Adult children pretend to be adults, pressuring other adult children to do the same. And then we're sorted into new realities where these are the only sights to behold. Let's wrap up this conversation on the immaturity, manipulation, and illusion of modern living.
summary
In this conversation, lets explores the impact of societal norms and the internet on individual identity and behavior. Looking at how traumatized social behaviors, for example toxic masculinity and femininity, are perpetuated through generations due to a lack of experiential wisdom. The conversation highlights the role of the internet in shaping identity and the maturity gap that exists in society. Then we discuss how algorithms manipulate social interactions and create divisions among individuals, leading to a regression into immature behaviors. The need for mature adult leadership is emphasized as a solution to the current societal challenges.
takeaways
- Traumatized social behaviors stem from a child's understanding of adulthood.
- Cult.ural norms are passed down through generations, creating default behaviors.
- There is a disconnect between biological and social maturity, known as the maturity gap.
- Individuals are often influenced by those who are less knowledgeable.
- Algorithms create and maintain social cliques, leading to automated radicalization.
- Social media has made it impossible to escape manipulative influences.
- The sorting process of algorithms keeps people isolated in differing realities, serving our owners.
- Real adult leadership is needed to navigate current societal challenges.
keywords
traumatized social behaviors, toxic masculinity, internet influence, identity crisis, algorithms, social manipulation, peer pressure, emotional maturity, societal norms, psychological age
Today we’re here… to wrap up our take on what’s happening globally, supported by peer-reviewed psychological research we’ve been reading all month.
Let me start by sharing….
Children psychology in adult bodies
People who subscribe and push for what we might consider “traumatized social behaviors” such as toxic masculinity and femininity? Do so because they have a child’s understanding of adulthood.
When a person doesn’t have the experiential wisdom to know how to act because they are too young, but social pressure says it’s time to fucking grow up…. Individuals emulate whatever cartoonish, caricature-ish representation of a grown up that they’ve come to understand. You can see it in youngsters. And the behaviors don’t disappear with age.
Being big, tough, emotionless, ruthless, proud – if you’re a man.
Being small, soft, delicate, motherly, sweet, naïve – if you’re a woman.
And all the gender roles emerge between the two.
Now consider if this happens in one generation… and is passed along to the next. So that the children pretending to be grown ups are directly instructed to carry on this play – to be this falsely concentrated ideal. Each person being told “this is the right way to do it.” SO that there’s less and less personal doubt with each generational iteration. It becomes the default set of instructions that everyone unanimously agrees upon, because they did the same.
It creates cultures of children in adult clothing. Kids, cosplaying as grown-ups.
And then continues to get more extreme as that cult.ure becomes stronger… MORE unanimous.
… But also when it feels challenged. When the way people have carried out their lives is at all called into question, they usually double down on their beliefs and become aggressive in self-defense.
On the micro level, this is something we see in traumatized families, right? Kids often follow in their parents’ footsteps, mimicking their behaviors as they figure out what adulthood means, and behaving violently if anyone dares to suggest there’s a healthier, higher-minded way of doing things.
Perhaps this helps to explain a good deal of the political and religious polarization we’ve been seeing. With the less actually-adult adults trying to protect what they’ve been instructed is “correct” because they don’t critically question the costume they (and everyone around them) has been wearing for decades. Because, how could they, when everyone around them and all the media they consume have subscribed to the same way of being to maintain group cohesion.
Want to understand idiosyncrasies and hypocritical behaviors in personal and impersonal relationships that baffle you?
Try to see the person (or group of persons) as a kid or a group of them, pretending to be adults – and I bet their actions will make a lot more sense to you.
Maturity Gap & Internet Pressure
In our last episode, we said.. twice…
The internet has sent peer influence on a path of continual increase – untethered from biological age.
Because peer influence is about psychological age. Not neurophysiological growth, alone.
Yes, our brains are still developing in high school. But peer pressure is about emotional and consciousness age. It springs up from a mind needing to understand who it is and where it belongs.
The internet has caused all of us to newly question or re-question both of those things.
You can be any age and engage with 7 billion people, at any time of the day, in any place. Identity is no longer fixed, and it is up for discussion from a large crowd.
Thus…
Peer pressure is alive and making us unwell.
Because we (collectively speaking) never really matured, wholistically, as a species, to earn the privilege of unfettered communication with a diverse group of strangers.
The internet was more than we were prepared for, developmentally, as a whole.
The disconnect between biological and social maturity, known as the maturity gap, creates a specific form of adolescence-limited conformity pressure (Moffitt, 1993).
Creating a chain of jackasses that get more severe with each iteration, as children mimic the behaviors of other children, (dressed as adults), each of them thinking that they’re demonstrating the ultimate dick swinging.
And we’re taking cues about who to be from folks who know even less than we do, but boisterously present themselves as leaders.
Idolizing upwards
Most adolescents recognize that friends are required to successfully navigate peer culture. Friends are particularly important to those whose undesirable characteristics.. place them at risk for victimization (Fox & Boulton, 2006; Kochel et al., 2017).
Which might explain why those who have undesirable characteristics, such as being unsuccessful, reactive, admittedly – self identifyingly - “not smart,” have latched onto the teat of the party that they pretend to be friends with. And then used those internet peers as the fake adults to copy.
Going so far as to call some of those popular figures “daddy,” even.
