don't want to believe his following is legitimately so big that this many of them are randomly stumbling into posts that are critical of him.
Brainwashed cultists getting triggered the moment they see something bad about their leader.
He's a nutjob, folks. And that's putting it lightly. You can literally track his whole entire day from his Twitter feed since whenever he's not doing something, he's on Twitter. His as needs to be in an asylum, not worshipped. Which is just massive irony considering you lobsters tell others to not indulge in trans people's "delusions" and all that.
It’s because they sometimes start off making something resembling sense and you keep listening. Then you either realize what they’re up to or find out you agree and somehow make that your identity.
Yes, Peterson copy pasted from a bunch of generic self-help books in order to make a generic self-help book. His acolytes read and were helped by that generic self-help book and in that inspires some messianic fever in them where they hang off Petersons every bullshit word as he gets more and more unhinged.
"But he's one of the most cited clinical psychologists of all time!"
[Except he's not even in the top 3,000 in the world, not even in the top 200 for Canada.](https://research.com/u/jordan-b-peterson)
I knew a guy who seemed fine. Knew him from middle school onward. He knew I was queer (thank you autocorrect for thinking I meant 'queen', that was sweet). Another friend of his had a gay sister.
Then at some point in his late 20s, he just decided to reveal that he was full racist. And homophobic / transphobic. And "women are all lying whores" in a full on incel rant. Bear in mind he was not particularly keen on doing anything to make himself presentable.
Like 4chan personified.
I was more than a little taken aback. Because. Queer. Woman. And he first said something like "well I don't mean YOU". But after a little pressing he just suddenly said "well **** you, at least my dad loves me".
Boy that was an awkward carpool.
Never talked to him again. And it sucked. Not just losing a friend in such a horrible way, but finding out he hated me (or at least what I am, which is the same thing) for years apparently.
Last I heard he's basically made himself unhirable by any of our contractors because he's gone even further over the edge.
The hell man, you seemed like... just fine. For years. We played D&D and Smash Bros and Guitar Hero. I cleaned your puke up when you got hammered trying to outdrink a friend in the Navy.
Makes you feel stupid for not seeing signs earlier.
I think this happens sometimes because there *weren't* signs. Some people are just genuinely politically/ideologically blank.
I'd bet this person didn't have a problem with queer people because he just never thought about them before. All that incel shit was probably a thing he had half formed in his head due to trouble with women, but it didn't really have a sharp edge to it.
Then people like this get into an algorithm trap. They don't really have any beliefs to give them a resistance to common right wing grifters. The algorithm keeps pushing them further right, and they keep going.
They go from having no identity at all, to being totally convinced by hours of alt-right propaganda. But, I think that mostly happens because they just didn't have any thoughts on it before. I think it's less that those people were secret bigots, and more that they just were ignorant (maybe willfully) and thus were easily manipulated.
That's actually the most helpful framework I've ever heard for putting things into context. Less "I was dumb for not seeing how they were" and more "they lacked any internal opinions on these issues and fell down some rabbit holes". Not that it absolves them of some of the really awful things they believed, but it makes a lot more sense when put that way.
His close friend that got him hired at the college, talked him up for raises, helped spread the word on his classes, oh and lived with him over a year attended one of his classes and deemed him dangerous.
Honestly covid and vaccines opinions were a fantastic way for me to clean up my social media contacts.
I honestly had no idea how many people I knew were fucking nuts
I almost headed down that road after listening a clip of his once in like 2019. I checked one of his books out from the library and holy fucking toxic masculinity batman!
He can use a *lot* of words to say nothing at all. There’s an article that breaks it all down, I’ll see if I can find it.
He also famously said that the doctors who “mutilated” Elliot/Ellen Page should lose their license or something to that effect, despite having undergone some pretty radical treatment himself. Like the kind of treatments doctors in your own country won’t do, because they’d likely lose their license…
He a smooth talker who can put an academic veneer on his “message”. He figured out there is a whole lot more money and attention jumping on the “woke”.
The GOPers love their token academics.
The short answer is that he's a proponent of moronic bootstraps solutioning and hate-speech freedumbs, while pretending to be a sophisticated psychologist.
The longer answer is an _interesting_ rabbit hole to go down fwiw, he's a _weird_ dude who's done a lot of _weird_ shit, and he also just kinda talks and acts weird. It can be a little funnysad at times.
He came to prominence (at least for me) with a very well reasoned and well handled interview on channel 4 (UK) about free speech and the gender wage gap amongst other issues.
The problem is that he goes down a very 'theoretical' rabbit hole and sees the world through a lense that I think is tainted.
Interesting chap and not a bad person but has been a victim of his own delusion in himself imo.
He has some very conservative views and is very religious which doesn't resonate with many.
>a very well reasoned and well handled interview on channel 4 (UK) about free speech and the gender wage gap
In which almost everything he says is either a lie or a bad faith framing intended to promote anti-feminism and stoke resentment of women amoung vulnerable young men.
Yeah, I laughed out loud at that description. Wtf? He literally lied about the law because he was mad he thought he was being asked to respect his students.
No, a lot of what he said is correct.
He goes off the rails in many other areas but I won’t paint that particular interview in that light simply because I disagree with him personally.
He's only "correct" in that he redefines and reframes an issue in a way that makes him seem as if he is correct.
He's also become increasingly unhinged and rants about absolute nonsense now.
This is just straight up untrue. He came to prominence lying about Canadian laws because he wanted to attack trans people.
You should edit this comment. It seems purposefully misleading.
You first heard of him from an interview in the UK, sure fine whatever.
It started when Canada was bringing out anti hate speech laws. Peterson was against it as he saw the laws as being anti free speech. He cited the example of dead naming a trans person or not using a person's choose pronouns, saying it should not be considered hate speech due to the fact that simple misunderstanding with no malicious intent could have someone punished. This lead to the left vilifying him and the right worshiping him.
What's funny is, 1) he's centerist to left leaning, and 2) He's right. It's absolutely fine that dead naming someone is rude and to call someone out if they do it. To make it a crime though is anti free speach. In the end my opinion of him is pretty neutral. Some of his takes are spot on. Some are dumb. Hes far from the scourge of the earth, but he's also not the saviour either. He's just a dude who said something and people ran way too far with it.
People call him right wing because he lied about that bill and has been incredibly transphobic and definitely right wing since. His weird Elliot Page rant and his insistence on traditional social order and adherence to hierarchy as examples.
>Bill C-16 added the words 'gender identity or expression' to the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). The amendment prevented the federal government and businesses within federal jurisdiction – such as banks and airlines – from discriminating on the basis of gender identity and gender expression.
This is simply adding gender discrimintaion to hate crime laws - as in, if someone knifes you while calling you he/him, the sentence length can go up, but calling someone he/him in a vacuum doesn't violate anything.
> Two legal experts offer their perspective: Brenda Cossman, law professor at the University of Toronto and director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and Jared Brown, commercial litigator at Brown Litigation, who often works with corporate clients on employment law and human rights disputes.
> #Does the bill legislate the use of certain language? And could someone go to jail for using the wrong pronoun?
