I think their brains have just been thoroughly microwaved by social media feedback loops. I remarked elsewhere that I'm not sure these people are or can be earnest about this (cf. the fact that the billionaires they're celebrating are laser-focused on the tech they claim might doom the world); they're simply too conditioned towards creating outrage content for Twitter. To me, this is more akin to LARPing "Leave Britney alone!" than it is serious political activism.

I would say that the in-group jargon is more of a retention tactic than an attraction tactic, although it can become that for people who are desperately looking for an ordered view of the world. Certainly I've seen it a lot in recovering Scientologists, expressing how that edifice of jargon, colloquialisms, and redefined words shaped their worldview and how they related to other people. In this case here, if you've been nodding along for a while and want to continue to be one of the cool guys, how could you not glomarize? Peek coolly out from beneath your fedora and neither confirm nor deny?

I will agree that the ratsphere has softer boundaries and is not particularly competently managed as a cult. As you allude to, too, there isn't a clear induction ritual or psychological turning point, just a mass of material that you're supposed to absorb and internalize over a necessarily lengthy stretch of time. Hence the most clearly identifiable cults are splinter groups.

Two cases that are a bit less clear, but still show some structural similarities: Peter Thiel, Sam Altman.

A bit less clear because these two have a bit more money to throw around, and damn would it be good if they started throwing some in our direction again

Anybody want to pitch in to get him a basic e-bike and a solar charge setup? He could probably fund his egress the rest of the way by posting a travelogue, that might turn into some choice content around the time he hits El Paso

My rule for understanding somebody like Piper is that they will endorse whatever they think will keep Starbucks open, ubiquitous, and relatively inexpensive

Despite Mr. Davis' commitment to verbose apologetics, his faith movement is based around the devotional practice of wandering around pulling spurious probability estimates out of one's ass

A recent innovation on this practice, among the degenerate indulgence-retailers of the movement, is the posting of graphs showing hopelessly low-liquidity betting pools on prediction market websites

Over the last few years, I have fully gotten on board with the idea that the haunting vestige of the idea of people as property is one of the core weaknesses of American society, and the "western civilization" enthusiasts that promote its supremacy.

Of course, there are a lot of other people who have been on board with that point of view for centuries.

He will never stop to reflect that his "philosophy," such as it is, is explicitly tailored for avaricious power-hungry narcissists, soooooo

Obvious joke is obvious, but

The essay brims with false dichotomies, logical inconsistencies, half-baked metaphors, and allusions to genocide. It careens from Romanian tractor factories to Harvard being turned “into dust. Into quarks” with the coherence of a meth-addled squirrel.

Harvard isn't already full of Quarks?

Clicked on Aella content, sho' nuff, exposed to strange new forms of brainworms. What's the deal with the "ultra-wokeness" guy picking on "taurine deficiency?"

It could also be swapped out for nothing. The people in charge could figure out that this stuff is costing more than it's making, turn the servers off, and deactivate the user-facing features or leave them as vestigial stubs.

There's more evidence right now for that scenario, and it would generate an awful lot of e-waste. Tell me, are you up to date on process improvements for recycling or repurposing that much e-waste?

We are, of course, assuming that the author continues to "micro"dose.