#machiavellianism — Public Fediverse posts

DATE: October 19, 2026 at 02:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: People with darker personalities tend to prefer partners like themselves, study suggests

URL: https://www.psypost.org/people-with-darker-personalities-tend-to-prefer-partners-like-themselves-study-suggests/

People generally want a romantic partner who is kind and cooperative, yet some individuals are drawn to manipulative personalities and even violent criminals. A new study published in Evolution and Human Behavior suggests that preferences for these dark traits largely track people’s own personalities, with those higher in such traits rating them as more desirable in a partner. The study also found that a hypothetical partner described as manipulative and as having committed physical assault was rated as highly undesirable, and adding fame, wealth, or good looks did not make that person any more appealing.

When people look for a romantic partner, evolutionary biology suggests they should favor prosocial traits like kindness, trustworthiness, and cooperation. These qualities help build stable relationships and help ensure that both partners invest in raising children. Despite this general rule, some people are attracted to antisocial personalities, and at the extreme, to people who have committed serious crimes, a sexual attraction known as hybristophilia.

Public fascination with notorious offenders such as the American serial killer Ted Bundy helped inspire the new investigation. “The idea for this study came from observing the attraction to famous criminals, such as Ted Bundy, who famously received many love letters during his imprisonment,” study lead author Katharina P. da Silva told PsyPost. “This observation led me to question whether there might be an evolutionary basis for being attracted to individuals with socially undesirable traits, given that these traits could bring disadvantages to those who form relationships with them.”

To understand why someone would choose a partner likely to exploit or harm them, psychologists often examine the Dark Triad of personality. The Dark Triad is a cluster of three distinct but overlapping socially offensive traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Narcissism involves grandiosity, entitlement, and a constant need for admiration. Machiavellianism is defined by strategic manipulation, deceit, and a belief that the ends justify the means, while psychopathy is characterized by callousness, impulsivity, and a lack of empathy or remorse.

These traits exist on a spectrum in the general population, meaning people can display everyday, non-clinical levels of selfishness and manipulation without being diagnosed with a personality disorder or committing crimes. Early evolutionary research into these traits suggested they might actually offer an advantage in the dating pool. For instance, a 2008 survey of college students found that men with higher Dark Triad scores tended to have more casual sexual partners and a stronger preference for short-term relationships.

Building on this idea, a 2013 experiment asked women to rate written descriptions of fictional men and found that the Dark Triad personality was rated as more attractive than a regular control personality. However, subsequent research questioned whether dark traits are inherently appealing or if they simply piggyback on other attractive qualities. The new study’s authors refer to this idea as the desirability by-product hypothesis, which proposes that people are not actually drawn to manipulation or cruelty itself, but rather to desirable traits like physical beauty, social status, or wealth that happen to appear alongside a dark personality.

Another competing explanation for the appeal of dark personalities is homogamy, also known as assortative mating, which is the tendency for people to choose partners who are similar to themselves. Under this view, manipulative or callous individuals actively prefer partners who share their worldview and lifestyle. For example, a 2016 study found that women who scored high in narcissism preferred male faces digitally altered to look narcissistic, though this self-similarity effect did not appear for Machiavellianism or psychopathy.

Da Silva, who holds a master’s degree in experimental psychology, developed the research in the Behavior, Evolution and Sexuality Lab at the Institute of Psychology at the University of São Paulo under the supervision of Jaroslava V. Valentova, with whom she and co-author Marco Antonio C. Varella also recently published a book chapter on Dark Triad traits and casual sex across cultures. Now a doctoral student at the Laboratory of Translational and Behavioral Neuroscience at the Federal University of São Paulo, she and her colleagues set out to directly test both homogamy and the desirability by-product hypothesis in a single study.

The researchers wanted to see whether attraction to Dark Triad traits is linked to a person’s own dark traits and risk-taking tendencies, and whether adding fame, wealth, or good looks to a violent criminal profile could make an antisocial partner seem desirable.

The researchers recruited 400 Brazilian adults between the ages of 18 and 60, with an average age of about 28. The sample included 193 women, 176 men, and 31 participants who identified as non-binary, identified as a Latin American trans-feminine identity known as travesti, or chose not to state their gender. Because the non-binary and travesti groups were small, the researchers excluded those 31 individuals from statistical models that specifically tested for gender differences, leaving 369 participants for those specific comparisons.

Participants completed a series of online questionnaires measuring their own personalities and behavioral tendencies. To measure Dark Triad traits, the authors used a 12-item survey called the Dirty Dozen, which asks respondents how much they agree with statements reflecting narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy on a 1-to-5 scale. Participants also completed an adapted version of this same scale to rate how desirable they found each of those 12 dark traits in a potential romantic partner.

To measure risk-taking and thrill-seeking, the researchers administered two additional questionnaires. One was a 10-item scale assessing sexual sensation-seeking, which measures a person’s desire for novel and varied sexual experiences. The other was the 12-item sensation-seeking portion of an impulsivity questionnaire, which measures the tendency to seek out exciting, risky activities.

For the experimental portion of the study, each participant was randomly assigned to read one of six short written vignettes describing a hypothetical person. The descriptions were kept completely neutral regarding gender, age, and race, and no photographs were used so that physical facial features would not accidentally bias the ratings. After reading their assigned profile, participants rated how willing they would be to enter a casual, short-term relationship and a stable, long-term relationship with that person on a scale from 1 (extremely unwilling) to 7 (extremely willing).

The first vignette served as a prosocial control condition, describing an intelligent, kind, and helpful person who enjoys teamwork and cares about how their actions affect others. The second vignette described a person with Dark Triad traits but no criminal record, portraying them as calculating, persuasive, and willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead because they believe the ends justify the means. The third vignette used this exact same Dark Triad description but added that the person had committed the crime of physical assault.

The remaining three vignettes tested the by-product hypothesis by pairing the Dark Triad and physical assault profile with a major desirable attribute. In the fourth scenario, the assault gained media attention, and the person became famous with a large social media following. In the fifth scenario, the person was described as wealthy and of high social status, able to post bail after the assault arrest. In the sixth scenario, the person was described as extremely physically attractive, drawing media focus for their good looks after being sent to jail for the assault.

When analyzing the personality questionnaires, the researchers found evidence consistent with the homogamy hypothesis. Across the board, participants who scored higher on Dark Triad traits rated those same traits as more desirable in a romantic partner. People’s own scores correlated with their preference for the same trait at about 0.59 for Machiavellianism, 0.66 for psychopathy, and 0.69 for narcissism, on a scale where 1 is a perfect relationship. Even when controlling for gender, sexual sensation-seeking, and thrill-seeking in a combined statistical model, a person’s own levels of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism remained the primary predictors of their preference for those respective traits in a mate.

While sexual sensation-seeking and thrill-seeking were weakly linked to dark trait preferences in simple one-to-one comparisons, their influence disappeared once the participants’ own Dark Triad scores were accounted for. This suggests that thrill-seeking does not explain preferences for dark traits beyond its overlap with people’s own dark traits. As a further check, the researchers compared each participant’s preferences with the self-ratings of randomly paired participants and found that people’s preferences sat closer to their own scores than chance pairings would predict.

These findings align with research covered by PsyPost in October 2024, which examined real-world romantic couples rather than ratings of hypothetical profiles and similarly found that partners tend to share similar levels of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The results are also consistent with a study covered by PsyPost in August 2024, which evaluated real-world couples and found that people with dark personalities feel more satisfied in relationships when their partners share similar levels of psychopathy and narcissism.

“It is worth noting that, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence of assortative mating for antisocial traits in a Brazilian sample,” da Silva noted. “We hope these findings encourage further investigation into the underlying factors driving such attraction in Latin American populations.”

In the experimental vignette portion of the study, the desirability by-product hypothesis was not supported. On the 1-to-7 willingness scale, the kind, prosocial control profile received an average rating of 5.92, making it by far the most desirable option. When the profile switched to a calculating Dark Triad personality without a criminal record, average willingness to date the person dropped sharply to 2.40.

“The main takeaway is that, despite evidence showing some attraction to antisocial traits and criminal individuals, prosociality still remains a far more desirable trait in the context of mate choice,” da Silva explained.

Adding a history of physical assault caused desirability to fall even further, down to an average rating of 1.52. Pairing that profile with fame, wealth, or extreme physical attractiveness did not improve its appeal. The famous criminal received an average score of 1.46, the wealthy criminal scored 1.49, and the physically attractive criminal scored 1.60, none of which were statistically different from the plain criminal profile.

“Given the extensive literature supporting attraction to traits such as fame, high socioeconomic status, and physical attractiveness, it was an interesting surprise when the byproduct hypothesis was not confirmed,” da Silva said. “However, this finding suggests that the effect of antisocial traits combined specifically with the crime of physical assault may have acted as a dealbreaker, that is, a negative trait in a potential partner that carries more weight in attraction than any positive characteristics presented by them.”