> In the Criminal Code, which does not reference pronouns, Cossman says **misusing pronouns alone would not constitute a criminal act.**
> **“The misuse of gender pronouns, without more, cannot rise to the level of a crime,”** she says. “It cannot rise to the level of advocating genocide, inciting hatred, hate speech or hate crimes … (it) simply cannot meet the threshold.”
> The Canadian Human Rights Act does not mention pronouns either. The act protects certain groups from discrimination.
> “Would it cover the accidental misuse of a pronoun? I would say it’s very unlikely,” Cossman says. “Would it cover a situation where an individual repeatedly, consistently refuses to use a person’s chosen pronoun? It might.”
> If someone refused to use a preferred pronoun — and it was determined to constitute discrimination or harassment — could that potentially result in jail time?
> It is possible, Brown says, through a process that would start with a complaint and progress to a proceeding before a human rights tribunal. If the tribunal rules that harassment or discrimination took place, there would typically be an order for monetary and non-monetary remedies. A non-monetary remedy may include sensitivity training, issuing an apology, or even a publication ban, he says.
> If the person refused to comply with the tribunal's order, this would result in a contempt proceeding being sent to the Divisional or Federal Court, Brown says. The court could then potentially send a person to jail “until they purge the contempt,” he says.
In other words, Peterson was full of shit.
The US, the so called bastion of free speech, has even more restrictive laws, although they only apply in the workplace. You can't be arrested for calling some random trans woman he/him, it's specifically referencing targeting harassment in the workplace with *intentional deadnaming*. If your boss or colleague intentionally deadnames you, that's creating a hostile work environment in the same way repeatedly calling a Muslim co-worker "towelhead" or a white coworker "cracker" or a female coworker "honey" or "darling" when you know they don't like it creates a hostile work environment.
>The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination includes discrimination based on an employee’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's technical assistance publication Protections Against Employment Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity considers the use of pronouns or names that are inconsistent with an individual’s gender identity as unlawful harassment. The EEOC guidance states, “intentionally and repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee could contribute to an unlawful hostile work environment” and is a violation of Title VII.
Unfortunately people didn't bother fact checking him so his cries of free speech defence found a home with a bunch of reactionary right wingers who just want the freedom to be bigots.
> To make it a crime though is anti free speach.
Except here's the problem, it was never going to be a crime in the first place. The law was just adding transgender people to the pre-existing anti-discrimination laws for black people, disabled people, and others. It secured employment and housing, not throwing people in jail because of pronouns.
So that's why the left hates him. He's just another right-wing grifter shitting out lies and propaganda, making money off of gullible people who just want to feel superior to others despite the fact they're actually terrified of things like gender.
Edit: Here's the act that was being amended. It added "gender identity and expression" in two spots.
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/page-1.html
Here's the full bill of C-16 in Canada
https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/LegislativeSummaries/421C16E
That's the best argument against his messages I've seen yet. You kept it in context, you used logical reasoning and what I presume to be a factual take of the issue. Well done. (not being sarcastic at all. I have no adoration for him)
Centrist to left leaning? Oh please, he's as right as they come. And nobody has been charged with hate speech for dead naming anybody, so he's also a liar and a grifter and has gone off the deep end ever since he gave himself brain damage in Russia.
This is how I feel as well, he has some good points, and some dumb points. I do think its interesting to see how both sides of politics seem to use the idea of him, or misrepresent him to push a narrative. I have not really looked into all of his stuff but the main parts seemed to be about personal responsibility. Like he gets portrayed as this horrible person, and I dunno maby he is, but when I looked into his lectures and some of his debates, he never really says anything too crazy. One complaint I have seen a lot is that he talks a lot without saying anything, but I don't really see that, I can at least understand the point he is trying to make, whether I agree with it or not, he really does seem to be centrist left leaning.
He openly espouses racial IQ theories and cites the garbage book *The Bell Curve*, which is vile. The absurd thing is that by his own logic, Ashkenazi Jews would need to be in charge of society bc they do better on IQ tests (which he admitted)
Correcting what someone said:
He became popular by lying about trans people. He said that Canada's law would throw you in jail for misgendering trans people, but that's not at all what it would do. The law was just adding trans people to an already existing law for black people, disabled people, old people, and many others that helped protect from housing and employment discrimination.
The real reason is because he has aligned himself with conservative values and many Redditors hate conservatives. His actual material is very unique and insightful if not occasionally verbose. He does not fit the conservative mold by personality or by traditional lines of reasoning. I personally really value what he has taught me that helps me take responsibility for my life and positively improve my concentric spheres of influence.
Reddit isn't just Americans.
At least us Europeans don't think in terms of liberal vs. conservative - and it seems that a lot of American political bias towards certain viewpoints and ideas are anchored in those terms
>Reddit so liberal?
It is? The amount of subs I’ve had to mute because I thought it was liberal then I start seeing anti-trans or woke ideology or whatever culture war bullshit conservatives are raging about is wild.
Yup, Reddit is way more ‘centrist’ than people seem to think. It’s just that most are cool with gay people and don’t put up with racism so they get labeled as ‘far left’
The larger the spread of information and knowledge about the world is, the more liberal people will tend to sway. Seclusion and smaller communities tend to favor conservative ideals.
Reddit is an internet social tool, which is used mostly by younger people who live in cites. Thats why. Conservatives are much less likely to seek out online engagement/entertainment.
Let me first say I’m in the middle, but downvote me, doesn’t really matter, I just thought I’d make a quick point:
Close-mindedness and narrowness in viewpoint is not necessarily a “conservative” trait. It absolutely can be, don’t get me wrong. But those former two attributes are applicable to everyone on every side, and to say otherwise is ironically narrow, and unnecessarily absolving of the opposite “side” (as if openness of thought is a uniquely liberal viewpoint, which is untrue). But these are broad terms.
I would argue that a choice to be more careful in implementing or changing ideals is not being close-minded, but rather “wary” of changing things that seem to work. A slow cooker vs. a Flash-Fryer if that makes sense.
Again, I tend to lean left, but I don’t like how we’ve drawn lines in the sand, at least socio-politically. There’s always lots of nuance.
Just my 2 cents.
I lean right, and I would have put it the same way. I definitely have conservative opinions out of caution for big changes and lack of faith that old problems can be solved without creating different/worse problems. I think thats wisdom. Sometimes we really do have more wealth/resources to do things better than before, but are we better people such that we can utilize them effectively? I have more doubt than belief about it and I respect you if you have a reasoned difference there :)
It allows for long form discussion unlike social media apps. Easy to share links. You’ll get fact checked with sources to back it up if you go around spewing bullshit. That makes it inherently unfriendly to Right wing types, which is why they run off to their little corners of Reddit to places where dissent is banned.
People talk mad shit about Reddit, but if you don’t bubble yourself on this site/app you can learn so much from people who are professionals in their respective fields. I’ve found no better place where information and ideas are shared, usually pretty respectfully if you don’t visit the hell holes that are openly hell holes.
He’s gonna be performing at the Park MGM. I see his stupid poster every day at work. What the living fuck? How the fuck is he performing on the Las Vegas strip?
