#This is a "shower thought" more than a properly empirically researched idea, so it is presented without any citations. This lack of resources is also a reference to many modernist philosophers, whom I dearly appreciate.

Modernist theories famously tried to get at "the truth behind eveything". For example, majority of both pro- and anti-capitalists thought that history was progressing in a linear tract, and that there was such a thing as end of history. So, they tried to find the drive of history. Famously, Marx claimed to have found it in historical materialism. Similarly, many pro-capitalists have declared The End of History when USSR fell.

Both of these claims were made on the idea that a single mechanism was behind the progress of history, therefore almost everything.

It is my thesis that this was and is an extension of essentialist thinking. Such a way of thinking looked for "the essence" of the object of study, because it assumed an (singular) essence drove the object to behave the way it did. There were no multiple causes, only a single cause—if you could find it, you could explain the object in its entirety.

Modernist philosophers updated this idea a bit. They didn't look for a Platonic idea, for example, but they looked for "the drive behind the object". While they were more materialist, it was also a quasi-metaphysical endeavor.

I'm going to quote Marx's historical materialism again, because it's one modernist narrative I'm familiar with—simply put, it was such an attempt. While the historical materialist narrative touched on many great things about humanity (e.g. the plasticity of "human nature", the dependence of culture on material conditions), it overreached and overreduced history to a single mechanism. It seemingly recognized the role of other mechanisms, but decidedly explained away their importance in contrast to what Marx saw as "productive forces".

This was an extension of Hegelian dialectics, but reversed. Hegel assumed thought drove materialist changes. Marx flipped this over. However, both of these were still highly metaphysical, highly essentialist.

Essentialism's mistake, in this context, is not only that it is metaphysical, it's also that it reduces the object of study to a monocausal explanation. It looks for only one cause. However, as the advance of scientific and most specifically statistical knowledge shows, there are always multiple causes to complex phenomena.

This revolution in thinking was a great attack on modernist and all the preceding grand narratives. Statistics especially was important in this. The more an explanation -any explanation- was tested in scientific contexts the more it was apparent that no single cause was able to explain everything. Nevermind that, as both natural and social scientists became aware, most of the time a single cause wasn't able to explain most (>50%) of the variation seen in a study.

Another result of statistical thinking, if one is willing to consider all its implications, is that uncertainty is an inherent part of everything we do and explain. There is no epistemic certainty, nothing we can know for certain. So, everything is always, at some level, a working hypothesis. This doesn't mean that everything is equally plausible, but that we can never be 100% certain about our explanations, neither in science nor in anything.

Why is this so? Because inferential statistics is structured to give an idea about the uncertainty of the inference we are doing, based on our observations. In short, it always assumes there are "error bars" or something of equivalent function.

This is the second implication of this revolution—we should be aware of uncertainty and embrace it.

In summary, there were two important results of this revolution in thinking.

1. Monocausality bias hinders thinking. In complex phenomena, natural or social, there are most likely multiple important drives (causes).
2. Rejecting the inherent epistemic uncertainty of our explanations and embracing the psychological certainty of monocausal explanations would be a folly.

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, this doesn't mean everything is equally plausible (doing so is also counter to statistical thinking!). But realizing the value in this approach provides a great deal of flexibility of the mind, and it makes it much less likely that a person would seek comfort in psychologically certain, essentialist or quasi-essentialist narratives. It makes it less likely so that you fall victim to overly reductive but confident-sounding explanations.

It also allows one to critically examine modernist and previous explanations, both in positive and negative ways. Grand narratives, I think, touch on many great topics and have insight, but they fall victim to overreductive monocausality bias. If you can separate them from that, then you find a source of rich thinking styles. It seems that sociology does this with thinkers such as Marx, Weber, and more.

This, I think, is one of the greater revolutions in the "post-modern" era. Post-modern thinking is often associated with extreme skepticism, to the point of declaring everything unknowable, however, this would be reductive. In the way I described, being skeptical of such grand explanations and embracing multicausality and uncertainty is an extremely productive approach.

This, however, does not mean essentialist, monocausal, modernist, etc. thinking is defeated and gone. "Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard."

Of course, despite the quote, there is nothing sure about the eventual victory of this better way of thinking. However, even in the case that it could become the dominant mode of thought, it will take a great deal of time and active struggle against the old ideas and powers-that-be.

I've been mulling over this for some time. I'm what you'd call a politically or ideologically motivated person, as it contains topics close to my heart and I'm trying to do my best about them. However, I mostly don't personally follow "the news". I still hear or read things due to my friends and family, or because of places I browse like Tildes. But even here, I filter out most news topics.

Part of this is due to the health problems I have, as they leave little mental energy to spend on stuff, and I'd much rather spend that energy to build something rather than get demoralized. So, what I do instead is to check out specific topics I care more about, and possibly academic articles.