The researchers also looked at whether these preferences changed depending on whether the relationship was casual or long-term. Overall, participants expressed slightly higher willingness to engage in short-term relationships than long-term ones across all profiles, and men gave slightly higher willingness ratings than women for short-term dating. Contrary to the authors’ expectations, however, the dark and criminal profiles gained no special advantage in the casual context; the gap between them and the prosocial profile was similar for flings and for stable relationships.

This general rejection of dark personalities is in line with a study covered by PsyPost in February 2025, which also used written vignettes of hypothetical partners and found that people generally prefer low levels of Dark Triad traits for both short-term and long-term dating. The results also differ from the 2013 experiment described earlier, in which women rated a fictional man with Dark Triad traits as more attractive than a control character. Similarly, the new findings stand in tension with a 2016 speed-dating study covered by PsyPost, which found that narcissism and psychopathy were linked to greater short-term dating success. That study involved real face-to-face meetings rather than written profiles, and in person, charm and body language might mask a person’s underlying manipulation.

As with all research, there are some caveats to consider when interpreting these findings. In the personality survey, most participants rated themselves and their ideal partners very low on the Dark Triad scale, clustering near the bottom of the 1-to-5 range. For example, average self-ratings were 1.62 for Machiavellianism, 1.58 for psychopathy, and 2.45 for narcissism, which creates a “floor effect” where the lack of high scores can artificially inflate the statistical similarity between self-ratings and partner preferences. The homogamy results also reflect stated preferences rather than the partners people actually choose.

There are also a few methodological details to keep in mind regarding the online survey tools and vignettes. The researchers noted that the brief 12-item Dirty Dozen scale had slightly weaker internal consistency for Machiavellianism and psychopathy than is ideal, and the survey did not include attention-check questions to weed out distracted readers.

The researchers also did not check whether participants saw the added fame, wealth, and looks as desirable, or whether they viewed the assault as equally serious across profiles. In addition, using written descriptions of beauty, wealth, and fame may not trigger the same automatic emotional reactions as seeing an actual photograph of a gorgeous person or interacting with someone of high status in real life.

The specific crime chosen for the vignettes, physical assault, may also help explain why the desirable traits failed to make the criminal profiles appealing, since violence may signal a direct threat to a partner’s safety. In addition, every profile with fame, wealth, or good looks also described an assault, so the study could not test whether those attributes would make a manipulative but law-abiding partner more appealing. Those profiles were also rated near the bottom of the scale, leaving little room to detect any improvement. Future studies could test whether non-violent offenses, such as financial fraud or white-collar crime, are more easily forgiven when a potential partner is wealthy, famous, or good-looking.

Finally, the study relied on a convenience sample of Brazilian internet users. Even though Brazil has high rates of violent crime overall, the participants were more educated than the general population and were recruited mainly through university channels and social media, so they may not reflect people in settings where crime is more common.

“It’s important to say that the use of a convenience sample may have limited the representation of individuals who are attracted to partners with criminal records, as this preference is likely rare in the general population,” da Silva added. “This could have diluted the observed effects of criminal behavior on mate preferences. Additionally, it is essential to remember that our research was performed in a Brazilian sample, and that no single sample can represent humanity. Also, this reinforces why it is so important to do research on diverse, ‘in-between’ populations such as ours, which are unfortunately still underrepresented in the literature, building a more robust evolutionary psychological science.”

Looking ahead, the researchers hope to explore whether these mating preferences shift in different social environments where aggressive, dominant behavior might be viewed by some as a practical form of protection or resource acquisition. “Future research could benefit from employing targeted sampling strategies (e.g., in high-crime areas or specific subcultures) to test whether the observed mechanisms are amplified in ecologies where the cost-benefit ratio of criminality is altered,” da Silva said.

The study, “Dark side of mate choice: homogamy drives attraction to dark triad, but desirability of antisocial traits and criminal behavior is not enhanced by fame, wealth, or looks,” was authored by Katharina P. da Silva, Bruno H. Amaral, Marco Antonio C. Varella, and Jaroslava V. Valentova.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/people-with-darker-personalities-tend-to-prefer-partners-like-themselves-study-suggests/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DarkTriad #MateChoice #Homogamy #InfluenceOfDarkTraits #AssortativeMating #Psychopathy #Narcissism #Machiavellianism #DarkSideOfLove #EvolutionaryPsychology

DATE: October 6, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Narcissism and psychopathy are closely linked in women serving prison sentences

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-manipulative-strategies-connect-narcissism-and-psychopathy-behind-bars/

A recent study of incarcerated individuals reveals that grandiose, narcissistic personality traits are closely linked to psychopathic tendencies, partially because people with these traits use manipulative strategies to navigate prison environments. This direct relationship between narcissism and psychopathy is especially pronounced in incarcerated women. The research was published in Psychology, Crime & Law.

The Dark Triad is a psychological framework that groups together three aggressive and self-centered personality traits. These include narcissism, which involves an inflated sense of self-importance; Machiavellianism, characterized by a manipulative and cynical approach to others; and psychopathy, marked by emotional coldness, moral disengagement, and a lack of empathy. In everyday settings, psychologists often view these three traits as related but distinct behavioral patterns.

In a restrictive environment like a prison, these personality features can blend together into active survival tactics. Correctional facilities force constant competition for limited resources and informal privileges. Because overt aggression can attract swift formal or informal sanctions, inmates often rely on covert manipulation to maintain their social standing.

Health researcher Gizell Green of the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College in Israel, along with crisis management and security scholars Alena Lochmannová and Ondřej Kolář of the Police Academy of the Czech Republic, wanted to understand how these traits operate under the constraints of incarceration. The researchers proposed that an innate sense of narcissistic entitlement might not automatically lead to psychopathic behavior. Instead, they hypothesized that an intermediate step of calculated manipulation connects the two. They also wanted to investigate whether this behavioral pathway looked different between men and women in custody.

To test these ideas, the researchers surveyed 344 adults serving time in six different Czech prisons. The group included 205 women and 139 men. Participants filled out a demographic questionnaire and a brief psychological assessment known as the Dirty Dozen. This assessment uses a twelve-item rating scale to measure the presence of the three Dark Triad traits.

To encourage honest answers about antisocial behavior, the researchers used a locked collection box so that prison staff could not match responses to specific individuals. The team then used statistical modeling to map the relationships among the three personality traits. Their models accounted for background factors like age, marital status, and the number of children each participant had, as these demographic details can influence criminal trajectories and baseline personality expressions.

The results showed strong associations among all three dark personality traits in the prison sample. Narcissism was robustly linked to elevated levels of Machiavellian tendencies. Both narcissism and Machiavellianism also directly predicted higher levels of psychopathy.

When analyzing the pathways between these traits, the researchers found that Machiavellianism acts as a psychological bridge. Narcissistic desires for dominance and admiration translate into psychopathic callousness partly through the use of calculating and manipulative strategies. In the context of a prison, where informal hierarchies dictate social standing, manipulation functions as a practical tool to secure resources without exposing personal vulnerability. This repeated strategic behavior can foster the emotional detachment characteristic of psychopathy.

The researchers also looked at whether gender changed these behavioral pathways. Their statistical model did not allow the indirect pathway linking narcissism to psychopathy through manipulation to vary by gender, so it was treated as the same for men and women rather than tested for differences. The direct link between narcissism and psychopathy, however, varied measurably depending on gender. For incarcerated women, the direct association between narcissistic traits and psychopathic traits was almost twice as strong as it was for incarcerated men.

In women’s prisons, a grandiose sense of entitlement is more likely to be paired with severe interpersonal hostility and emotional coldness. Female offenders who display pronounced narcissistic behavior represent a more extreme deviation from traditional gender expectations. The researchers suggest this deviation often reflects a more deeply rooted personality pathology that closely aligns with psychopathy.

These findings offer practical guidance for correctional staff managing risk and rehabilitation. Assessment protocols should avoid treating high scores on Dark Triad tests as a single, undifferentiated warning sign. Recognizing how a person’s pursuit of status translates into exploitative tactics can help staff identify inmates who might resort to coercive behavior. Rehabilitation programs can then focus on addressing these specific manipulative strategies rather than just enforcing general rule compliance.

Because the researchers collected all their data at a single point in time, the study cannot establish a definitive sequence of cause and effect. It remains possible that the prison environment first encourages manipulative behavior, which then brings out dormant narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies. The study also lacked a comparison group of people living outside the prison system. Without this baseline, it is impossible to know if this specific blending of personality traits is unique to the custodial environment.

The psychological survey used in the study is brief and might not capture the full range of behaviors associated with psychopathy. Participants in a prison setting might also adjust their answers to protect their reputations, even with anonymous collection methods. Expanding on these findings will require incorporating longer psychological evaluations and reviewing official behavioral records. Observing how these traits manifest in different international justice systems could help clarify how specific prison cultures shape antagonistic behavior.