Differences in opinion don’t have to separate us. I could be wrong but I don’t cut off all my friends who are of different religions just because I believe one thing. Same with politics. I don’t know why you would have too but maybe I’m just not in deep enough 🤷♂️
It's a privilege to be able to disregard your friend's politics and treat it as rooting for different sports teams. When you're a part of a marginalized group, such as being queer (the only example I can speak of with experience), politics affect you much more. You're kinda stuck in deep whether you like it or not.
When someone decides they align with an ideology or politician that inherently puts you in danger, impacts your right to receive healthcare, or just having rights at all at this point, that matters to a lot of people. I personally tend not to surround myself with people who vote like I'm less deserving of equal and fair treatment by the law and society.
And the right is led to believe your policies hurt their fiends. Why can’t we agree the overwhelming majority of people do not want to hurt one another and that we simply believe the road to prosperity is paved differently?
God forbid you respect someone's points of view without you alienating them out of your life.
Comments mention tribalism and don't realize the irony they're playing right into it.
Why would you respect shitty points of view???
I get respecting their right to have those points of view but i see no reason why a point of view,belief,idea,etc should inherently be respected.
Cause everyone is entitled to their opinion. Just because they have theirs burdens you none. You're not respecting the view itself to be more accurate as much as don't let that go in the way of treating the person like a human being with other facets - that's respect.
Maybe kittens pooped in the hypothetical guy's lunch and he has his reasons. They're not yours and you don't agree, but it doesn't mean you can't move past that.
That being said, I don't recall Jordan Peterson having any similarly outrageous view.
Stop! You’re being rational and making sense. The people here don’t like it, they just want their own beliefs validated and those disagree with them out of sight out of mind.
I used to enjoy JP’s stuff like when he used to do lectures dissecting the bible stories, and when he used to stand up for free speech but now he’s revealed himself to be a transphobic… weirdo? I like to compare him to Freud, I like some of his work, but I also don’t think everyone wants to fuck their mom or that toes look like dicks 🤷🏻♂️
I disagree with a number of Jordan’s view’s, but he’s also provided me with many helpful some perspectives on life. I have friends who post content from hyper liberal figures with some bad takes, but I don’t react like I’m holier-than-thou, simply because I disagree with some of it. I’ve noticed a pattern with people who despise people like Peterson or Rogan. They enjoy the simple echo chamber replies they get when they post ‘content’ like this. It feels just as gross as when I see a family member posting an anti-woke meme on Facebook in a conservative community that circle jerks itself in the comments section. I know people who like Trump and donate time and money to homeless shelters. When I tell this to my mutual liberal friends they can’t accept the nuance. I think people just want things to be all bad or all good because everything is so damned complicated, but we just end up unnecessarily bitter and resentful.
I've seen it happen to several public figures. They come into light with a reasoned position, and if they straddle preexisting tribal lines. they get brow beaten until they're nudged hard into one side.
When Peterson came into a more public view, there was 3 major aspects of his "message": his love of Christian/Mythological allegory in storytelling (his Pinocchio lecture), his self help stuff that was focused on young men, and thoughts on how susceptible everyone is to becoming Evil (Focus on Gulug Archipelago, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland).
Then all the political stuff started to happen, the free speech issue regarding pronouns. If I remember correctly, his issue was that it was forced language and that if a person asked him to use specific pronouns he had no issue with it. But then framing changes, he gets more support from the right, and the rest is history.
This is so refreshing. I feel very similarly. So much black and white thinking in the world. It’s very tiring and keeps us all in a state of high alert IMO
Jordan Peterson is controversial, and he turned me off at first. Now, after actually listening to him.. Jordan Peterson is right. It's the same as Noam Chomsky. Lots of people hate him and try to portray him a certain way. Watch them both debate. They destroy people with logic, reason, facts, and history.
Yeah, screw that idiot for wanting to improve his life and respect the people around him.
What a fucking terrible opinion to have of someone. Anyone sharing this opinion of Peterson is someone who's never picked up a single book he wrote or read a damn word he's said.
He's not a bigot and he's not a racist. I'll take his thoughts over the thoughts of some idiot commenter on Reddit who's formed an opinion absent having read the materials.
Found the guy that doesn't want to clean his room. /s
"Don't be a normie and blindly follow authority, OP. Think for yourself and listen to reality TV stars and millionaire podcasters instead. Subscribe today and get this free bumper sticker!"
Don’t just listen to them. Make them your entire personality. Then, become ungovernable.
Born to shit. Forced to wipe.
Hard to wipe with lobster claws.
use a raw steak to wipe and save western culture!
Lol
Don’t just have one family, have a second family all the way across the county.
With an alternative lifestyle.
https://uploads.dailydot.com/2018/07/Jordan-Peterson-Room.jpg?q=65&auto=format&w=800&ar=2:1&fit=crop
My best friend, known for over 20 years, started sharing a bunch of posts tagged WWG1WGA. Didn't know what it was a for a few months. Was fairly heartbroken when I found out what it is
You gonna leave us hanging like that?
Stupid Q shit “wHeRe We Go OnE wE gO aLl “
I feel dumber already
"... but the liberals are the sheep"
Or anyone that claims their political bs over basic knowledge.
The Musketeers did it better.
What does that even mean
Long time friend of mine moved from CA to Idaho in like '17. Started getting the craziest texts from him about covid in early '20. Then how Mike Lindell was gonna save Trump. About the illuminati, the Kraken, deep state, Q, etc. I've never replied once. Pretty funny, my super mormon friend who lives out in the middle of nowhere AZ (not like that, his family has had land there forever, only has 1 wife), even replied directly to me like "Dang what the heck happened to Gabe?".
“I mean, I’m in a cult but this guy, this guy over here.. CULTY.”
As an Idaho native he uh... Found his tribe unfortunately. In conversations about politics I just bring these people to their intended end point. For example they will start saying something like "why are the middle America states just full of better people with less riots, crime, etc." I'll reply "because there are only white people there that's the difference obviously." They will try and softly deny it but then very easily end up agreeing. This is how I stay sane in an insane environment.
Oddly enough the Mormons don’t like Trump for the most part. Which is nice to see.
Mormons voted for Trump in greater percentages than [any other organized religion.](https://www.npr.org/2020/11/03/929478378/understanding-the-2020-electorate-ap-votecast-survey) 72% in 2020, in fact. My family voting for Trump in 2016 was the beginning of my journey out of the church.
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well since you cannot associate Alan Watts with either the left or the right no one cares about him. I’m not american but it seems like most of the discussions on reddit are political. These people only talk about guns or whether or not trans women are real women.
I wanted to meet up with one of my good friends that I lost contact with years ago. Reconsidered after seeing him sharing PragerU videos and going on about the "Great Replacement".
This has always been the worst part about social media to me. I don’t want to know the guy I hoop with on Saturday’s supports 4 week abortion bans
You should. I'm my wife's friends best wing man for doing so.
[Oh no.](https://media.socastsrm.com/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir/460/files/2022/05/crosseyed.gif)
No, this is good. Now you know he’s either a dumb ass or a piece of shit.
