Alright may as well talk about it, the recent Archcast brought this to light but everything from trans pushes to how people apply social media to the real world this is something that's been on my mind a lot.
We should have in our heads a clear distinction between what is fiction and what is reality. Reality is the empirical, from our senses, experience and anaylsis of the environment. Fiction is the opposite, it be based on aspects of reality but isn't required and should have little to no consequences on reality.
We've always had issues with the two with superstitions and mysticism but usually they were either because of lack of knowledge or to remember real world dangers (a tale of a monster attacking if you build there is a warning tsunamis hit this area)
But now it's gone nuts. We have a media encouraging delusions on sex, right and left saying drawings are immoral yet the left say that teaching kids about sex positions is fine and that a woman can beat up a man twice her size.
If I were to pin point when the acceleration pedal was pushed down on this, I'd say it's when normies hit the Internet. They were used to every communication being with an actual person that when they got on the Internet, they didn't understand the etiquette that you can be whatever you want here. They have never caught onto that distinction and it's why we see so many pushes to remove anonymity.
Then there's the lolicon 'debate', it's more a canary in the coal mine for us all than a hill not to die on. Look at everything that happened to it first, payment processors refusing service, refusal to allow content despite meeting tos, criminalisation in some countries of a drawing. This started with fictional content but has bled so easily into speech laws, the fictional was the thin edge of the wedge to then target the real.
I'll stop here to not go too long tldr; The West at large has lost a lot of it's ability to tell fiction from reality and it's led to the mass adoptions of delusions along with using fictional content to target the real world
The superstition mysticism stuff was made up by bored rich people. They could act like minorities while holding tons of money. It's why so many rich girls want to be 'spiritual'.
The actual study of mysticism and whether someone was a witch has been surprisingly the opposite of what it is purported. The first major use of evidence and procedural investigation was done for witch trials. The Spanish inquisition had very few deaths or tortures and led to a lot of modern thinking on how to deal with situations where a lot of people are using accusation to gain power.
I've met people who were in the actual military study of mental abilities. They did try drugs, and found it didn't help. Then they just tried telling someone to imagine something, and they had a 1 in 3 chance of actually describing the place or thing. It had really low funding and was located in a ghetto. They found that yes, mental powers do exist, but there was no real way to increase or use them correctly. That's way different than Stranger Things or the complete disbelief. It exists but is unknown is how most of the planets in the solar system were described before we could actually find them.
I bring this up because the promoted reality is rarely the truth, and those trying to alter it have no real sense of it either.
I always like hearing these snippets of knowledge, just cause you realise more how crazy the world is lol
History is a complete study in absurdity.
Very true lol, though love reading about those events for a laugh
Like the 'temper, temper' incident during the Korean War, both badass and hilarious.