The study, “The dark path to psychopathy, Machiavellianism as a mediator of the narcissism–psychopathy link among incarcerated men and women: a moderated mediation analysis,” was authored by Gizell Green, Alena Lochmannová, and Ondřej Kolář.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-manipulative-strategies-connect-narcissism-and-psychopathy-behind-bars/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #Narcissism #Psychopathy #DarkTriad #Machiavellianism #PrisonResearch #GenderDifferences #IncarceratedWomen #PsychologyCrimeLaw #PrisonPsychology #ManipulationStrategies

DATE: October 1, 2026 at 08:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Kindness isn’t always what it seems: The psychology of women’s competitive altruism

URL: https://www.psypost.org/kindness-isnt-always-what-it-seems-the-psychology-of-womens-competitive-altruism/

New research suggests that some women report using kindness and generosity strategically to gain an edge over rivals, a tendency linked to manipulative personality traits and lower agreeableness. These findings, published in Frontiers in Psychology, provide evidence that cooperation can sometimes serve as a subtle tool for interpersonal competition.

The research, led by Maryanne Fisher, a Santamarian Research Chair in the Faculty of Science at Saint Mary’s University’s Department of Psychology, builds on the concept of competitive altruism. The study grew out of a Faculty Mobility for Partnership Building Program grant from the Government of Canada, which allowed Fisher to spend a month at the Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile, with additional funding from Chile’s ANID Fondecyt program. “I relocated there for a month and it was amazing,” Fisher told PsyPost.

In evolutionary psychology, competitive altruism refers to the idea that people give away resources or help others in ways that boost their own reputation and social standing. A 2006 experiment showed that people can gain higher status and social influence by making showy, generous sacrifices, as observers tend to prefer these cooperative individuals as future partners.

Initially, scientists viewed competitive altruism as a predominantly male tactic for winning status and attracting mates. For example, a 2012 experiment indicated that men eagerly competed to endure pain and inconvenience to secure status within a group, while women held back from this overt display. Because of findings like this, visible generosity was often treated as a public broadcast of quality aimed at a large audience.

“There was absolutely a research gap we tried to address,” Fisher said. “Most research on competitive altruism (the idea that people compete to be seen as the most generous or kind) has focused on men. It also often centered around men’s conspicuous public displays, such as men becoming more generous in the presence of a potential mate.”

However, research into female social dynamics provides a different perspective. A 2020 review highlighted that women tend to seek social status through subtle, low-risk strategies rather than the overt, public contests that men often favor.

“Past studies that included women produced highly mixed results, and we thought it might be because researchers were looking in the wrong place,” Fisher explained. “A long line of work shows that women’s rivalry tends to involve minimal risk and rely on indirect means, for example, carried out through gossip, exclusion, and the management of reputation rather than open confrontation.”

This pattern of indirect competition raised the question of whether women might weaponize kindness and giving as a subtle way to outcompete others. Fisher and her colleagues suspected that some women use generosity not as a flashy public contest, but as a quiet, low-risk way to win allies and reputation while remaining deniable as competition.

“Given this is how women often compete, kindness seemed like an ideal competitive tool because it wins allies and social standing while being very difficult to call out as competition,” Fisher noted. “The everyday expression ‘kill them with kindness’ captures that thought. We went one step further, though, and tried to actually measure its occurrence, which meant we had to create the Competitive Altruism Survey.”

To investigate this, the scientists developed the survey and recruited 103 heterosexual cisgender women, aged 18 to 45, primarily from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, through an online research platform. The participants rated 15 statements describing the strategic use of kindness, such as offering help to gain an advantage or behaving generously to look better than a rival.

Participants rated these statements twice: once based on how they behave toward other women, and once based on how they behave toward men. They also completed several established psychological questionnaires. These included a measure of Machiavellianism, which is a personality trait characterized by treating social life as something to be manipulated for personal gain. Other questionnaires measured general personality traits, such as agreeableness, as well as the participants’ tendencies to give socially desirable answers or claim implausibly virtuous behaviors.

The results indicated a strong positive association between competitive altruism and Machiavellianism. Women who reported higher levels of strategic kindness were also more likely to possess a manipulative, self-interested approach to social interactions. In contrast, competitive altruism was negatively associated with agreeableness, which is the personality trait linked to genuine warmth, trust, and cooperative sincerity.

Some predictions were not borne out: competitive altruism was unrelated to extraversion and conscientiousness. As expected, neuroticism was linked not to strategic kindness itself but to the anxiety and frustration that can accompany it, such as worrying that one’s kindness will seem insincere or feeling upset when it goes unnoticed.

“The biggest finding is that kindness and competition are not opposites, because some prosocial behavior can serve a competitive purpose,” Fisher told PsyPost. “This is not to say we are totally aware that our kindness or generosity might have this motive attached to it, or that all ‘nice’ acts are for competition, but to say they are opposite is incorrect.”

“The real point to consider though is that the average score on the survey was below the neutral midpoint of the scale, meaning that, on average, women leaned towards disagreeing with the strategic statements,” she added. “The study tells us which women report the behavior and how it relates to personality. It does not tell us how common strategic kindness is in women’s daily life, or whether it works. Those need follow up studies.”

The overall average competitive altruism score was 2.51 on a scale of 1 to 5. The audience of the behavior mattered. The participants reported slightly but reliably higher levels of competitive altruism directed toward other women (an average score of 2.58) than toward men (2.43). This aligns with the idea that women’s reputational management and social rivalry frequently occur within female peer groups.

Unexpectedly, the study found a negative relationship between competitive altruism and impression management. The researchers had anticipated that women who use kindness strategically might also try to present themselves as perfectly virtuous on the survey. Instead, women who endorsed strategic kindness appeared relatively open about their manipulative intent and tended to score lower on a measure of the need for social approval.

“What was really unexpected was that women were so open,” Fisher said. “We expected women who use kindness strategically to be the most concerned with presenting themselves favorably but the opposite emerged.”

“It might be that women who endorse strategic kindness are simply more candid about it and less invested in being liked by everyone; this is a very real possibility,” she explained.

When asked to rate their own traits compared to peers, these women described themselves as more manipulative, deceptive, and fake, less honest, and more popular than other women their age, but not as kinder or more generous.

At the end of the survey, 101 participants provided open-ended descriptions of times they had witnessed other women using kindness strategically. The most common themes included offering gifts or favors to create a sense of obligation, performing warmth in public that contradicted private unkindness, and directing exaggerated helpfulness toward superiors or men in romantic contexts.

These findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which investigated concern-framed gossip rather than self-reported generosity. That study similarly found that women use seemingly benevolent behaviors to gain social advantages in competition, successfully knocking down rivals while appearing trustworthy to observers.

“This research offers a new way to think about how people, in this case women, can use kindness in a strategic way and how this relates to other similar measures,” said Daniel Farrelly, a principal lecturer in psychology at the University of Worcester who was not involved in the research. “The authors have found that their newly-created measure of competitive altruism (which is altruistic acts that aim to improve the actor’s reputation compared to others) correlates with some existing personality measures, and that when asked about it women often describe how and when they see such acts being used.”

“There is good evidence that women do compete with one another, but unlike men this competition often involves indirect acts (such as gossip, reputation challenges etc),” Farrelly told PsyPost. “This study further supports the indirect nature of women’s competition, showing that competing to be seen to be cooperative is just another example of this.”

There are a few details to keep in mind when interpreting the current study. Because the data relies entirely on self-reporting, it might underestimate how often this behavior occurs. Women who are deeply invested in maintaining a kind reputation might be unwilling to admit their manipulative motives on a survey, meaning the results only capture the behavior of women willing to be honest about their deception.

Fisher noted another possibility: “women who are strategically kind but unwilling to admit it would score low, which means a self-report survey probably underestimates the behavior among the women most invested in appearing kind.”

“It’s important to note, as the authors rightly do as well, that competitive altruism doesn’t cover all types of altruism,” Farrelly noted. “In this case it is only a very strategic display that is used in particular circumstances, and how much an individual uses competitive altruism is unlikely to have a clear relationship with how kind/altruistic they are overall.”

“We do not want readers to walk away thinking that all kindness is fake,” Fisher emphasized. “We also have not compared how it occurs relative to men, and our findings are really preliminary.”

“There are some clear findings here, but not all hypotheses are supported so as the authors state there is more to find out about this potential effect,” Farrelly said. “One thing I did feel was missing was a comparison with men’s competitive altruism. As this study only used female participants we don’t yet know if the same effects might occur in men’s behavior.”

It is also unknown whether this strategy actually works in practice. The survey measures the intent and the self-reported behavior, but it does not test whether the targets of this strategic kindness actually extend greater cooperation, status, or alliances in return. Future research using observational methods could help determine if competitive altruism successfully tricks observers into granting social rewards.

“The most important question is whether strategic kindness works,” Fisher told PsyPost. “We have a qualitative study underway to start to address this question. We would like to use designs that observe both the person being kind and the people receiving that kindness, such as economic games in which generosity is made more or less visible, partner-choice tasks, and observation of real groups, with the sex of the audience varied.”

“It would be good to see examples of competitive altruism being used in women’s intrasexual competition, this is something that could be explored in future experiments,” Farrelly added. “I would also like to see this study replicated in male participants so we can see if/how the behaviors the authors describe in this study are unique to women.”

