
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution (2015) - bglusman
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
======
wheremind
This is the basic problem of all social organisations, not just 'subcultures',
whatever they are.

Any marginally successful group attracts sociopaths. The more power available
to someone installing themselves at the centre of an elite clique that runs
the organisation, the more attractive it is. No-one ever sees it fully until
they get on the wrong end of one of these toxic power dynamics, there is so
much subtle BS working against anyone trying to face this stuff down that it's
almost pointless wasting your life trying.

The only answer to the problem I've ever thought up is to burn it to the
ground and start again, not very helpful but what else can you do? apart from
walking away and leaving them to it.

Also, this 'Geeks,fanatics etc.' narrative will be part of the arsenal
deployed against anyone trying to expose a sociopath at the centre of one of
these organisations. The levels of fuckery you come up against with this stuff
are so unbelievably frustrating.

~~~
majos
One answer is to be braver about calling out people you think are sociopaths
(maybe not using that word). Presumably some non-mops are in the sweet spot of
having enough social skills to do this but not so much that they find it
uncomfortable.

I get that doing this is difficult and draining, but if you're thinking about
burning it down any way you may as well try this first, no?

~~~
wheremind
It only works if everyone does it, or if you're really well prepared and have
irrefutable evidence of something. If you're the only one (or even part of a
small group) calling them out you just get buried. You're basically a naive
amateur working against someone who has spent their life focused on getting
and exploiting power. It's literally what they live for.

Imagine a random guy wandering into an MMA cage and punching Connor Mcgregor
in the face. Calling out sociopaths is the social version of doing that.

They're prepared, they'll have pawns that do all their dirty work, they'll
have built up a network of obligations around themselves, they'll have taken
control of whatever channels of information dissemination exist within the
group and be actively shaping the narrative within the organisation. Standing
up and pointing them out will get the whole apparatus focused on steamrolling
you. It's nasty business.

Maybe it is better to try before walking away but there's a pretty big
personal cost. I've done it and wasted huge amounts of time and energy and i
have no idea whether it really made any difference in the end. I think there
is an endless sea of problems and you only have a finite life and aren't
responsible for everyone else's decisions. If everyone else is going to
tolerate BS then who am I to try to change it? There are so many people, so
many organisations that you could find a hill to die on every day of the week
and probably make no difference to anything. I've come to the conclusion that
I'm better off just dodging that stuff when it comes up and focusing on
building up healthy, loving relationships among my community rather than
trying to tilt against windmills in these hierarchical social organisations.

I think my motto is basically 'eh, fuck it, I'm off' when it comes to this
stuff now. I think that's how you really beat it, don't play the game.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Your comment has expanded my thinking about this issue. It's one thing to
learn to identify sociopaths, but the next step is even tricker: Identifying
their networks in the organization. You're absolutely right that sociopaths
immediately surround themselves with a web of hangers-on, toadies, enforcers,
and adoring fans which make them very difficult to take out. If you're the CEO
charged with healing a toxic organization, it requires not only ejecting the
sociopath, but also most of his or her entire support network probably needs
to be ejected at the same time.

------
stcredzero
“All revolutions are conceived by idealists, implemented by fanatics, and its
fruits are stolen by scoundrels.” -Thomas Carlyle

Perhaps this should be adapted: Subcultures are conceived by geek idealists,
run by geek fanatics, overrun by mops, and then stolen by sociopaths.

I think there is an impedance mismatch between the market nature of the
Internet as a whole, versus the centrally controlled nature of subsections of
it. Let's say that your allegiance isn't to one particular scene, but you're
in a scene, and it becomes overrun by sociopaths. Well, in that case, you can
just choose a different scene. The "free market of ideas" has worked. That's
good for mops, which is to say it's good for most consumers and most people.