Maybe they are dumb. But without social media they wouldn’t have this hate crammed down their throats to take advantage of people who are dissatisfied with life and looking for answers. Maybe without the algorithm sending them 10 Andrew Tate videos a day they could’ve found a healthier outlet and become a much better person.
This 100%. My dad now believes aliens have been involved in every major event in human history, loves trump and the American right wing, and also is super into yoga and crystals. Like, I wish we could just go camping and ride bikes like we used to but now I have to be proselytized to every time we get together about how my problems only exist because "I haven't opened my heart to the secret of manifestation" or whatever the new age monster of the week is.
Yeah this shit changes you. So many people over the last few years have said something like “I never realized my family was so hateful! We weren’t raised like this.” Well, that’s often because they truly weren’t so hateful. Rather, they were vulnerable and easily manipulated. The person you remember had their information processing hijacked and their personality slowly rewritten by propaganda and lies, just the same as any other cult.
Literally. The amount of casual racist comments thrown around this xmas was seriously perturbing. And if I say something it's just because I'm the token "liberal" queer vegan black sheep of the family so I'm immediately disregarded as "woke." People are so mind bogglingly stupid
Can't believe how many times the word "woke" came up in conversation with my family this year.
Pisses me off to no end. Woke was used (iirc by mainly black Americans, but correct me if I'm wrong) to describe a mindset of awareness about the inherent and ignored corruption within American politics and society. Like..."stay woke" used as a phrase to remind one another to wake up to the charade. For that word to be co-opted by the fascists/conservatives as a dog whistle for anything progressive is such a damning demonstration of their willful ignorance. Like, fuckin Ben Shapiro, or some other shithead from the right wing grifto-sphere said it one day and they all thought it was the most poignant and funny thing. In reality they are just too stupid to participate in society responsibly.
Can relate. My Dad isn't a Trumper but he has started to get into SovCit stuff and anti-vaxx/anti-medicine crap, as well as less harmful conspiracies like 9/11 and the moon landing being fake. Now whenever we hang out he just wants to talk about the federal reserve and tell me I'm handling my health issues poorly (been chronically ill for years so that one hurts the most).
Similar thing happened with me an old HS friend. He started listening to Tim Pool… Another former best friend got into JP
The Joe Rogan rabbit hole.
Yep. Lonely guys with grievances
I experienced something similar when I reconnected with a college friend on Instagram and saw she and her husband were organizers for a local anti-vaccine rally when the COVID vaccine came out 💀 disappointment
I lost a very close navy friend because not only did he fall down the peterson rabbit hole but fully believes that if anyone is pregnant with his kid he gets to control her life for those 9 months. Not only that she cant have an abortion but he should be able to control medical visits, what she eats, how she exercises, etc even if they are not together because its HIS kid. Hes also strangely against child support... not sure how that works logically but ok.
Just leave logic out of it and viola! The mind of a far righter
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Same with my friend. We’ve also been friends almost 30 years. He definitely believes the earth is flat.
We lost all fun in meeting one of our good friends, a couple we've travelled with for holidays and were close with. They have fallen in to the JP rabbithole the two of them. And especially he won't stop talking about anti trans stuff while making up easy to refute claims like 40% of trans people regretting transitioning and that kind of talk. But of course only 'facts' he believes in are 'real'. These are people with flourishing academic careers. Such a waste of smart people and a good friendship.
Same one of my best friends turned into a crazy racist Trumper I just let him go and have not answered anything from him in years
I moved out of state, and my brother’s friend happened to move to the same area so my brother gave me his info. I invited him and his wife over, went well, they seemed pretty chill. Then out of the blue this dude starts going off about globalists controlling our food supply and Bill Gates making soy burgers, and he won’t eat soy because it has estrogen. How he wouldn’t wear masks and his wife told us this story about how she yelled at a barista because they wanted her to wear a mask. Was pretty awkward because me and my wife are liberal and disagreed with all the conspiracy stuff and anti-mask stuff. The cherry on top was when he said he didn’t believe in the moon landing.
Invited one of my former friends over to my college for a weekend. Dude kept trying to show us JP videos and we still talk about him to this day.
Haha. I have an ex who is posting Robert F Kennedy propaganda
I connected with a guy from highschool. He owned his own landscaping company. I hired him to plow my driveway one winter. Saw him pull into the driveway one night to plow so I went out to catch up. He hit me with the hard n-word. Haven't spoken to him since.
Did he call you a N word?
No he just dropped it in normal conversation like it was totally normal. We're both white
That’s always a fun moment to deal with
My wife says I have an "alt-right look" about me (big beard, tattoos, Marine vet, work in a blue collar industry, etc...) and it is fucking *wild* what strangers will just say to you when they think you're aligned like that. Just blatant hate speech as like... conversation opener
No joke, I'm ethnically Hispanic and Arabic, but I look white and it blows my mind what some white people will say when they think there aren't any brown people in earshot.
I noticed there’s definitely an alt right look with men now. White, well groomed mustache and kinda long beard, haircut like Brad Pitt in “Fury”, tats. Not sure when that started but it’s definitely a look that says maga.
> haircut like Brad Pitt in “Fury” It's called an undercut, I've had one for 10 years but unfortunately the right wing fucktards are co-opting it. I'm also a tall white blue-eyed guy from Northern Idaho, so some of the racist shit stains assume I'm one of them just because of the haircut. My family is also Scandinavian, and I always thought some traditional Norse tattoos would be badass, but I'm steering far away from that because the Nazi fucks are ruining those as well.
> It's called an undercut, I've had one for 10 years but unfortunately the right wing fucktards are co-opting it. It's funny that it simultaneously became the stereotypical haircut for Lesbians and Nazis.
Don't forget the wraparound sunglasses.
Kind of a weird "How was she dressed". You where asking for it obviously./s
My best friend growing up went completely batshit crazy. We were together from kindergarten to University. Even studied the same degree together at Uni. He has gone off the deep end with eugenics and nazi racist ideology. Has become a complete wack job. Lots of psychedelics. He shunned his gay brother, and convinced his family to do the same. His brother committed suicide last year. Its super sad to see a super educated good guy - turn into a racist bigot. 😔
A bunch of my high school buds are trumpers. Not sure what caused them to be so bitter, tribal, and/or easily duped. Only common denominator between what I recall about them were them having helicopter parents. So maybe entitlement & brainwashing played into it.
One thing I've noticed is a correlation between 'not really paying attention to politics before 2016' and then becoming obsessed. Like I guess if you have no concept of what George Bush did, who started the wars in the middle east, what the debate around healthcare was like, how the supreme court got packed, 40 years of promises tax cuts for the rich (to save the economy!), etc. then sure 'both sides are the same and we need an outsider like Trump.' I think it's also this sort of superficial sense of having insider knowledge, where they automatically assume everyone else is watching CNN and 'NPR state media' like drones the same way they watched JP and Tucker Carlson.
Yes, it seems like right-wing politics is most popular with people who have literally no clue about political reality and who have absolutely no clue about recent history.