Finally, the sample was modest in size and consisted of heterosexual cisgender women from predominantly Western, English-speaking countries. Because cultural norms dictate how competition and self-presentation are expressed, the findings might not apply to populations with different social expectations.

The study, “Kill them with kindness: preliminary evidence for women’s competitive altruism,” was authored by Maryanne L. Fisher, Oriana Figueroa, Nohelia Valenzuela, Ferity Thorne, Pablo Polo, José Antonio Muñoz-Reyes, Nerea Aldunate, and Simón Ramirez.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/kindness-isnt-always-what-it-seems-the-psychology-of-womens-competitive-altruism/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CompetitiveAltruism #WomensRivalry #KindnessStrategy #PsychologyOfGender #SocialReputation #Machiavellianism #GossipAndReputation #IndirectCompetition #StrategicKindness #FemaleCompetition

@DerLogiker @georgetakei Trump is worse, actually.

Letter to congressional leaders from psychiatrists: 'President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.'

They describe the evidence that he's dangerously unstable, that his "judgment is, by every visible measure, severely compromised" and that "he is a constitutional emergency."

"Top psychiatrists issue urgent letter to Congress about Trump's mental instability" https://www.alternet.org/psychiatrists-trump/

#Trump #DarkTriad #narcissism #narcissist #Machiavellian #Machiavellianism #psychopath #psychopathy #unstable #25thAmendment #2547th #25th

Electric fences & Tortoises

https://waynebisset.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/electric-fences-tortoises/

I saw this on Mastodon and almost had a stroke.

@davidgerard wrote:

“Most of the AI coding claims are conveniently nondisprovable. What studies there are show it not helping coding at all, or making it worse

But SO MANY LOUD ANECDOTES! Trust me my friend, I am the most efficient coder in the land now. No, you can’t see it. No, I didn’t measure. But if you don’t believe me, you are clearly a fool.

These guys had one good experience with the bot, they got one-shotted, and now if you say “perhaps the bot is not all that” they act like you’re trying to take their cocaine away.”

First, the term is falsifiable, and proving propositions about algorithms (i.e., code) is part of what I do for a living. Mathematically human-written code and AI-written code can be tested, which means you can falsify propositions about them. You would test them the same way.

There is no intrinsic mathematical distinction between code written by a person and code produced by an AI system. In both cases, the result is a formal program made of logic and structure. In principle, the same testing techniques can be applied to each. If it were really nondisprovable, you could not test to see what is generated by a human and what is generated by AI. But you can test it. Studies have found that AI-generated code tends to exhibit a higher frequency of certain types of defects. So, reviewers and testers know what logic flaws and security weaknesses to look for. This would not be the case if it were nondisprovable.

You can study this from datasets where the source of the code is known. You can use open-source pull requests identified as AI-assisted versus those written without such tools. You then evaluate both groups using the same industry-standard analysis tools: static analyzers, complexity metrics, security scanners, and defect classification systems. These tools flag bugs, vulnerabilities, performance issues, and maintainability concerns. They do so in a consistent way across samples.

A widely cited analysis of 470 real pull requests reported that AI-generated contributions contained roughly 1.7 times as many issues on average as human-written ones. The difference included a higher number of critical and major defects. It also included more logic and security-related problems. Because these findings rely on standard measurement tools — counting defects, grading severity, and comparing issue rates — the results are grounded in observable data. Again, I am making a point here. It’s testable and therefore disproveable.

This is a good paper that goes into it:

In this paper, we present a large-scale comparison of code authored by human developers and three state-of-the-art LLMs, i.e., ChatGPT, DeepSeek-Coder, and Qwen-Coder, on multiple dimensions of software quality: code defects, security vulnerabilities, and structural complexity. Our evaluation spans over 500k code samples in two widely used languages, Python and Java, classifying defects via Orthogonal Defect Classification and security vulnerabilities using the Common Weakness Enumeration. We find that AI-generated code is generally simpler and more repetitive, yet more prone to unused constructs and hardcoded debugging, while human-written code exhibits greater structural complexity and a higher concentration of maintainability issues. Notably, AI-generated code also contains more high-risk security vulnerabilities. These findings highlight the distinct defect profiles of AI- and human-authored code and underscore the need for specialized quality assurance practices in AI-assisted programming.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21634

Something I’ve started to notice about a lot of the content on social media platforms is that most of the posts people are liking, sharing, and memetically mutating—and then spreading virally—usually don’t include any citations, sources, or receipts. It’s often just some out-of-context screenshot with no reference link or actual sources.

A lot of the anti-AI content is not genuine critique. It’s often misinformation, but people who hate AI don’t question it or ask for sources because it aligns with their biases. The propaganda on social media has gotten so bad that anything other than heavily curated and vetted feeds is pretty much useless, and it’s filled with all sorts of memetic contagions with nasty hooks that are optimized for you algorithmically. I am at the point where I will disregard anything that is not followed up with a source. Period. It is all optimized to persuade, coerce, or piss you off. I am only writing about this because this I’m actually able to contribute genuine information about the topic.

That they said symbolic propositions written by AI agents (i.e., code) are non-disprovable because they were written by AI boggles my mind. It’s like saying that an article written in English by AI is not English because AI generated it. It might be a bad piece of text, but it’s syntactically, semantically, and grammatically English.

Basically, any string of data can be represented in a base-2 system, where it can be interpreted as bits (0s and 1s). Those bits can be used as the basis for symbolic reasoning. In formal propositional logic, a proposition is a sequence of symbols constructed according to strict syntax rules (atomic variables plus logical connectives). Under a given semantics, it is assigned exactly one truth value (true or false) in a two-valued logic system.

They are essentially saying that code written by AI is not binary, isn’t symbolically logical at all, and cannot be evaluated as true or false by implying it is nondisproveable. At the lowest level, compiled code consists of binary machine instructions that a processor executes. At higher levels, source code is written in symbolic syntax that humans and tools use to express logic and structure. You can also translate parts of code into formal logic expressions. For example, conditions and assertions in a program can be modeled as Boolean formulas. Tools like SAT/SMT solvers or symbolic execution engines check those formulas for satisfiability or correctness. It blows my mind how confidently people talk about things they do not understand.

Furthermore that they don’t realize the projection is wild to me.

@davidgerard wrote:

“But SO MANY LOUD ANECDOTES! Trust me my friend, I am the most efficient coder in the land now. No, you can’t see it. No, I didn’t measure. But if you don’t believe me, you are clearly a fool.”

They are presenting a story—i.e., saying that the studies are not disprovable—and accusing computer scientists of using anecdotal evidence without actually providing evidence to support this, while expecting people to take it prima facie. You’re doing what you are accusing others of doing.

It comes down to this: they feel that people ought not to use AI, so they are tacitly committed to a future in which people do not use AI. For example, a major argument against AI is the damage it is doing to resources, which is driving up the prices of computer components, as well as the ecological harm it causes. They feel justified in lying and misinforming others if it achieves the outcome they want—people not using AI because it is bad for the environment. That is a very strong point, but most people don’t care about that, which is why they lie about things people would care about.

It’s corrupt. And what’s really scary is that people don’t recognize when they are part of corruption or a corrupt conspiracy to misinform. Well, they recognize it when they see the other side doing it, that is. No one is more dangerous than people who feel righteous in what they are doing.

@cloudskater wrote:

Some instances are run by bad people. Hell, a few projects like Lemmy and Matrix are DEVELOPED by assholes, but the FLOSS and federated nature of these platforms allows us to bypass/fork them and create healthy spaces outside their reach.

Nope, that is actually what is killing the fediverse. I just explained here:

The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.

Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.

That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.

https://neon-blue-demon-wyrm.x10.network/archives/16932

FYI, I’m not doing culture wars or political debates. I’m just saying this idea of “forking away” from them is literally breaking the fediverse’s distributed network and creating all kinds of issues with semantic interoperability. Yes, federation is still happening at the delivery level, but the semantic issues are out of fucking control. You are a federation by the very sheer skin of your teeth.

The reason why developers are leaving the fediverse is because you folks don’t take criticism. You respond to criticism with — I’m being so serious right now — political manifestos and harassing developers. ActivityPub developers and authors oversold you folks on the capabilities of ActivityStreams. They flat-out lied to y’all.

↬bark.lgbt/@cloudskater/116080965694723006

ActivityPub Server’s Custom Reply‑Control Extensions Undermine Federation

It seems like Activitbypub developers are extending ActivityPub with optional metadata to fix a lot of its issues, but that is still problematic. Trying to add moderation tools and user control to threads seems to be the ongoing battle. I am fascinated by dumpster fires, so I’ve started looking at the ActivityPub protocol in detail. I tend to become fascinated with things that are going down in flames.

