What do QAnon, the Woke, and the Red-pilled all have in common?
They offer the thrill of revelation without the burden of dealing with complexity.
They have different jargon and different priorities, but provide the same relief: Finally the world makes sense...and everything wrong is someone else's fault.
They're all selling the same emotional experience: A moment of awakening. That lightning bolt where everything suddenly makes sense. Whether it’s "the elites are eating babies" or "whiteness is a structural force," the rush is identical. You're not just learning, you're enlightened. The veil has been lifted.
They provide a villain who explains everything. No messy complexity, just a clear bad guy. The outgroup. The sick, immoral Them which is standing in the way of the righteous Us. Globalist elites. The Patriarchy. The Libs.
They provide a tribe that gets it. Once you're in, you're not just agreeing with ideas. You're part of a We, a totalizing in-group. Outsiders (They) are blind, brainwashed, or evil.
Why do so many people fall into this trap? Human brains love shortcuts. Thinking is hard. Wrestling with uncertainty is exhausting.
These ideologies hand you a pre-packaged reality where you don't have to weigh evidence, you just have to follow the script.
It feels good. The high from feeling that you see the truth is addictive. That's why people double down on their narrative even when facts contradict them. Admitting doubt means losing that sweet, sweet certainty fix. The prospect withdrawal is terrifying.
Blame is comforting. If everything wrong in the world is because of them, then you're not just a spectator, you're a warrior. Warriors don’t have to engage in messy, difficult, painful self-reflection. They just fight.
Jargon as a badge
Do your own research
Check your privilege
Take the red pill
The right phrase is the signal or shibboleth that you're in the club.
But no ideology or narrative explains everything.
The world is chaos, power is complicated, nobody is in charge, and most of us are just guessing and fumbling our way forward.
But that's a tough sell. Nobody wants to hear it.
Who wants to swallow the "maybe-I-need-to-keep-thinking-about-it" pill when they can have the "I-can-see-the-Matrix-glitching-and-there-is-no-spoon" fantasy?
We have to learn to hold our beliefs seriously, but lightly enough to keep re-examining them with the receipt of new information.
We have to stay curious.
We have to accept that not knowing is part of being human in a bizarre, complex, baffling world.
Good luck making that trend on TikTok.