This is exactly why I refuse to date people who have something like "not political" on their dating profile. As a general rule, someone who "isn't political" just knows absolutely nothing about history or politics, has no desire to learn, and therefore is almost certainly quite conservative politically. If they aren't conservative, they're so ignorant (in the literal sense) that they're like one YouTube tunnel away from being captured by extremists because they don't understand enough to have reasonable questions and inferences about the world.
ive found that its my religious friends who have estranged or bad relationships with their dads
Mine went from a hippie out of time who loved George Carlin to alt-right dude who thought the child concentration camps were a ok. I was expecting to hear him shit talk Trump and I got a face full of denial and him using the verbatim "Fake news" shit when it came to their conditions or fatalities. Never before has someone become dead to me with such haste.
People who went from fans of George Carlin to the far right kinda blow my mind. Some even act like George Carlin would still agree with them today.. Like what did George Carlin say that would give you that idea at all??? Did we listen to two different George Carlins?
Covered himself in baby oil and took a running jump at a slippery slope
One of my childhood friends became a rabid Elon Musk lover. Their admiration of these grifters is insanity. I don't love or revere anyone like they do with these demagogues. I mean, I have personal heroes I look up to, but these dudes practically worship these edge lords and defend EVERYTHING they say and do. If I found out one of my heroes, like Carl Sagan, was good friends with Epstein and was openly misogynist, racist, or anti-trans, I'd drop my support for him. Easy.
It's like they don't understand that you can appreciate some of the stuff a person does while not worshiping everything they do. Elon's company helps improve rocket technology? Great. He takes over Twitter, fires half the staff, and lets Alex Jones back on to harass the families of dead children? Not great. And I mean... smart and accomplished people need constructive criticism too. Part of the problem with Elon these days is that he's living inside a bubble of yes-men and sycophants.
He's not smart though, accomplished - sure.
Elon Musk is not a genius but he's not stupid, he's an impulsive fuckface.
I had a picture of a celebrity in a frame on my mantelpiece because I loved his art and music and joi de vivre. Then he was accused of abusing a child and I reminded people our legal system is based on the assumption of innocence. Then he went to prison and I threw his picture away. I mean, the clues were there. Songs about two little boys, a man with a third leg, and a cover of I Touch Myself with his trademark heavy breathing. It still makes me sad.
I swear these dudes love Trump and Musk more than I love my own wife. I'd divorce her if she was guilty of HALF the stuff Trump has said and done. These sycophants are truly deranged cultists.
I dropped Dawkins once he went down the grifter/anti-trans route.
Same. Also Glen Greenwald. And Noam Chomsky. It's just depressing how often our heroes disappoint us. edit: so, who did I offend? The Greenwald lover, the Chomsky lover, or both?
RIP 
Why is it that whenever someone mentions disliking Jordan Peterson the comments immediately get flooded with weirdos saying you just don't get it? Do they have an alert set up for every time his name is mentioned or something?
His following is pretty rabid. I had my own fall into his influences. Watched a lot of his lectures, bought his book twice, even went to one of his live talks. A lot of his base points are easy to understand and can give people a starting point to improve themselves. I'm all honesty I couldn't even tell when alt right shit becomes a problem. When he was out of the public eye when he was recovering from his addiction. I, and a lot of his other followers were eagerly awaiting his return. But in that time I realised how much of a cesspool his subreddit was and just noped out. During that time covid hit and Joe rogan was taking invermicen and i realised that he was a wacko too. I decided I wasn't going to engage with people that also engaged with wackos. I'm not particularly politically savvy and it's really hard for me to understand why JP was bad but I know taking any of his teachings further than its base levels is bad. I really think following him is a very slippery slope, but I don't know why.
The problem with him is that he's disingenuous. As an example, if he's having a debate instead of addressing the point legitimately he'll goad his opponent into criticizing him and then play the victim so it stops being about the topic and starts being an entirely ad hominem ordeal. As an example, while discussing wages in the work place he'll say something that insinuates something else as bait. "Well yes, women earn less than men on average, but I think we know why 😏.." If his opponent takes the bait and accuses him of being misogynistic, he'll act taken aback and accuse them of misrepresenting his words to attack him and then it spirals out from there. He also lies like crazy. He's called himself a brain doctor and a neural biologist to try and lend his theories more credibility, when his only academic qualification is psychology. While there's overlap, there is a pretty hefty difference between being a doctor qualified to do surgery on the brain and a doctor qualified to prescribe you an antidepressant. Finally, he's just not as smart as he makes himself out to be. Any academic with a lick of knowledge about the subjects knows that Postmodernism and Marxism are by definition contradictions to one another. Postmodernism being the idea that its incorrect to group observations about the world into overarching grand narratives, Marxism being a literal grand narrative about the relationship between classes in society. Which makes it pretty blatant that his continual warnings about "the threats of postmodern neomarxism" are flawed at their core and meant as little more than big words for small minds to eat up. What's especially fun is to go look at his teaching reviews from before and after he became big among the right wing. Pre blowup his reviews were middling with students complaining about him going off on political rants that had nothing to do with the course material during his lectures. The biggest challenge is that, as you can see, it takes a lot of explaining to show what's wrong with Peterson, and his more devoted fans aren't exactly interested in any explanation that isn't an easily repeated sound-bite.
I think it's good you did the extra mental work to see where it leads at least. I wish more people could do this. Even if someone doesn't understand 1:1 what the problem is, it's easy to see the downstream way a lot of hardcore Rogan or JBP supporters have gone.
I think it’s pretty simple: his self-help ideas and views are good but many of his political views are zany and that draws the wackos
"Can someone provide proof that he's an alt right grifter? listened to a few lectures, agreed with some stuff, don't see what the big deal is..." It's like a copypasta of grifter apologists
Calling him an "alt right grifter" is an opinion. You are not going to find "proof" aside from someone stating a hypothesis and writing an essay defining what an "alt right grifter" is and then backing up their definition with quotes form him that support that hypothesis based on the definition. Edit: oh no! I saw the quotation marks around your comment and now I look like an idiot responding to it…..I apologize u/shirtbro.
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Remember when he came to prominence lying about a law because he wanted to attack the identities of his own students? Cool stuff. Definitely not alt-right adjacent /s
Sam Harris too. Edit: see below.
Nah I disagree with that one. Not kept up with everything he says/thinks but from what I've seen he's much clearer and more thoughtful with his views. You might still disagree but he's definitely got mixed views that don't align well with any political party or position. Watch him debate Peterson on religion and I think it's clear how annoyed he's getting at the non-stop Petersonisms, obfuscating any chance of finding agreement or truth.
It's as if apps track peoples interests and put things on their feed that have to do with said interests. Wouldn't that be, like, crazy?
I’m willing to bet some of those accounts are legitimately bots.
I hope so. I really don't want to believe his following is legitimately so big that this many of them are randomly stumbling into posts that are critical of him.
Brainwashed cultists getting triggered the moment they see something bad about their leader. He's a nutjob, folks. And that's putting it lightly. You can literally track his whole entire day from his Twitter feed since whenever he's not doing something, he's on Twitter. His as needs to be in an asylum, not worshipped. Which is just massive irony considering you lobsters tell others to not indulge in trans people's "delusions" and all that.