As a brief recap of the problem:

So, one of the very popular features on Bluesky—also popular on Twitter—is the ability to select who can reply to a post. A major issue in the Fediverse is the inability to decide who can reply, and once you block someone, their harassing reply is still there. I honestly thought it was simply a case of them choosing not to add or address it for cultural reasons. What is clear from that thread is that they were always aware that the ActivityPub protocol and most Fediverse implementations don’t provide a universal way to control reply visibility or enforce blocks across instances.

An ActivityPub server that has reply control is GoToSocial. ActivityPub, as defined by the W3C specification, standardizes how servers federate activities. It defines actors, inboxes, outboxes, and activity types (Create, Follow, Like, Announce, etc.) expressed using ActivityStreams 2.0. It also specifies delivery mechanics (including how a Create activity reaches another server’s inbox) and how collections behave.

The specification does not include interaction policy semantics such as “only followers may reply” or “replies require manual approval.” There is no field in the normative vocabulary requiring conforming servers to enforce reply permissions. That category of rule is outside the protocol’s defined contract.

GoToSocial implements reply controls through what it calls interaction policies. These appear as additional properties on ActivityStreams objects using a custom JSON-LD namespace controlled by the GoToSocial project.

JSON-LD permits additional namespaced terms. This means the document remains structurally valid ActivityStreams and federates normally. The meaning of those custom fields, however, comes from GoToSocial’s own documentation and implementation. Other servers can ignore them without violating ActivityPub because they are not part of the interoperable core vocabulary.

Enforcement occurs locally. When a remote server sends a reply—a Create activity whose object references another via inReplyTo—ActivityPub governs delivery, not acceptance criteria. Whether the receiving server checks a reply policy, rejects the activity, queues it, or displays it is determined in the server’s inbox-processing code. The decision to accept, display, or require approval happens after successful protocol-level delivery. This behavior belongs to the application layer.

These are server-side features layered on top of ActivityPub’s transport and data model that are not actually part of ActivityPub. The protocol ensures standardized delivery of activities; however, the server implementation defines additional constraints and user-facing behavior. Two GoToSocial instances may both recognize and act on the same extension fields. However, a different implementation, such as Mastodon, has no obligation under the specification to interpret or enforce GoToSocial’s interactionPolicy properties. These fields function as extension metadata rather than protocol requirements.

The semantics of GoToSocial are not part of the specification’s defined vocabulary and processing rules for ActivityPub. They no longer operate purely at the protocol layer; it has become an application-layer contract implemented by specific servers.

Let’s use the AT Protocol as an example. Bluesky’s direct messages (DMs) are not currently part of the AT Protocol (ATProto). The AT Protocol has nothing that specifies anything for DMs, so DMs are not part of the AT Protocol. The AT Protocol was designed to handle public social interactions, but it does not define private or encrypted messaging. Bluesky implemented DMs at the application level, outside of the core protocol. DMs are centralized and stored on Bluesky’s servers. What is happening with servers like GoToSocial is sort of like that. The difference is that the AT Protocol was designed for different app views; ActivityPub was not.

The issue is the divergence in semantic interpretation that emerges at the interpretation layer. ActivityPub standardizes message delivery and defines common activity types. However, it leaves extension semantics and application-layer policy decisions to individual implementations. Servers may introduce custom JSON-LD namespaces and enforce local behaviors, such as reply restrictions, while remaining protocol-compliant. But, the noise created by divergences are problematic, because it creates unexpected, unintended, and unpredictable behavior.

Divergence appears when implementations rely on non-normative metadata and assume reciprocal handling to preserve a consistent user experience. Behavioral alignment then varies. Syntactic exchange succeeds, but behavioral consistency is not guaranteed. Though instances continue to federate at the transport level, policy semantics and processing logic differ across deployments. Those differences produce inconsistent experiences and results between implementations.

That leads to fragmentation, specifically semantic or behavioral fragmentation and an inconsistent user experiences. ActivityPub ensures syntactic interoperability, but semantic interoperability (everyone interprets and enforces rules the same way) varies. This creates a system that is federated at the transport level yet fragmented in behavior and expectations across implementations. It is funny how the thing that the fediverse touted has made the entire thing very brittle. ActivityPub technically federates correctly, but semantically falls apart once servers start adding their own behavioral rules.

FEP-171b: Conversation Containers Won’t Work

So, I took a look at this:

This document specifies a model for managing conversations in ActivityPub network. It is based on the implementation of Conversation Containers in Streams.

In this model conversations are represented as collections controlled by a single actor. Such conversations take place within a specific audience and may be moderated.

FEP-171b: Conversation Containers

https://fediverse.codeberg.page/fep/fep/171b/

TL;DR: It won’t work.

The proposal introduces authoritative conversation control to ActivityPub by modeling threads as owner-managed OrderedCollection containers. The conversation owner curates replies and redistributes approved activities via Add. Participants are expected to reject unapproved content. The abstraction is internally coherent. The friction appears when this model is placed inside ActivityPub’s federated design.

Here is the problem. ActivityPub does not define enforcement semantics. Servers operate autonomously and apply local policy. A specification can say that implementations “SHOULD reject” unapproved replies. Yet nothing in the protocol requires that outcome. A server that declines to participate can still accept Create(Note) activities directly. It can reconstruct threads from inReplyTo and ignore the container model. In that environment, thread authority exists only where it is voluntarily recognized.

The delivery path changes as well. Under typical federation, actors deliver activities directly to recipients’ inboxes. Here, replies flow to the conversation owner first. Only approved entries are redistributed. Each thread effectively runs through a single coordinating node. Availability now depends on the owner’s server. If it is offline or slow to redistribute, the conversation stalls. Different redistribution behavior across instances can also produce divergent views of the same thread. This is a structural shift in how information propagates.

Ordering and consistency are less defined than the container model implies. ActivityPub does not specify global ordering or conflict resolution rules. An OrderedCollection provides sequencing, but not append-only guarantees or convergence constraints. Order might reflect author timestamps, owner receipt time, or redistribution time. The owner can reorder, omit, or later insert activities. Other servers may cache earlier states. Without cryptographic sequencing or a log structure that constrains mutation, synchronization relies on local policy rather than shared verification.

Moderation authority also changes. The conversation owner decides which activities become part of the visible thread. That may reduce unwanted replies in cooperative environments. It also concentrates control over inclusion and historical presentation. Because the container remains mutable, integrity depends on trust in the owner. It also depends on how other servers interpret updates.

The harassment issue is not actually solved. A non-adopting instance can continue storing and rendering replies it receives directly. Some servers will display only curated entries. Others will not. Over time, different thread views can coexist without converging.

Compatibility with existing implementations raises practical concerns. Most current systems build conversation views from inReplyTo chains and local storage. Introducing container-centric validation, authenticated Add wrapping, and modified inbox handling would require substantial changes. Partial adoption would produce mixed behavior across the network.

The proposal acknowledges risks such as forged or poisoned embedded updates. It also suggests validation steps. Even with those measures, the container remains mutable shared state interpreted by independent systems. ActivityPub standardizes vocabulary and delivery, but not global state enforcement. This design can improve reply gating among cooperating servers. It does not, by itself, establish authoritative thread state across a federation built on autonomous peers.

The issue with the fediverse is that they want their cake and they want to eat it, too. They like to emphasize that they are truly decentralized and use that as a way to sweep any critiques against them in relation to the AT protocol away. But being truly decentralized is the issue.

The core issue is the federated and decentralized nature of ActivityPub. The problem is that the protocol is built around autonomous servers that don’t have to obey a central authority. Each server applies its own rules and policies. Even if a specification says servers “should” reject unapproved replies, they can still accept and display them. The authority is voluntary and not enforceable. The major limitation is that state is not globally enforced. There is no mechanism to ensure that all servers see the same thread order or content. A container can sequence posts. Other servers can reorder, omit, or cache different versions. Without cryptographic or append-only logs that every node verifies, synchronization relies entirely on local trust rather than any shared enforcement.

Partial adoption makes it even more of a clusterfuck. Some servers might implement the new authoritative-thread model, while others won’t. So threads will diverge across the network, and harassment or unwanted content can still appear on servers that do not participate. The decentralized and federated design fundamentally limits any attempt to impose global authority.

No, I am not joining in on the thread, because ActivityPub devs are especially nasty. That is why no one wants to fucking work with them. That is why it’s so fucking underdeveloped.

I was going to put this into this post, but I realized it would get too long:

https://neon-blue-demon-wyrm.x10.network/archives/16790

This is a really bad situation. I have been working with the AT protocol for roughly a year, so I haven’t been keeping track of what’s been going on here. Basically, the only way to fix it is to pretty much change the expected behavior so much it is no longer recognizable. Yikes!

So, I’m a developer. I am following along with and reading this thread:

https://oisaur.com/@renchap/116056634129526611

All I can think while reading this is: Well, that’s unfortunate.

So, one of the very popular features on Bluesky—also popular on Twitter—is the ability to select who can reply to a post. A major issue in the Fediverse is the inability to decide who can reply, and once you block someone, their harassing reply is still there. I honestly thought it was simply a case of them choosing not to add or address it for cultural reasons. What is clear from that thread is that they were always aware that the ActivityPub protocol and most Fediverse implementations don’t provide a universal way to control reply visibility or enforce blocks across instances. They were hedging and hiding behind cultural norms this whole time instead of working to fix it, because they were too busy waging political culture wars instead of doing their damn jobs.