But what if you can't/won't leave a particular scene? That particular scene is
probably of the size where a small number of online groups (perhaps 1)
dominates 90% of the communications, power, and resources in that scene. In
that case, there is no "free market of ideas." From that point of view, there
is only a centralized totalitarianism to face. (You can see this embodied in
miniature in Reddit. Want to discus media/stories? Reddit provides a whole lot
of choices, then! Want to discuss superhero comics? You'd better hew to
particular politics, and the mere asking questions about certain topics will
get you perma-banned.)

The organizing/media power of tools available to Geeks and Sociopaths both has
increased to the point where sociopaths can control viable city/states/islands
of culture. The available tools unwittingly fit and facilitate the centrally
controlled authoritarian tendencies of sociopaths.

Is there a technological/game-theoretic solution?

In recent years, YouTube, Discord, and other online tools/sites have become a
technological/game-theoretic solution. If a particular scene has been overrun
by sociopaths, who then become drunk on power and start going too far, people
have started to speak out against the authoritarianism on YouTube.
Unfortunately, in recent years, this has led to the urging for and attempts at
censorship on those platforms.

~~~
nyolfen
> Is there a technological/game-theoretic solution?

exit via the nascent wave of decentralizing tech holds some promise

------
kbenson
> The optimal mop:geek ratio is maybe 6:1. At that ratio, the mops provide
> more energy than they consume. A ratio above about 10:1 becomes unworkable;
> it’s a recipe for burnout among supporting fanatics.

Obviously, the correct ratio is 7.56, from the evidence presented (that is,
there is none). ;)

A fun read, in the same way the Gervais principle is, but stay away from hard
numbers. This is all hand-wavey pseudo-science, which doesn't really detract
from the entertainment value at all, but once you start throwing out concrete
numbers without any basis, the suspension of disbelief bubble will pop for
some.

------
Uhhrrr
Pretty much accurate. I think it's noteworthy that HN consciously discourages
mops, by remaining text-only, slowing down hot-button discussions, downvoting
injokes and the like. As compared to (specifically) Reddit.

I'm very interested in hearing about other specific scenes which have
survived, in the author's estimation.

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tejtm
Getting enough people in a group to read the late Pieter Hintjens' 'Psychopath
Code'[0] helps cerate awareness and builds heard immunity.

[0][https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta...](https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details)

------
nautilus12
Written by a mop that thinks hes a fanatic and that was likely exploited by a
sociopath.

------
jstewartmobile
He went off the rails before he even got started:

" _One reason—among several—is that as soon as subcultures start getting
really interesting, they get invaded by muggles, who ruin them._ "

Many of these subcultures come into being when people working from an unusual
set of values and perceptions find each other. We're all mainlining the same
Netflix/Facebook/Twitter/etc now. How much harder must it be to end up that
unusual in a global web-based monoculture?

I guess we still have subcultures in some sense... it's just that they now
have world-wide membership and the populations of small countries.

That, and year 2000 was just around the time most westerners plugged into the
matrix.

~~~
krapp
"One reason—among several—is that as soon as subcultures start getting really
interesting, they get invaded by muggles, who ruin them."

Yes. Nothing is worse than when normal people ruin your quirky, exclusive
niche thing by liking the same thing you like, contributing to it and making a
part of mainstream culture.

I'm going to go watch anime on the web and work on Unity projects now.

Reeeeee.

~~~
jstewartmobile
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences)

------
JoachimS
The article makes a lot of hard claims, but contains very few examples to back
them up.

What are well known scenes, subcultures that have died like this?

------
im3w1l
This story fits bitcoin pretty much exactly

~~~
Avamander
It kind-of also fits Linux, it's not that far gone, but it's moving towards
that sociopath stage.

Though, would it be wrong to bring social rights movements as examples too?

------
JoachimS
Previous discussion from when the article was published:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751)

------
dang
Discussed in 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9632751).

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hardwaresofton
This article might just explain why HN is not Reddit (yet?).

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fake-name
The article title is "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution".

At minimum, the title should probably include the commas.

\------

Also, the site appears to be being hugged to death.

~~~
dang
Title fixed now.