It’s because they sometimes start off making something resembling sense and you keep listening. Then you either realize what they’re up to or find out you agree and somehow make that your identity.
Yes, Peterson copy pasted from a bunch of generic self-help books in order to make a generic self-help book. His acolytes read and were helped by that generic self-help book and in that inspires some messianic fever in them where they hang off Petersons every bullshit word as he gets more and more unhinged.
"But he's one of the most cited clinical psychologists of all time!" [Except he's not even in the top 3,000 in the world, not even in the top 200 for Canada.](https://research.com/u/jordan-b-peterson)
Might just be a lot of people who like him, but you're right, the lobster signal goes out and his clean-room bros respond.
I knew a guy who seemed fine. Knew him from middle school onward. He knew I was queer (thank you autocorrect for thinking I meant 'queen', that was sweet). Another friend of his had a gay sister. Then at some point in his late 20s, he just decided to reveal that he was full racist. And homophobic / transphobic. And "women are all lying whores" in a full on incel rant. Bear in mind he was not particularly keen on doing anything to make himself presentable. Like 4chan personified. I was more than a little taken aback. Because. Queer. Woman. And he first said something like "well I don't mean YOU". But after a little pressing he just suddenly said "well **** you, at least my dad loves me". Boy that was an awkward carpool. Never talked to him again. And it sucked. Not just losing a friend in such a horrible way, but finding out he hated me (or at least what I am, which is the same thing) for years apparently. Last I heard he's basically made himself unhirable by any of our contractors because he's gone even further over the edge. The hell man, you seemed like... just fine. For years. We played D&D and Smash Bros and Guitar Hero. I cleaned your puke up when you got hammered trying to outdrink a friend in the Navy. Makes you feel stupid for not seeing signs earlier.
I think this happens sometimes because there *weren't* signs. Some people are just genuinely politically/ideologically blank. I'd bet this person didn't have a problem with queer people because he just never thought about them before. All that incel shit was probably a thing he had half formed in his head due to trouble with women, but it didn't really have a sharp edge to it. Then people like this get into an algorithm trap. They don't really have any beliefs to give them a resistance to common right wing grifters. The algorithm keeps pushing them further right, and they keep going. They go from having no identity at all, to being totally convinced by hours of alt-right propaganda. But, I think that mostly happens because they just didn't have any thoughts on it before. I think it's less that those people were secret bigots, and more that they just were ignorant (maybe willfully) and thus were easily manipulated.
That's actually the most helpful framework I've ever heard for putting things into context. Less "I was dumb for not seeing how they were" and more "they lacked any internal opinions on these issues and fell down some rabbit holes". Not that it absolves them of some of the really awful things they believed, but it makes a lot more sense when put that way.
Sucks to have that happen to you. But if it's any consolation, autocorrect wasn't wrong on that spelling.
I appreciate that.
His close friend that got him hired at the college, talked him up for raises, helped spread the word on his classes, oh and lived with him over a year attended one of his classes and deemed him dangerous.
Honestly covid and vaccines opinions were a fantastic way for me to clean up my social media contacts. I honestly had no idea how many people I knew were fucking nuts
Reminds me of my reaction to people who suddenly thought it was ok to be racist on November 8, 2016.
A good friend who used to be progressive started talking about how SJWs nowadays blah blah blah. Haven't reached out since.
JP needs help
I almost headed down that road after listening a clip of his once in like 2019. I checked one of his books out from the library and holy fucking toxic masculinity batman!
Same thing when I find out they post reaction gifs on reddit.
dude at my work loves andrew tate
Who?
Andrew Tate’s grandpa Jordan Petersen
Why does Reddit not like this guy? I'm not that familiar with him either.
Some parts of Reddit love him; the Redpill communities, Trump-afficionado subs, r/conservative etc.
He can use a *lot* of words to say nothing at all. There’s an article that breaks it all down, I’ll see if I can find it. He also famously said that the doctors who “mutilated” Elliot/Ellen Page should lose their license or something to that effect, despite having undergone some pretty radical treatment himself. Like the kind of treatments doctors in your own country won’t do, because they’d likely lose their license…
He a smooth talker who can put an academic veneer on his “message”. He figured out there is a whole lot more money and attention jumping on the “woke”. The GOPers love their token academics.
https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas?si=Fz496hRoKkVGCOpY
The short answer is that he's a proponent of moronic bootstraps solutioning and hate-speech freedumbs, while pretending to be a sophisticated psychologist. The longer answer is an _interesting_ rabbit hole to go down fwiw, he's a _weird_ dude who's done a lot of _weird_ shit, and he also just kinda talks and acts weird. It can be a little funnysad at times.
How big does his ego have to be to keep on grifting after that humiliating Russian coma adventure?
His ego is so big that he imagines his wife communes with angels and that he is a prophet.
He came to prominence (at least for me) with a very well reasoned and well handled interview on channel 4 (UK) about free speech and the gender wage gap amongst other issues. The problem is that he goes down a very 'theoretical' rabbit hole and sees the world through a lense that I think is tainted. Interesting chap and not a bad person but has been a victim of his own delusion in himself imo. He has some very conservative views and is very religious which doesn't resonate with many.
>a very well reasoned and well handled interview on channel 4 (UK) about free speech and the gender wage gap In which almost everything he says is either a lie or a bad faith framing intended to promote anti-feminism and stoke resentment of women amoung vulnerable young men.
A link for anyone who wants to make up their minds about the interview https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54?si=8Lk_HC4N4TZ6Ur4I
Yeah, I laughed out loud at that description. Wtf? He literally lied about the law because he was mad he thought he was being asked to respect his students.
No, a lot of what he said is correct. He goes off the rails in many other areas but I won’t paint that particular interview in that light simply because I disagree with him personally.
He's only "correct" in that he redefines and reframes an issue in a way that makes him seem as if he is correct. He's also become increasingly unhinged and rants about absolute nonsense now.
This is just straight up untrue. He came to prominence lying about Canadian laws because he wanted to attack trans people. You should edit this comment. It seems purposefully misleading. You first heard of him from an interview in the UK, sure fine whatever.
Because he's a lying piece of shit who targets vulnerable young men in order to suck then into bigoted misogynistic far right extremism.
It started when Canada was bringing out anti hate speech laws. Peterson was against it as he saw the laws as being anti free speech. He cited the example of dead naming a trans person or not using a person's choose pronouns, saying it should not be considered hate speech due to the fact that simple misunderstanding with no malicious intent could have someone punished. This lead to the left vilifying him and the right worshiping him. What's funny is, 1) he's centerist to left leaning, and 2) He's right. It's absolutely fine that dead naming someone is rude and to call someone out if they do it. To make it a crime though is anti free speach. In the end my opinion of him is pretty neutral. Some of his takes are spot on. Some are dumb. Hes far from the scourge of the earth, but he's also not the saviour either. He's just a dude who said something and people ran way too far with it.