With this being said, I've been observing people around me and how they interact with the news. I'm trying to assess how much following the news regularly impact their political activity. I mean contributing to some sort of political goal. Based on my observations, I'm not convinced that regular consumption of news, in the form of visiting a news website (or several), is what is presented to be.

So, I decided to flex my ideological analysis muscles a little. Here's a rough sketch of my thoughts on the ideology of being a news outlet, whether it's a giant corporation or a single person.

I think there are two levels to the ideology of being a news outlet.

1) The News System

A) How to Market Yourself

1. You are the most important source of knowledge about the topic you choose. This most often includes a city, country, continent, a political concept like "the west", or the world in general.
2. You are the objective source of knowledge on this topic.
3. Consuming news regularly is the responsibility of every citizen. Thus, they should buy your products or visit your website. Doing otherwise is shirking one's duty, and it's morally reprehensible. It's equal to being ignorant.

With this level, you establish yourself as the epistemological source of news about the topic, and you attach moral feelings of duty, guilt, shame, etc. to consuming your product. However, it's also a wider ideology. You don't only sell your news, you sell the news. That means you're also marketing the idea of news to people. This is how you establish the moral case, that is vital to selling your product. It's also important for prestige, which shouldn't be underestimated. There is not only an economic motivation but also a social motivation to selling the idea of news, presenting yourself as a bringer of truths.

B) How to Keep Them in the Loop

1. Humans are problem-fixers, because ignoring problems would mean they or their loved ones could suffer from them in the future. So, they are emotionally motivated to seek and try to fix problems. So, if you present them a problem, they will pay attention to it.
2. Cities, countries, continents, etc. are vast. There are always problems, no matter how big or small. You can always report on them.
3. If you face with the criticism of getting too small on scale, you can say you are just putting a human face on a widespread problem.

By utilizing the points above, you can ensure that you are always selling your product. You also ensure that you are feeling like you are contributing to the world, by "bringing the news to people". This way, you ensure both your financial success and your moral standing, your sense of meaning.

2) The Problems

The problem with the system created by the approach above is several-fold, and it doesn't depend on the factuality of the news being reported.

1. This system ensures there is always bad-news to be reported every single day, possibly even every single waking hour.
2. The constant source of bad-news demoralizes people, and quite possibly affects their mental health. A cursory look at Google Scholar with the keywords "doomscrolling mental health" is enough to show that this is suspected by the psychological literature too.
3. This stream of bad-news alters a person's perception of city, country, world.

For example, if you look at the subreddit for a city, quite often you'll see it filled with news of crimes and such, with people in the comments lamenting or raging about it. But the daily life in such cities is very rarely one of being riddled with crime.

Another example is USA citizens' perception of crime. "The violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-74%), aggravated assault (-39%) and murder/nonnegligent manslaughter (-34%)." However, more and more people in USA think crime is getting worse. I suspect the news-cycle bears a big portion of the blame.

To drive the point home, I suspect this constant stream of bad-news might be feeding into conservatism, as "a meta-analysis (88 samples, 12 countries, 22,818 cases) confirms that several psychological variables predict political conservatism: death anxiety (weighted mean r = .50); system instability (.47); dogmatism–intolerance of ambiguity (.34); openness to experience (–.32); uncertainty tolerance (–.27); needs for order, structure, and closure (.26); integrative complexity (–.20); fear of threat and loss (.18); and self-esteem (–.09). The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat."

So, there is enough reason to suspect that constant stream of bad-news, which should elevate people's feelings of uncertainty and threat, should be feeding into conservatism.

3) Solution?

This is an open-ended topic, and I'm not claiming to have solved a very complex topic in a few hundred words. However, one thing that I found to work is limiting and choosing what I consume. By the ways I mentioned, I limit what I see and I try to focus more on topics I care more about.

There is support from the literature too, that suggests partial news avoidance can benefit mental health and well-being (more on the topic can be found on Google Scholar with "news avoidance mental health").

Obviously, following news isn't a black or white situation, and for moderation there is no single size that fits all. But I think it would be better to keep in mind that news outlets benefit both financially and socially from establishing their regular consumption as a moral principle. Honestly, I think constructing a good understanding of ideology and history is more important than that, as it provides a more solid base to judge things from, but that's another day's topic.

The recent reaction to the Rings of Power trailer and a thought-provoking video about ragebait from the Youtuber Arbitor Ian made me think about this topic.

Fan as Identity and Fandom as Tribe

We all know that guy who is an extreme purist about a beloved franchise. As they love to talk about it, they love the source material, or they love the originals. Any adaptation of or addition to these is seen as deviating from these "sacred texts". Especially if the more recent material produced significantly differs from these sacred texts, it has to be bad. So, you should watch or create hours-long videos nitpicking them.

