Comment by cess11

Wild how this person starts off with 'I don't like collective thought and action' and lands in 'so I joined a gambling addicted cult using discrete math from high school and advocates for it with pop culture tropes'.

The audacity to discard millennia of history and philosophy with 'no one's got time for that' and substituting it with a crude gambling scheme is just astounding. QAnon for the well-off, a cognitive technique to get out of having to deal with systemic injustice because 'sometimes rentiers also feel bad so there is actually suffering on both sides'.

In a way it's similar to some forms of antisemitism, antisemitism as "der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle", noticing some superficial conditions but instead of following through to develop a worldview copping out and getting an obsession with a simple, consistently applied reasoning. The jews did you nasty because you're not one of them. You did a bad bet because you were controlled by your tribe, unlike me, the enlightened high schooler who isn't loyal to anyone but myself.

Like antisemitism it's the position of a loser refusing to join forces with other people to try and cause systemic change based on their common material interests. Yes, I see that the banks are exploiting us, but no, I won't join your 'tribe', instead I'm going to make tables detailing the ancestry of the bankers. Yes, I see that were going down the drain but instead of joining your movement to put pressure on people in power I'm going to spend the evening making a flowchart and cherry pick some statistics and then give money to a cult that agrees with this approach.

If you meet someone like this, you should absolutely engage with them on contemporary, political issues. As soon as you get them to agree that something is bad, tell them to come to a meeting, be it a union, dinner, protest, whatever. Insist, don't take a no for an answer. Make it a challenge, whatever it takes. If it doesn't work the first time, try again next time you meet. These people need help and empathy, and to be among people at least sometimes when they're away from their screens.