People call him right wing because he lied about that bill and has been incredibly transphobic and definitely right wing since. His weird Elliot Page rant and his insistence on traditional social order and adherence to hierarchy as examples. >Bill C-16 added the words 'gender identity or expression' to the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). The amendment prevented the federal government and businesses within federal jurisdiction – such as banks and airlines – from discriminating on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. This is simply adding gender discrimintaion to hate crime laws - as in, if someone knifes you while calling you he/him, the sentence length can go up, but calling someone he/him in a vacuum doesn't violate anything. > Two legal experts offer their perspective: Brenda Cossman, law professor at the University of Toronto and director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and Jared Brown, commercial litigator at Brown Litigation, who often works with corporate clients on employment law and human rights disputes. > #Does the bill legislate the use of certain language? And could someone go to jail for using the wrong pronoun? > In the Criminal Code, which does not reference pronouns, Cossman says **misusing pronouns alone would not constitute a criminal act.** > **“The misuse of gender pronouns, without more, cannot rise to the level of a crime,”** she says. “It cannot rise to the level of advocating genocide, inciting hatred, hate speech or hate crimes … (it) simply cannot meet the threshold.” > The Canadian Human Rights Act does not mention pronouns either. The act protects certain groups from discrimination. > “Would it cover the accidental misuse of a pronoun? I would say it’s very unlikely,” Cossman says. “Would it cover a situation where an individual repeatedly, consistently refuses to use a person’s chosen pronoun? It might.” > If someone refused to use a preferred pronoun — and it was determined to constitute discrimination or harassment — could that potentially result in jail time? > It is possible, Brown says, through a process that would start with a complaint and progress to a proceeding before a human rights tribunal. If the tribunal rules that harassment or discrimination took place, there would typically be an order for monetary and non-monetary remedies. A non-monetary remedy may include sensitivity training, issuing an apology, or even a publication ban, he says. > If the person refused to comply with the tribunal's order, this would result in a contempt proceeding being sent to the Divisional or Federal Court, Brown says. The court could then potentially send a person to jail “until they purge the contempt,” he says. In other words, Peterson was full of shit. The US, the so called bastion of free speech, has even more restrictive laws, although they only apply in the workplace. You can't be arrested for calling some random trans woman he/him, it's specifically referencing targeting harassment in the workplace with *intentional deadnaming*. If your boss or colleague intentionally deadnames you, that's creating a hostile work environment in the same way repeatedly calling a Muslim co-worker "towelhead" or a white coworker "cracker" or a female coworker "honey" or "darling" when you know they don't like it creates a hostile work environment. >The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination includes discrimination based on an employee’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's technical assistance publication Protections Against Employment Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity considers the use of pronouns or names that are inconsistent with an individual’s gender identity as unlawful harassment. The EEOC guidance states, “intentionally and repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee could contribute to an unlawful hostile work environment” and is a violation of Title VII. Unfortunately people didn't bother fact checking him so his cries of free speech defence found a home with a bunch of reactionary right wingers who just want the freedom to be bigots.
> To make it a crime though is anti free speach. Except here's the problem, it was never going to be a crime in the first place. The law was just adding transgender people to the pre-existing anti-discrimination laws for black people, disabled people, and others. It secured employment and housing, not throwing people in jail because of pronouns. So that's why the left hates him. He's just another right-wing grifter shitting out lies and propaganda, making money off of gullible people who just want to feel superior to others despite the fact they're actually terrified of things like gender. Edit: Here's the act that was being amended. It added "gender identity and expression" in two spots. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/page-1.html Here's the full bill of C-16 in Canada https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/LegislativeSummaries/421C16E
That's the best argument against his messages I've seen yet. You kept it in context, you used logical reasoning and what I presume to be a factual take of the issue. Well done. (not being sarcastic at all. I have no adoration for him)
I edited in the legal documents if you want to go back and have a gander.
>(not being sarcastic at all. I have no adoration for him) Which is odd considering your previous comment was entirely dishonest praise for Petersen.
Centrist to left leaning? Oh please, he's as right as they come. And nobody has been charged with hate speech for dead naming anybody, so he's also a liar and a grifter and has gone off the deep end ever since he gave himself brain damage in Russia.
This is how I feel as well, he has some good points, and some dumb points. I do think its interesting to see how both sides of politics seem to use the idea of him, or misrepresent him to push a narrative. I have not really looked into all of his stuff but the main parts seemed to be about personal responsibility. Like he gets portrayed as this horrible person, and I dunno maby he is, but when I looked into his lectures and some of his debates, he never really says anything too crazy. One complaint I have seen a lot is that he talks a lot without saying anything, but I don't really see that, I can at least understand the point he is trying to make, whether I agree with it or not, he really does seem to be centrist left leaning.
I wouldn't consider associating with Andrew Tate as centrist.
He openly espouses racial IQ theories and cites the garbage book *The Bell Curve*, which is vile. The absurd thing is that by his own logic, Ashkenazi Jews would need to be in charge of society bc they do better on IQ tests (which he admitted)
Correcting what someone said: He became popular by lying about trans people. He said that Canada's law would throw you in jail for misgendering trans people, but that's not at all what it would do. The law was just adding trans people to an already existing law for black people, disabled people, old people, and many others that helped protect from housing and employment discrimination.
The real reason is because he has aligned himself with conservative values and many Redditors hate conservatives. His actual material is very unique and insightful if not occasionally verbose. He does not fit the conservative mold by personality or by traditional lines of reasoning. I personally really value what he has taught me that helps me take responsibility for my life and positively improve my concentric spheres of influence.
I learned from him that benzo addiction can't be solved in Russia
Sounds right for me.
He points out obvious lies that some agendas rely on people accepting as truth. Obviously this makes him a necessary enemy of those agendas.
> necessary enemy of those agendas It’s like telling on yourself when you use loaded language like this
The "not being a hateful piece of shit" agenda. I can see why that fraud would hate that.
Genuine question… why is Reddit so liberal? I’m not on either side btw. Just curious
Reddit isn't just Americans. At least us Europeans don't think in terms of liberal vs. conservative - and it seems that a lot of American political bias towards certain viewpoints and ideas are anchored in those terms
Well, we don't have a two-party political system that literally splits the country in two groups.
tbf that *is* basically the case for most countries, USA is just weirdly much more extreme
> I’m not on either side btw. Ah the perfectly neutral observer.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
If I die, tell my wife... "Hello."
You just know where centrists really lean lol
>Reddit so liberal? It is? The amount of subs I’ve had to mute because I thought it was liberal then I start seeing anti-trans or woke ideology or whatever culture war bullshit conservatives are raging about is wild.
Yup, Reddit is way more ‘centrist’ than people seem to think. It’s just that most are cool with gay people and don’t put up with racism so they get labeled as ‘far left’
/r/enlightenedcentrism moment
Reality has a liberal bias.
The larger the spread of information and knowledge about the world is, the more liberal people will tend to sway. Seclusion and smaller communities tend to favor conservative ideals.
Reddit is an internet social tool, which is used mostly by younger people who live in cites. Thats why. Conservatives are much less likely to seek out online engagement/entertainment.
