HYP3💹🪽

(Warning: Word wall alert) There is something that is ultimately far more damaging to a community than a FED who is simply running an op like SPX6900 Rainbow. It’s someone who genuinely believes they’re a force for good, their integrity is beyond reproach and are convinced that they acting in the best interests of SPX … yet, invariably finds themselves in a very small minority on many issues counter to the prevailing culture and norms or socially isolated. In the process they have become unable to distinguish what’s good for the community from the validation of their own judgment. If people disagree with them → they are members of the echo chamber. If influential people disagree with them → they are echo chamber leaders, gatekeepers, etc. If lots of people disagree with them → that demonstrates how pervasive the echo chamber is. If criticism becomes intense → that demonstrates how threatening their independent thinking is. Sound familiar? There is almost no possible outcome in which they have to entertain the proposition that other people independently considered what they said and concluded that they were simply WRONG. Instead, everyone else’s independence has to be demonstrated by disagreeing with the people they disagree with. Such a person typically becomes obsessed with proving that nobody should have any sort of soft authority (and believes that all views should be tolerated with equal weighting) which ironically, constructs an enormous authority for themselves: their own judgment becomes unfalsifiable. “I am an independent thinker! I cannot be controlled!” Unfortunately, we’ve spawned a few of these people in SPX, as well as some notable adjacents that blew in from other communities. Their egos can’t allow them to concede anything and at its worst it devolves into full on narcissism - to the point that they’d rather side or amplify the efforts of hostile actors, tear down the culture and damage SPX than wind their necks in or show some loyalty/good will/compassion empathy to their fellow Aeons. (And if you think you have been treated wrongly or other people have acted badly - and of course that can be the case because nobody is perfect - what happened to taking the higher ground and being the better person?) We also need to learn the difference between a dissident and a contrarian. And truly independent thinker is someone who actually agrees/aligns with the wider community and its prevailing culture and norms the majority of the time (otherwise, what the hell are you doing here?!?) but can dissent in a healthy mature way when necessary. A independent thinker can be a dissident and say: “I will disagree with the group when I believe the group is wrong.” An identity contrarian says: “My disagreement with the group demonstrates that I am the kind of person who sees what others cannot.” The first is extremely valuable to a community. The second becomes an ever more toxic presence. All this is a long winded way to say that with regret it is once again time to use that mute button and move on. (P.S. remember that muting nukes reach better than blocking)