That realization sunk my hopes. It basically means that the social media ecosystem with the most moderation tools is Bluesky and the ATmosphere, albeit Bluesky isn’t fully using all of them and is using the moderation tools in ways that selectively moderate according to their enigmatic interests. That does not make me feel good. Honestly, that makes me feel fucking awful about the future of the Internet.

ActivityStreams/ActivityPub was formalized around 2018, and platforms like Mastodon (which implement the ActivityPub protocol) have had years to work on federation and moderation tooling. Instead, many of those years were spent debating culture and writing manifestos. The most disturbing thing about all of this is that it had so much potential. But yeah, I think the Fediverse is going to be relegated to a legacy platform like Usenet or IRC. It’s not fixable, and the folks over at the Fediverse have alienated so many developers that no one really wants to work on fixing it.

The co-authors of ActivityPub are working on other social media projects that have nothing to do with the fediverse. Meanwhile, Mastodon’s founder, Eugen Rochko, stepped down as CEO in November 2025 as part of Mastodon’s transition to a nonprofit governance structure. The restructuring was intended to formalize governance and reduce reliance on a single individual. Rochko transferred control of Mastodon’s core assets and trademark to the nonprofit organization and remains involved in a strategic and advisory capacity. Day-to-day operations are now overseen by an executive director under a board-governed structure. I believe how badly Eugen fucked Mastodon is a large reason why he stepped down, albeit they are all doing the virtue signaling thing.

For the most part, I have pretty much pulled away from microblogging platforms as a whole. I was never a heavy user of anything but forums, and I was part of the occult niche. Since that is pretty much gone, there really isn’t a reason for me to be on social media, which is why I mostly blog. It really sucks because I wanted to believe in ActivityPub and the fediverse.

It pretty much comes down to the fact that the ActivityPub protocol is flawed at the protocol level when it comes to protecting people from harassment. While Bluesky’s app view is choosing to apply its tools selectively to address this, it is more capable of protecting people. Honestly, that really sucks, because that spells the death of this protocol. ActivityPub’s decentralized design doesn’t provide built-in, enforceable protections against harassment. This makes moderation and harassment mitigation practically impossible.

Renaud Chaput so much as admits it here:

“So we need to consider if we want to switch to a “thread context”-based approval model, there the author of the root of the thread controls all the tree of replies. Which would be a big change for Mastodon (and similar implementations), but might be more aligned with what user want, and solve other issues as well (replies federation).
But that would be a huge undertaking, with lot of problems related to backward compatibility (for example)”

What I noticed was this phrase by Renaud Chaput:

“First step for us is probably staying alive and continuing having a team that is focused on building a better product, which is our focus right now. We are very well aware of this topic (as I keep repeating each time you mention me 😉 ).”

They are saying the quiet part out loud: We are having issues staying relevant.

ActivityPub is built on the ActivityStreams 2.0 vocabulary. Three core components define it: Actor, Object, and Activity. It provides a Client-to-Server (C2S) API that lets an Actor submit Activities to an outbox. It also provides a Server-to-Server (S2S) federation protocol. This protocol delivers those Activities to other servers’ inboxes.

Replies are created by setting the inReplyTo property on an Object. Servers may expose a replies Collection. However, that collection is optional and not globally authoritative. The specification describes how Activities are serialized and delivered. It does not introduce a canonical container for conversations. It does not define a required global index or binding enforcement rules for moderation. A Block Activity is defined as a type of Activity. However, remote servers are not obligated to remove or hide content beyond their own policies. Each server maintains its own inboxes, outboxes, collections, and storage model. It interprets incoming Activities according to local implementation choices.

This facilitates interoperability at the transport and vocabulary level. It does not do so at the level of governance. Servers do not have to construct identical conversation graphs from inReplyTo chains. Nothing in the protocol allows an Actor to assert authoritative control over all descendant replies. This is the main problem. Federation operates peer to peer among autonomous servers. Moderation decisions, including defederation, filtering, and suspensions, remain local. The specification does not define a global control layer.

The AT Protocol approaches the problem differently. Users are identified through Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs). They publish signed records stored in repositories. These repositories are usually hosted on a Personal Data Server (PDS). They are append-only and cryptographically verifiable. Records follow schemas defined in Lexicon. Lexicon describes types, fields, and RPC interfaces in machine-readable form. Updates propagate through relays. These relays aggregate repository changes into a network-wide event stream, often called the firehose. Higher-level services, including AppViews, subscribe to this stream. They may also query indexes derived from it. The AT Protocol defines message delivery, identity, storage, and synchronization.

Within the AT Protocol, moderation operates across the same repository data. Labeling and visibility controls are expressed as structured records. Clients or AppViews can apply them deterministically if they choose to consume them. Content exists as signed records keyed by DIDs. It is distributed through relays. Moderation services therefore work against a consistent dataset rather than isolated server copies. Identity portability follows from this structure. Users can move between hosting providers without losing their DID, repository history, or social graph.

ActivityPub standardizes how Activities move between servers and how they are described. It leaves indexing, thread authority, and enforcement to individual implementations. The AT Protocol defines repository structure, identity binding, record schemas, and synchronization across the network. ActivityPub centers on federated message exchange with local policy control. No participant has protocol-level authority over the shape or visibility of a conversation once it federates. The AT Protocol centers on a shared record system with portable identity and network-wide data propagation. Moderation and visibility decisions can attach to the same canonical records seen across the network.

In ActivityPub’s model, moderation is local. If someone replies to you in a harassing way, your server can hide it, block it, or defederate from the offending server. Other servers may still store, display, and propagate those replies according to their own policies. There is no protocol-level mechanism that lets you assert binding control over how replies to your post are indexed or rendered elsewhere. Harassment mitigation is fragmented. Harassment can persist in parallel contexts even after you act against it locally.

In the AT Protocol model, content exists as signed records in repositories keyed to portable identities. It is distributed through a shared data propagation layer. Because of this, moderation services can operate against a consistent dataset. Labels, visibility controls, or account-level actions can attach to the same canonical records that other services consume. While it does not eliminate harassment, it makes it technically possible for moderation decisions to propagate more coherently across applications that choose to honor them.

So the difference for harassment is this: in ActivityPub, protection is inherently piecemeal and server-scoped. In the AT Protocol, protection can be structurally network-aware. Identity, storage, and moderation signals live in the same shared data model.

Basically, the fediverse has no means to keep vulnerable, marginalized people safe. The AT Protocol does, albeit the Bluesky app view chooses not to use it. The point is that it has the potential. The last time I tried to explain all of this, I was harassed by a person who operates multiple servers and accounts on here:

@FediThing @FediTips @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] and @[email protected]

The protocol is fundamentally flawed, and they do not know how to fix it. These people are incapable of good-faith conversations, so I am avoiding tagging them or attaching this response.to the thread, because their response is basically to stall, hedge, and gas light.

I’m not a fan of Bluesky — not at all. I really wanted to love ActivityPub, but I think Eugene pretty much killed it within the last three years. They had a very narrow, myopic culture and vision in mind, where they completely ignored all criticisms. Now, there is really no way to fix this mess, which is why they stick to gaslighting their users and literally harassing any developer who criticizes them. Social media has normalized lying to its users, so am I surprised?

Edit:

What a surprise. An anti-black reaction that pulls the it is okay to ignore you because you are an angry black person. Yes, black people are angry, and that you do not understand why is the problem.

I’m not going to go back and forth with a racist, nor am I going to quote them because of my stance on spreading misinformation and vitriol. A person who was implicated in the anti-Black behavior of the fediverse tried to discredit me as a Black person by claiming that I am not on Blacksky, have not worked on Blacksky, and am not happy or positive enough to be included in the Black folks who have been harmed by anti-Blackness.

Yes, they said that with a straight face. Blacksky exists because Black people were angry at being mistreated by the fediverse. Ergo, since I am not happy about being mistreated, I can’t be part of that demographic of Black folks. They are tacitly expecting trustworthy Black people to respond to abuse by being happy. What kind of Jim Crow shit is this? Therefore, it is acceptable to dismiss my experiences as a Black person because I don’t conform to the stereotype of what a Black person in America is.

In other words, they are saying I am a hostile angry black person, and we can disregard what I have to say because I am an angry Black person in Donald Trump’s America.

What kills me is that these folks have no insight into their own racism. This is all the attention they get, because I believe racists should be isolated among other things. They truly believe they are the good guys and that the savior complex is an imperialistic colonial archetype flies over their heads I don’t think white racists can ever change, so I will not be addressing them. That’s all I will say about that.