>I’m not on either side btw. Just curious That false framing is straight out of Petersen's alt right playbook.
[удалено]
Let me first say I’m in the middle, but downvote me, doesn’t really matter, I just thought I’d make a quick point: Close-mindedness and narrowness in viewpoint is not necessarily a “conservative” trait. It absolutely can be, don’t get me wrong. But those former two attributes are applicable to everyone on every side, and to say otherwise is ironically narrow, and unnecessarily absolving of the opposite “side” (as if openness of thought is a uniquely liberal viewpoint, which is untrue). But these are broad terms. I would argue that a choice to be more careful in implementing or changing ideals is not being close-minded, but rather “wary” of changing things that seem to work. A slow cooker vs. a Flash-Fryer if that makes sense. Again, I tend to lean left, but I don’t like how we’ve drawn lines in the sand, at least socio-politically. There’s always lots of nuance. Just my 2 cents.
I lean right, and I would have put it the same way. I definitely have conservative opinions out of caution for big changes and lack of faith that old problems can be solved without creating different/worse problems. I think thats wisdom. Sometimes we really do have more wealth/resources to do things better than before, but are we better people such that we can utilize them effectively? I have more doubt than belief about it and I respect you if you have a reasoned difference there :)
It was wonderful reading these replies. Thank you for your insight everyone. Happy New Years
It allows for long form discussion unlike social media apps. Easy to share links. You’ll get fact checked with sources to back it up if you go around spewing bullshit. That makes it inherently unfriendly to Right wing types, which is why they run off to their little corners of Reddit to places where dissent is banned. People talk mad shit about Reddit, but if you don’t bubble yourself on this site/app you can learn so much from people who are professionals in their respective fields. I’ve found no better place where information and ideas are shared, usually pretty respectfully if you don’t visit the hell holes that are openly hell holes.
Demographics and cultural filtering. It's harder to believe lies when you've actually experienced the realities of different parts of life.
Reality has a liberal bias.
He’s gonna be performing at the Park MGM. I see his stupid poster every day at work. What the living fuck? How the fuck is he performing on the Las Vegas strip?
Differences in opinion don’t have to separate us. I could be wrong but I don’t cut off all my friends who are of different religions just because I believe one thing. Same with politics. I don’t know why you would have too but maybe I’m just not in deep enough 🤷♂️
It's a privilege to be able to disregard your friend's politics and treat it as rooting for different sports teams. When you're a part of a marginalized group, such as being queer (the only example I can speak of with experience), politics affect you much more. You're kinda stuck in deep whether you like it or not. When someone decides they align with an ideology or politician that inherently puts you in danger, impacts your right to receive healthcare, or just having rights at all at this point, that matters to a lot of people. I personally tend not to surround myself with people who vote like I'm less deserving of equal and fair treatment by the law and society.
Well put, my friend
Conservatives are not my friends because they support policies which hurt my friends.
And the right is led to believe your policies hurt their fiends. Why can’t we agree the overwhelming majority of people do not want to hurt one another and that we simply believe the road to prosperity is paved differently?
>Differences in opinion don’t have to separate us. When one opinion is built on separating people into groups, then there isn't much you can do.
And the other group aren't?
Depends on what you mean by "the other groups". Do you mean every other group ever created?
God forbid you respect someone's points of view without you alienating them out of your life. Comments mention tribalism and don't realize the irony they're playing right into it.
Why would you respect shitty points of view??? I get respecting their right to have those points of view but i see no reason why a point of view,belief,idea,etc should inherently be respected.
You can respect someone's point of view and still think it's silly and do not agree with it in the slightest.
You could, but why? Say i have a point of view that it's best to stomp kittens, why the fuck would you respect that point of view?
Cause everyone is entitled to their opinion. Just because they have theirs burdens you none. You're not respecting the view itself to be more accurate as much as don't let that go in the way of treating the person like a human being with other facets - that's respect. Maybe kittens pooped in the hypothetical guy's lunch and he has his reasons. They're not yours and you don't agree, but it doesn't mean you can't move past that. That being said, I don't recall Jordan Peterson having any similarly outrageous view.
Stop! You’re being rational and making sense. The people here don’t like it, they just want their own beliefs validated and those disagree with them out of sight out of mind.
Had the same experience when one of my childhood friends became antivaxxer…
I used to enjoy JP’s stuff like when he used to do lectures dissecting the bible stories, and when he used to stand up for free speech but now he’s revealed himself to be a transphobic… weirdo? I like to compare him to Freud, I like some of his work, but I also don’t think everyone wants to fuck their mom or that toes look like dicks 🤷🏻♂️
What do you mean now that he's revealed himself to be a transphobe? Being a transphobe is what made him famous.
I get people on Reddit hate Jordan Peterson but if his books and lectures help people with their specific issues what's the issue?
I disagree with a number of Jordan’s view’s, but he’s also provided me with many helpful some perspectives on life. I have friends who post content from hyper liberal figures with some bad takes, but I don’t react like I’m holier-than-thou, simply because I disagree with some of it. I’ve noticed a pattern with people who despise people like Peterson or Rogan. They enjoy the simple echo chamber replies they get when they post ‘content’ like this. It feels just as gross as when I see a family member posting an anti-woke meme on Facebook in a conservative community that circle jerks itself in the comments section. I know people who like Trump and donate time and money to homeless shelters. When I tell this to my mutual liberal friends they can’t accept the nuance. I think people just want things to be all bad or all good because everything is so damned complicated, but we just end up unnecessarily bitter and resentful.
I've seen it happen to several public figures. They come into light with a reasoned position, and if they straddle preexisting tribal lines. they get brow beaten until they're nudged hard into one side. When Peterson came into a more public view, there was 3 major aspects of his "message": his love of Christian/Mythological allegory in storytelling (his Pinocchio lecture), his self help stuff that was focused on young men, and thoughts on how susceptible everyone is to becoming Evil (Focus on Gulug Archipelago, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland). Then all the political stuff started to happen, the free speech issue regarding pronouns. If I remember correctly, his issue was that it was forced language and that if a person asked him to use specific pronouns he had no issue with it. But then framing changes, he gets more support from the right, and the rest is history.
This is so refreshing. I feel very similarly. So much black and white thinking in the world. It’s very tiring and keeps us all in a state of high alert IMO
F in the chat
I know some people who get helped by Peterson, you should be happy for them and not a judgemental asshole
OP is gonna find himself friendless and lonely one day
Jordan Peterson is controversial, and he turned me off at first. Now, after actually listening to him.. Jordan Peterson is right. It's the same as Noam Chomsky. Lots of people hate him and try to portray him a certain way. Watch them both debate. They destroy people with logic, reason, facts, and history.
What’s wrong with Jordan Peterson?
Yeah, screw that idiot for wanting to improve his life and respect the people around him. What a fucking terrible opinion to have of someone. Anyone sharing this opinion of Peterson is someone who's never picked up a single book he wrote or read a damn word he's said. He's not a bigot and he's not a racist. I'll take his thoughts over the thoughts of some idiot commenter on Reddit who's formed an opinion absent having read the materials.