This is the best explanation for the disconnect between progressivism and conservatism that I’ve ever heard. It makes total sense. I sort of knew this already, since it’s clear from their racism that they think helping minorities hurts them somehow, but this video wraps that idea up into a nice, simple explanation.
Ian Danskin is a fucking
nationalworld treasure!Please consider supporting him if you can, to make even more videos like this one.
The quality of Innuendo Studios has been declining lately, and I no longer feel comfortable sharing their videos. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/innuendo-studios-is-getting-more-reactionary-2c9e54da67b5
The first reference in that article is to a behavior. It’s not IS’s fault that there are a lot of articles denigrating people with NPD for displaying that behavior. The behavior itself is an issue, whether or not the person doing it has NPD. A job interview is an example of flattery and manipulation, and that’s why nobody expects them to be an absolutely accurate view of a person.
The second reference is a language issue and it’s a valid point. “Narcissistic” is a loaded term, in that it’s both a diagnostic descriptor and a colloquial term, and it’s easy to simply substitute it with egotistical or self-obsessed, which don’t have additional medical definitions. This is the absolute first time this has come across my radar, though, so I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if it’s also not on IS’s radar- the author of that piece ascribes it to hate, but that seems like a real stretch.
I watched the video, and then visited the sources. This seems like a good candidate for the psychology of the video, but frankly, there are a lot of sources that all describe the methods of alt-right actors online. It would be great if it was better sourced, but it’s a quick video that doesn’t cover too much new ground.
The title of the article is also misleading- the author notes a poorly cited video and two microaggressions against people with NPD, but those aren’t reactionary things imo.
I think that aggression against people on the basis of disability is inherently reactionary, no matter the scale of the aggression, nor the disability in question. Furthermore, there’s also the fact that Ian thinks Gary was wrong to defend an indigenous species from genocide by a colonising power. That is an incredibly bad take to be coming from an outlet often touted as exemplary of leftist values. And the fact that it seems to be a factor that the liberator of the indigenous people is supposedly disabled, makes it very sus.
There is a bunch of odd things on that page that make me distrust, if not its journalistic integrity, then at least its fact-checking ability overall - e.g. nowhere does it ever describe what “NPD” means (an extremely basic rule in all professional writing: always define abbreviations upon first use, even if only via a link to something like a dictionary page), and this next one is more just odd but on a mobile site they have disabled zooming in on the pictures to read them more easily. i.e. despite its tone it reads like it exists more for the sake of the author wanting to vent their emotional state rather than trying to actually convey information.
In any case, I imagine that Ian is the type of person who would receive criticism well and, if warranted, even remove that video from his site in the worst case, or else adjust it if need be. But rather than take that idea further, I will preemptively concede that nothing is ever fully perfect, and even if that singular video were to be found to have problems with it, it would barely budge my opinion of the overall series of videos, which have quite a bit of weight behind them given their number and overall high quality of content. i.e., one video is not nothing, but neither is it everything. Also, on general principles, since when did one data point ever define a “trend”?
If discussion of politics is not to your liking, there are many other topics on his YouTube page, even if the Playlists page does not make that immediately apparent. e.g., feminism, art critiques, especially about video games and some older ones about movies, and more. One I HIGHLY recommend is this: https://youtu.be/R943_eAvnWw?si=dqjL7WtKZAM-W3iS about the nature of “protagony”, consent regarding artificial entities and what that may imply for us all (warning: while not technically NSFW, still caution may be advisable). Also, a metric shitton of videos about games, games, and more games.
Here is perhaps long past where I should have added that I do not always agree with what he says. But that literally does not matter to me in the slightest - I still enjoy hearing what he has to say, and especially the manner in which he dissects it.:-)
The whole capitalizing ‘my’ thing is a really weird vibe that comes off ironically narcissistic. Also who starts an article with a digit? Does Medium no longer have editors?
