A few years ago I tested the extent to which modern media and political celebrities are falling into the cultural evolutionary well of shamanism.
The conclusion was - most likely. It's just very hard for some personalities and the groups they belong to to resist the performative rewards of angst expression. This is probably a good lens from which to analyze the current bro-ha-ha of Gad Saad's deplatformed Psychology Today article on the moral hypocrisy of celebrities. Go read it on the archive site and give the thought police the finger with respect to their tribal allegiances and sacrileges.
The main critique seems to be his use of the term parasitic. As he just wrote a book with this exact title, it is hard not to see it as an accurate technical term. But it is also very clear it is used for its negative connotations. Apparently that linguistic trick is only appropriate for wrong-think targets. Psychology Today, as a cultural monolithic organization, has almost certainly fallen into post facto rationalization. That they are likely to justify this position as morally necessary speaks to the increasing co-option of societal institutions by religious wokeism.
It is really hard not to see this as the ancient Christian take-over of Roman institutions. As I've said many times before, we're seeing a retwining of religion with politics. Our secular pluralistic society is coming to a close. Private companies are doing what government can't legally do with a down-the-middle support split. Once institutions make deplatforming legit, then the Overton window should be sufficiently shifted to allow the Washington establishment to go where it wants - to deplatform half the population.
The end result is certain to follow 1600's war of religion trajectories. The end result is almost certain to be the splitting of countries into "Catholic" and "Protestant" camps. Which will prove more evolutionarily successful is something that can't really be predicted. The "Catholics" will link together under a type of globalism. Their elites will certainly rake in money, while their commoners will become increasing serf-like. But will they be rich serfs or poor serfs? The evolutionary path is always toward poor serfs, but in the modern age, we may very will see rich happy functionally powerless plebes. Socialism compensates for true poverty, but it does so via serf solutions.
As for celebrities, there is a growing percentage of people who are happy to see them screwed any way they can. The pandemic has greatly reduced the power of hollywood celebrities. They have few outlets for their extroverted personalities. The loss of the movie industry has depowered them. The emergence of B-celebrity political figures (like Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing) make a lot of people hate (or love) them.
Psychology today has picked tribes. Old injuctions that everything is now political are coming true. Wise people tried to say that this was a bad idea. But, it is only a bad idea if you like pluralism. If your side controls all the wheels of power and all the public squares, then it isn't a bad idea - it is getting on the right side of history....
Go to the Psychology Today's feedback form and leave a comment about deplatforming in academically oriented magazines in fields that should, by the nature of the the service they provide, be politically neutral.
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