I follow a guy on insta I used to know a decade ago but who has long since gone around the bend into volkish post-PUA manosphere land. He's kind of a useful gauge of what's happening with various fringe ideological formations—sometimes you can spot a new signifier floating around

A strange thing I've noticed lately is the proliferation of the phrase (often hashtagged) "critical thinking not critical theory." It's very weird to me that "critical thinking" has become a totem for people obsessed with Jung, powerlifting, and cultural marxism!!

He's not a dumb guy, he's read a lot, used to be an anarchist. It's so hard to get my head around coming to see Jordan P*terson as some kind of sage, and having a Cernovichian level of understanding of like, the Frankfurt School, when you used to write an anarchist theory zine!

A buddy from my PhD has a similar ex-friend. I was talking about this guy once and my buddy was like "oh yeah a guy I used to play D&D with in high school who was really into Scandanavian metal went full redpill a few years ago." It's wild

On some level I think I get how this happens to alienated, 14-year-old boys, maybe even high schoolers, but there's something truly inscrutable to me about people who do this as adults

also seen on his insta: pistol pic with "sometimes you need one of these. That's the world. You may dislike it but that won't change anything," promoting a dubious rescue org for trafficked women, and pics of frankly pretty impressive book piles he claims to have read this month

Anyway the only interaction we’ve had since probably 2011 is when I posted this insta story and he DMed me to get into an elenchus about JBP. (As you can see I declined.)