Edit again:

Welp, after seeing the first edit, the hit racist dog deleted the top level of the thread about me. That is what is called a consciousness of guilt, because if they had genuine good intentions and truly believed what they said was right, they would have said it with their whole chest and would not have deleted the top thread reply. Also, the little group of Fediverse racists explicitly rushed to report me. Report me to who—myself? It’s my instance. I have not explicitly violated any rules of this person’s home instance, but they feel entitled to try and have me removed from the Fediverse because I did not respond to their triangulation, brigading, and harassment by being nice. I did not take the mistreatment with a smile and a nod. Racist white people can fuck all the way off.

I am Not Migrating Back To IRC

So, with this whole Discord surveillance age verification situation, I am seeing lots of talk on every social media platform, including Discord ironically, about moving back to IRC. I am not going back to IRC. Though, I do not really have a valid interest in it, because I use Discord just to monitor occult cults and extremist groups, lol. So, it is not like I would be really displaced, anyway. I would just need to figure out a new exploit or hack.

I’m a Computational Biologist, so I am half in Biology and half in software engineering. I tend to look at technology and evolution as analogous to one another. Software, dynamical systems, and evolution are analogous. Evolution functions like a survivorship process. Lineages that leave more descendants become more represented over time where drift, mutation, recombination, and migration all perturb the system. It’s a stochastic dynamical system.

Speciation is a change under isolation. Once gene flow is cut off, divergence accumulates. Eventually, compatibility breaks, creating a divergence. A fork. You can think of it in a version control system like this: you stop merging upstream commits. You accumulate independent changes, and at some point the codebases are no longer interchangeable.

With evolution, even when traits resemble ancestral forms, they arise through new mutations in the current system. It’s a forward, not backward, branch. So from an evolutionary and software engineering perspective, progress happens by forking and optimizing what exists. That means you will not get progress by trying to migrate everyone back to legacy infrastructure.

I’m not migrating to IRC because it is not progress or evolution. It is technologically regressive. Regressive attitudes are why we are essentially in a weird, industrial, cyberpunk version of the 1930s right now. Hoping old-school forums make a comeback and that everyone migrates back to IRC is a technological and societal regression. It’s the same nostalgia-driven impulse that MAGA rides on. It’s not evolutionary or progressive. It’s regressive and backward. So that triggers all the alarm bells in my head, because this is sort of how we got here. Donald Trump rode in on a regressive platform of nostalgia and populism. Roughly 10–12% of Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 voted for Donald Trump under that wave.

Trump’s 2016 rise was driven significantly by populist themes such as critiques of establishment politics, nationalism, economic resentment, and appeals to voters dissatisfied with the status quo in both parties. Anyone paying attention in 2026 should see the cycle repeating itself. This weird form of technological regression is a techno-populist version of it. America never learns is lesson, does it?

Currently, I am on Matrix, albeit I use it more or less for bridge and puppeteer bot purposes. To me, it’s like going back to using muskets when everyone else is using AK-47s. The solution is not to make more regressive pieces of technology. They are least effective when you are essentially in a guerrilla, stochastic war with your own fascist government.

So, I am a Computational Biologist. Keep that in mind. I’m an actual scientist who works with ecological concepts, specifically the microbiome. One of the most insufferable reactions to the cyberpunk era we inhabit is the emergence of anti-science ideas from the left in response to techno-fascism. The strange part is that many people on the left do not even recognize them as anti-science, because they assume the left is aligned with science and the right opposed to it; ergo, if the left says it, it must be scientific. It is insane: washing your hands is technology. Medicine is technology.

I think, because the Internet has hijacked people’s brains, many conflate technology with electronics or machines. Anthropologically, technology consists of material objects, techniques, and organized practices through which humans intentionally intervene in their environments. Technology is culture, and human culture is technology. When someone learns a skill or a discipline from someone else, that is an extension of technology.

Technology encompasses craft traditions (blacksmithing), agriculture, and institutionalized processes of teaching and learning. Agriculture is one of the oldest forms of technology. Yes, farmers are tech workers. I write code, but I also spent a large amount of time on a farm, and I can tell you that many tech workers who pride themselves on writing code would not know what to do with farm equipment.

So, from that broad perspective, we can sum technology up in one word: education. A basic heuristic for determining if something is cultural or not is: can it be taught and learned? These words? I was taught English, and I am using an invented language to transmit knowledge to you; ergo, I am using technology to transmit cultural knowledge to you. Reading a book is thus using a piece of human technology. So, being anti-tech connotes being anti-education.

What got me thinking about this is a toot I read on Mastodon:

The truth is that society needs to develop ethically and ecologically more than it does technologically. That’s not to say that we should shun technology, but our development along other lines lags far behind our technological capacity.

↬ecoevo.social/@benlockwood/116052113455871454

Sounds valid, right? That is the distinct smell of bull shit.This is a clear example of what is called a platitude. Platitudes are memetically hijacking people’s brains. Memetics actually hijack your brain—they change it. It’s similar to how a retrovirus can alter the genome of its host. So, trying to have conversations with these people is pointless, which is why I avoid the chronically online Internet scene and arguing with them.

It made me want to scream. As I mentioned earlier, technology is basically a set of things you learn from other humans—typically within a culture—that helps you do or make something. You know what else is learned within human society? A normative set of cultural values about how we ought to behave. So, both technology and culture emerge from the same thing simultaneously and mutually. You cannot have humans intervening in things to achieve ecological development, because that is technology, and you cannot educate humans on ethics without an invented language. It is literally an anti-education argument.

Ethics and technology arise together from the same human conditions and social processes. It makes little sense to claim that technology is “outpacing” ethics. The two do not develop independently. We form ethical norms in response to new capacities and circumstances. There would be no cultural norms about how to use the Internet if the Internet did not exist. And, there would be no ethical debates about AI if AI did not exist. Ethical reflection emerges alongside technological change because both are products of human culture.

As new problems create new technologies that create new problems, societies respond by negotiating norms, rules, and expectations appropriate to those contexts. The same pattern appears in politics. Politics concerns who gets what, when, and how—it is the negotiation of power, rights, and resources. Without resources or competing claims, there would be nothing to negotiate. Ethics and politics are not trailing behind technology because they are co-emergent responses to the same underlying realities.

@benlockwood

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

Astroturfing Is Pretty Pointless When Social Subgraphs Are Fragmented (e.g., the Fediverse)

I am seeing astroturfing in the fediverse again, by AT Protocol developers implicitly trying to shill their products. I think it is stochastic behavior by developers with too much time on their hands. Honestly, I do not care. I like the people on ActivityPub more, but I like the AT Protocol better, and I have developed for both. Astroturfing on ActivityPub networks is fascinating to me because it is so pointless.

I am actually a Computational Biologist and Computer Scientist whose specialty is combinatorics, social graphs, graph theory, etc. Specifically, I use this to create epidemiological models for the memetic layer of human behaviors that act as vectors for diseases, using the SIRS model. I do not just study germs; I study human behaviors.

The models I construct extend into a “memetic layer,” in which beliefs, norms, and behaviors (such as risk-taking, compliance with public health measures, or susceptibility to misinformation) spread contagiously through social networks. These behaviors function as vectors that modulate biological transmission rates. As a result, the spread of ideas can accelerate, dampen, or reshape the spread of disease. By running computational simulations and agent-based models on these graphs, I study how network structure, influential nodes, clustering, and platform-specific dynamics affect behavioral contagion. I also examine how these factors influence epidemiological outcomes.

To say it very concisely, I study how the spread of bat-shit insane beliefs, shit posts, and memes influences whether or not there is a measles outbreak in Texas. Ironically, this is an evolution of my studying semiotics, memetics, and chaos magick in high school. I got a job where I can use occult, anarchist techniques professionally.

I think a large reason why I do not care about astroturfing in the fediverse is that it’s so pointless, lol. Astroturfing to manipulate the narrative would actually work better on Bluesky to keep people there than trying to recruit from the fediverse. Furthermore, big instances are relatively small. Some people on Bluesky have follower lists larger than an entire large instance in the fediverse.

Within ActivityPub networks, astroturfing rarely propagates far, because whether information spreads depends on properties of the social graph itself. Dense connectivity, short paths between communities, and a sufficient number of cross-cutting ties support diffusion. ActivityPub’s architecture tends to produce graphs that are fragmented and highly modular. This limits the reach of coordinated activity.

ActivityPub is a system where each instance maintains its own local user graph and exchanges activities through inboxes and outboxes. This makes it autonomous and decentralized. The network consists of loosely connected subgraphs. Cross-instance edges appear only through explicit follow relationships. The ActivityPub protocol does not provide a shared or complete view of the network. Measurements of the fediverse consistently show uneven connectivity between instances, clustering at the instance level, and relatively long effective path lengths across the network. Under these conditions, large cascades are uncommon.

Instance-level clustering means that in ActivityPub networks, users interact much more with others on the same server than with users on different servers. Because each instance has its own local timeline, culture, and moderation, connections form densely within instances and only sparsely across them through explicit follow relationships. This creates a network made up of tightly connected local communities linked by relatively few cross-instance ties, which slows the spread of information beyond its point of origin.