This type of person accepts as a given that the original material they are talking about is sacred. Therefore, any change to it is bad. They are often known as a purist, however, I think the better term for it is conservative.

There is research that posits that fandom is basically a postmodern tribe and fan a postmodern identity (1, 2). The idea is not entirely new. Sports fandoms and fans have been noted for these qualities before (3, 4).

I think this makes intuitive sense to people who read both humanities and participate in a fandom. Fans take their fictional worlds to heart, and they strongly identify with the characters, the universe, the stories, the games, etc. Combined with the weakening of more traditional identities, and the rise of internet that has created the conditions to connect with people worldwide, it's not surprising that such postmodern identities and tribes would be born.

The Conservative Fan

I talk about conservatism here in the broad sense, meaning being biased toward conserving what traditionally exists, a standpoint that values tradition. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry about this is well-researched.

"Conservatism in a broad sense, as a social attitude, has always existed. It expresses the instinctive human fear of sudden change, and tendency to habitual action."

I think the "purist fan" fits this definition perfectly. Combining this with the idea that a fan is a type postmodern identity, we can assert that this type of fan is a type of postmodern conservative. Therefore, fandom purism is a type of postmodern conservatism.

The Reactionary Fan and Outrage Culture

There are a lot of descriptions of what a reactionary is, and there is no agreed upon definition. I'm going to use a definition that makes sense to me as a broader definition.

For me, a reactionary, in its broadest sense, is someone who doesn't analyze things much and instead opts to act on impulsive emotion, which is very often anger, resentment, hatred. They approach topics from a very bad faith position. They make short, quippy, and wrong statements.

Reactionaries often, but not necessarily, defend conservative or conservative-adjacent views, because conservatism is biased toward reacting to changes and seeing them as negative. This aligns with the reactionary mindset that is built upon heavily reacting to things. Since change is inevitable and will always create reactions, conservatism -which is about resisting change- is a perfect fit for reactionarism.

A relevant extension of this reactionarism is the outrage culture. A production can't be just bad or mediocre, it has to be awful. You can't just dislike it and move on, you have to feel outrage. You have to belittle it at every chance you get. It's because your identity as a true nerd, and a fan of [insert fictional world], is threatened. You have to act now! They are trying to take it away!

Ragebait being amplified by social media algorithms also strengthens this. However, pointing to it as the sole reason would be a mistake.

The Synthesis and Some More Considerations

The purist fan is a postmodern conservative. They attach their identity very strongly to some sacred texts (book, comics, movie, etc.), and they don't want them to change. Therefore, there is a heavy bias involved in discussing developments around these texts.

The conservative fan can also be a reactionary fan, but doesn't have to be. They don't have to go out there and yell at people, or condescendingly talk to their social circle, like a reactionary fan does. However, they often do.

It shouldn't be hard to see why conservatism and reactionarism, in the context of fandom, would be related to their corresponding ideologies in the classical sense of the words. While decompartmentalization exists, and people don't necessarily act the same way in different areas of their lives, it makes sense that a general attitude about change would affect one's approach to both fandom and regular politics.

I think this is a major reason why we see so many loud "purists" about fandom topics follow reactionary politics in regular politics. It also explains why the regular reactionaries can so easily convince fandom reactionaries to adapt their arguments. They come from the same attitude toward change and same attachment to conservative identity politics.

So, this is my analysis of this topic. Before closing, I want to raise a question that's been on my mind. The quote I shared at the start of the post, the fear of change, I suspect this might be one of the key underlying characteristics of these people, both in regular and fandom politics. People who get attached to certain periods of time in the past so strongly that they dislike any change, or even react violently—they are at the heart of this.

There is a related, very famous meta-analysis studying 22,818 cases (88 samples) across 12 countries. Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. According to the study, conservatism is negatively correlated with openness to experience (-.32) and positively correlated with dogmatism-intolerance of ambiguity (.34).

Returning to fandom context, what I'm trying to get at is that maybe holding so dearly to experiences we've had as kids or teenagers is maybe not that good. Sure, there is nothing wrong with nostalgia, and there is nothing wrong with enjoying things we did as kids or teens. But I suspect this overemphasis on being forever teens is turning people into dogmatic, reactionary people. Maybe it's time to grow up and accept change, even find ways to cherish it.

Very Important Note

This is not an endorsement of any change to stories and franchises. Obviously, some can be bad. In fact, many adaptations of source material lose some things, partially because of differences in medium and partially because of financial interests involved in movie and show production. RoP is a good example of mediocritization due to financial concerns.

As you can guess, I did not even like Rings of Power. But even though I've been a Legendarium fan since I was a kid, it wasn't because they changed the source material. It's because I think RoP was, to use a more modern term, mid. However, this did not cause me to go on a rant about how they are ruining the Legendarium. This is a key difference, in my opinion, between simply disliking and being a reactionary.