If you’ve also been baffled about why the least resourced of the population have hooked up with the billionaire class that controls them… this is why.
The illusion that you really DO have access to these celebrities and politicians. That you are similar. That they care about you. That you’re somehow safer by being in their sphere. In their cult of followers.
And, that brings us to….
Algorithms as Clique Leaders
The third party that all cliques – all individuals OF all online cliques - now affiliate with.
Algorithms.
So that the population has become children led by children, now automatically sorted into highly contrasting groups – lord of the flies style.
Not even by choice.
Cliques are now created by, maintained by, and radicalized by algorithms. Which are created by, maintained by, and radicalized by, the ruling class.
If you click the wrong video, you’re suddenly being sucked into the third party affiliation required by one of the two groups. And once you enter, there are explicit demands to follow and support other third party icons. Which will be no problem to figure out and attend to, because ALL THE MEDIA you will be delivered will state the same thing.
Previously, movie studios and magazines told us what to believe and who to be. With limited media options for identity modelling and creating, this is how teenagers decided who they were or were allowed to be.
Now, we have the much more nefarious and unseeable influence of the internet, doing the same, but worse, because we don’t realize we’re being sent these instructions. We can’t comprehend that our reality is not reality; it’s the scenery and storyline that machines are feeding us. And we don’t have the option to abstain from engaging (or engorging) in it…. because a brain has to model “reality” somehow to navigate life, and alternative information isn’t being provided within these algorithmic torrents.
Before, one could say “these teen movies are bullshit, I’m not a dumb jock, an eating disordered cheerleader, or a mopey goth and I WILL NOT SEE THE FILMS.”
Now, no person can choose what they’re being influenced by, short of getting off the web entirely. Everything sent to every phone has been curated to influence that person’s thoughts and actions, in the most effective way possible, based on what they were primed to accept and believe.
Inch by inch, nudging every person towards the identity options chosen by the people in control – children in adult cosplay who figured out how to lead the other children for their own gains while pretending it’s mutually beneficial - via the most efficient manipulation route being constantly, automatically, and addictingly delivered to their eyeballs, and tailored to their brain depending on what piece of media they started clicking from.
THIS is how disparate, desperate, identity-shakey individuals have been so easily wrapped up in the games of a certain political party.
And how the rest of us…. Same. But we can’t see it, either.
Immaturity and Illusion All the Way Down
So, to pull this into focus.
The human species wasn’t prepared to be locked in a middle school dance with the rest of the population. Wasn’t mature or self-secure enough.
From this uncertain social setup, charismatic leaders arose.
Unfortunately, with the most convincing of them falling into the “aggressive” category of popular bullies.
This encouraged many people to behave the same.
Meanwhile, algorithms cropped up, controlled BY those aggressive bullies at the top. Or, their cronies and benefactors, to be more specific.
This, then, began to automatically encapsulate all individuals into cliques. Groups where similarity is crucial to be accepted and rewards were offered for following directives. For succumbing to peer pressure.
And meanwhile, we’re not even at the same dance anymore.
Algorithms have made life akin to attending different schools. We don’t see each other in the halls. We don’t share the same instructors. We don’t clap with the same mascots.
And our institutions are rivals.
Thanks to tradition, thanks to “the way it always has been,” thanks to the generations of children who’ve come before and the shit they’ve stirred in the past, pretending to act like adults via aggressing and ignoring each other, we’re locked in pointless battles that we can only lose.
As both schools burn.
It’s not our faults. It’s due to the sorting process that keeps us isolated in pods which feel like the only thing that matter. Just like friend groups did when we were younger.
But no one has identified it as such, due to the nature of the un-reality that algorithms have created. We can’t see how we’re being influenced from the top to behave like the people around us, who are mimicking those popular figures up above.
And as much as we’d all love to call “them” (in quotes) pathetic sheeple… they’re in the same boat as we are. Manipulated by technology, hijacking our socially natured brains, so that we don’t stand a chance to think or behave for ourselves.
“Following the leader” has become systematized by technology and turned against our biology and psychology. Bringing peer pressure into our lives, well after we would have previously in time “grown out of it.” Convincing us all to emulate icons selected to keep us separate, hierarchical, and fighting each other like trained pitbulls for the benefit of our owners. And making the entire influence invisible, unanimous, and insidious.
So that humanity regresses into the worst of middle school behaviors.
And we all scream for a real adult to enter the gymnasium, for the love of satan, to return sanity and order…. With two prevailing, disconnected ideas, about what that should look like.
Either desiring “real adults” with emotional maturity, because that’s what we’ve accomplished within ourselves… or the continuation of children in grown up cosplay steering the ship, because that’s what feels like home.
I hope this dip into sociology has helped clarify some questions about recent events on planet earth.
And may this be your bimonthly reminder that even I struggle to heed… no one is immune to the influence of algorithms. Perceptions shape perspectives shape realities.
If you value your own thoughts and actions, get off the popular digital media platforms. None of it is reality. It’s a “choose your own manipulation” adventure, from the first item you click, onward.
And, as every grown up in every teenage movie would say… just cuz your friends are doing it (friends, being a very loose, fake, internet term), doesn’t mean you should also jump off that cliff.
Thanks Fuckers.
Take care out there.
Hail Archie.
And I’ll talk to you next week with the public wrap-up episode on this series.