Honestly it kind of reminds me of a thread that popped up here a few weeks ago.
I am not sure Medium ever had editors. I think they got a good reputation because a lot of professional writers wrote blogs and articles on there, but AFAIK it has always been a blog site.
I use capitalised neopronouns because I’m transgender and nonbinary. I’m sure you didn’t realise that, or else you wouldn’t have complained about My pronouns. And yes, I am a person living with narcissistic personality disorder. You can psychoanalyse a potential connection between My gender and My disability if you wish, but please don’t feel the need to share your opinion of My psychiatric history, as I’ve heard, and thought about, it all before. Chicken, egg, it doesn’t matter to anyone else but Me, because it doesn’t hurt anyone except perhaps Me. That is if people are not understanding of My gender identity.
I have seen worse - e.g. when Donald Trump had some “lawyers” write up a brief to defend his actions during the second of two impeachment trials, which somehow misspelled the USA as “Unites States of America”. It makes sense that he misspells his own name and such on social media - we don’t bother as much with that stuff here (though in that case the site was the one that at the time was still called Twitter), but in a legal briefing for such an important issue, which will go into the permanent record of the the entire nation, and indeed the world, we normally expect better!?
Hence, the attitude of the Greek philosophy of stoicism comes to mind: we cannot control others, but damnit we should control ourselves! e.g. when we see such things, pay attention to how they signal us that the content is click bait that even the author didn’t put much effort into, therefore we should not either:-P.
Which only makes me love Innuendo Studios all the harder, by virtue of its being so rare to have such depths and clarity of thought as well as superb execution.
If discussion of politics is not to your liking
Actually, I am Extremely Political. Here are My blog posts on the subject of the subject of politics. One admittedly quite aggressive on the subject:
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/there-is-no-such-thing-as-apolitical-and-claiming-otherwise-is-dangerous-72180711a310
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/apolitical-queers-dont-deserve-to-opt-out-of-discourse-25bf467f9cc2Also, I admit that I am constructing a very emotional narrative in the blog post, which is a transparent attempt at emotionally manipulating people into feeling empathy and patience for the big scary person living with NPD. I find that when I use language that permits people to think of these issues as a matter of cold, hard, factual accuracy, their ability to empathise with oppressed peoples who they’ve been told to hate is deeply impaired. Stories are the language of human memory. They’re easy to listen to, easy to remember, easy to think about, and easy to feel about. The human mind is optimised for processing stories more readily than facts. So I often try to present facts as stories.
In any case, thank you for the idea to ask Ian directly. I just did so, and I plan to heavily rethink My post if he agrees.
That is so awesome. Yeah I admit I got emotional myself when you seemed to come out swinging in an adversarial stance against my favorite YouTuber. You are learning how you want to structure your journey and receptive to feedback so you will go far I believe, and I hope you remember that he is like that too so you should share that in common:-). A lot of people would be allies who, perhaps bc of their disorders and/or how raised by their parents, struggle with articulating their points in a manner that others can readily accept. Maybe he does sometimes. Maybe you do too. Definitely I do. It’s maybe important to not alienate them and rather reach out to share and even celebrate our common ground!?:-) 🥳 I hope he does that for you. But either way, stay strong my human.
He pinned a comment on the video that the word is wrong and promised to edit the video to remove or blur it! I took My article down.
Omg that is an amazing, heart-warming story, thanks so much for the update on it. I suspected he would - he seems like he genuinely cares, rather than e.g. being out to merely make money or get fame or “power” or some such by having his channel (Innuendo Studios).
Nobody can be correct 100% of the time, at least on the first pass, but if we are amenable to correction when appropriate, then how could we not end up being correct, eventually!? :-D
It’s so great also that he’s an ally for neurodivergence too, as well as being committed to Truth in general.:-)
Thanks for the good share
Been many years since I saw this. Thanks for bringing it back.
Wow, this was a fantastic explanation.
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