However, with the AT Protocol, global indexing and aggregation are explicitly supported. Relays and indexers can assemble near-complete views of the social graph. Applications built on top of this infrastructure operate over a graph that is denser and easier to traverse. There are fewer structural barriers between communities. The diffusion dynamics change substantially when content can move across the graph without relying on narrow federated paths.

Astroturfing depends on coordinated amplification, typically through tightly synchronized clusters of accounts intended to manufacture visibility. Work on coordinated inauthentic behavior shows that these tactics gain traction when they intersect highly connected regions of the graph or bridge otherwise separate communities. In networks with strong modularity, coordination remains local. ActivityPub’s federation model produces this kind of modularity by default. Coordinated clusters stand out clearly within instances. Their effects remain confined to those local neighborhoods.

Astroturfing on ActivityPub therefore tends to stall on its own because of the underlying graph topology. Without dense inter-instance connectivity or any form of global indexing, coordinated campaigns have a hard time moving beyond the immediate regions where they originate. Systems built on globally indexable social graphs, including those enabled by the AT Protocol, expose a much larger surface for viral spread. Network structure and connectivity account for the divergence where that is independent of moderation, cultural norms, ideology, or intent.

It’s just really funny to me how these stochastic techbro groups waste so many resources. I personally don’t want to go viral, which is why I avoid platforms where I can. The fact that it’s harder to achieve high virality on ActivityPub is exactly why I prefer the fediverse over the Atmosphere. One way to think about it is that you can change the ‘genetics’ of a system with a retrovirus, where memetic entities act as cultural retroviruses to reprogram the cultural loci of a space. That is their end goal. They are trying to hijack cultures memetically. You see this a lot with culture jamming.

Basically, the astroturfing on ActivityPub networks is designed to jam and subvert the culture. But, as I have already said, the topological structure makes memetic virality stall. They cannot achieve that kind of viral spread in the fediverse, which is why I cannot understand why they do this every year.

The Virulent Infection of BlueSky by Extremely Online, Brain-Rotten Zombies from X Continues

So, it appears a new migration from Twitter to Bluesky is underway. It appears to be some of the most virulent former 4chan users possible. Yep, I got off Bluesky just in time, lol. I’ve been keeping tabs on a particularly virulent and toxic subgraph on Twitter for years. It pretty much stayed off Bluesky because they couldn’t act like abusive dumpster fires there. Welp, looks like they’re becoming more active on Bluesky. It’s not looking good over there.

That they are on the move says something. It’s sort of like how the US is suddenly a place that is hospitable to measles. It was all but eradicated here.

My husband likes to say that you can tell where not to be by where I am looking from somewhere else. I like fires. So if I am observing your platform or community from a distance, you probably don’t want to be there.

Edit:

I had originally posted the above on a now-defunct federated blog. It got blasted to Mastodon. Someone replied and asked what I think is causing this. I debated actually answering, then decided that I’ve had enough of the dumpster fire that is social media. I decided not to wade through social media tech discourse into what will mostly likely be an Internet argument with a complete stranger. I am a techie dragon, and I engage with things to learn how they work so I can tinker with them. I only engaged with tech discourse to get my hands on how the tech works. There’s nothing in it for me to be part of larger conversations. Arguing with random strangers on social media is not an epistemically useful format. I do think I should answer, though. Just on my blog.

I treat social media like I do an addictive substance. I do not believe in abstinence, but I do believe in harm-reduction paradigms, so when I see everyone overdosing on social media, I pull back and shut down a lot of accounts. The Fediverse instance where the first part of this blog post was posted has been taken down, moved to this blog, and this section appended to it.

I often use the word weeb pejoratively. Here, I am using it categorically. There really isn’t an “official” name outside of otaku or weeb culture. I am at the fringes and intersections of it as a furry. My husband is a millennial weeb. With that being said—

The migration is in large part because Bluesky is capturing the otaku/weeb niche of X. X hosted networks that were ecosystems of “anime fans.” These included anime and manga artists, doujin and hentai artists, VTuber fans, NSFW illustrators, fandom shitposters, niche fetish communities, and other chronically and extremely online content creators and influencers. That culture relied heavily on timelines, informal networks, and discovery through reposts, replies, and algorithmic amplification.

Elon Musk pretty much destabilized X’s ecosystems and social networks from multiple directions at once. Algorithm changes made reach inconsistent. Moderation created anxiety and uncertainty about what would get suppressed or unintentionally “viral”. Bots, engagement farming, and blue-check reply spam actively poisoned fandom conversations.

Bluesky is the memetic and cultural progeny of early imageboard cultures. I conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the memetics, which you can check out here:

Bluesky is a competitor of X for otaku and fandom communities. Bluesky has a lot of the aspects of old Twitter dynamics around which fandom culture evolved. Recently, Bluesky introduced something big in those communities: going live. Since X is no longer habitable for weebs, they are moving to Bluesky.

For example, the AT protocol already has PinkSea:

https://pinksea.art

And, of course, there is WAFRN:

https://app.wafrn.net

I cope and deal with issues via personal, private sublimation and not so much exhibitionism of my art or consumption of art. So, while I do make comic books and do a shit ton of weeby art, it’s for the purpose of sublimation, so I’m not too interested in being a part of a community. That’s a large reason I am not active in those spaces. I’m quite cynical, in general, so I am suspicious of any community — and I mean any community, at all. Honestly, I am mildly contemptuous of mass participation or any sense of belonging. So, my art stays private, because it is created for me – and just me.

Astroturfing Is Pretty Pointless When Social Subgraphs Are Fragmented (e.g., the Fediverse)

I am seeing astroturfing in the fediverse again, by AT Protocol developers implicitly trying to shill their products. I think it is stochastic behavior by developers with too much time on their hands. Honestly, I do not care. I like the people on ActivityPub more, but I like the AT Protocol better, and I have developed for both. Astroturfing on ActivityPub networks is fascinating to me because it is so pointless.

I am actually a Computational Biologist and Computer Scientist whose specialty is combinatorics, social graphs, graph theory, etc. Specifically, I use this to create epidemiological models for the memetic layer of human behaviors that act as vectors for diseases, using the SIRS model. I do not just study germs; I study human behaviors.

The models I construct extend into a “memetic layer,” in which beliefs, norms, and behaviors (such as risk-taking, compliance with public health measures, or susceptibility to misinformation) spread contagiously through social networks. These behaviors function as vectors that modulate biological transmission rates. As a result, the spread of ideas can accelerate, dampen, or reshape the spread of disease. By running computational simulations and agent-based models on these graphs, I study how network structure, influential nodes, clustering, and platform-specific dynamics affect behavioral contagion. I also examine how these factors influence epidemiological outcomes.

To say it very concisely, I study how the spread of bat-shit insane beliefs, shit posts, and memes influences whether or not there is a measles outbreak in Texas. Ironically, this is an evolution of my studying semiotics, memetics, and chaos magick in high school. I got a job where I can use occult, anarchist techniques professionally.

I think a large reason why I do not care about astroturfing in the fediverse is that it’s so pointless, lol. Astroturfing to manipulate the narrative would actually work better on Bluesky to keep people there than trying to recruit from the fediverse. Furthermore, big instances are relatively small. Some people on Bluesky have follower lists larger than an entire large instance in the fediverse.

Within ActivityPub networks, astroturfing rarely propagates far, because whether information spreads depends on properties of the social graph itself. Dense connectivity, short paths between communities, and a sufficient number of cross-cutting ties support diffusion. ActivityPub’s architecture tends to produce graphs that are fragmented and highly modular. This limits the reach of coordinated activity.

ActivityPub is a system where each instance maintains its own local user graph and exchanges activities through inboxes and outboxes. This makes it autonomous and decentralized. The network consists of loosely connected subgraphs. Cross-instance edges appear only through explicit follow relationships. The ActivityPub protocol does not provide a shared or complete view of the network. Measurements of the fediverse consistently show uneven connectivity between instances, clustering at the instance level, and relatively long effective path lengths across the network. Under these conditions, large cascades are uncommon.

Instance-level clustering means that in ActivityPub networks, users interact much more with others on the same server than with users on different servers. Because each instance has its own local timeline, culture, and moderation, connections form densely within instances and only sparsely across them through explicit follow relationships. This creates a network made up of tightly connected local communities linked by relatively few cross-instance ties, which slows the spread of information beyond its point of origin.

However, with the AT Protocol, global indexing and aggregation are explicitly supported. Relays and indexers can assemble near-complete views of the social graph. Applications built on top of this infrastructure operate over a graph that is denser and easier to traverse. There are fewer structural barriers between communities. The diffusion dynamics change substantially when content can move across the graph without relying on narrow federated paths.

Astroturfing depends on coordinated amplification, typically through tightly synchronized clusters of accounts intended to manufacture visibility. Work on coordinated inauthentic behavior shows that these tactics gain traction when they intersect highly connected regions of the graph or bridge otherwise separate communities. In networks with strong modularity, coordination remains local. ActivityPub’s federation model produces this kind of modularity by default. Coordinated clusters stand out clearly within instances. Their effects remain confined to those local neighborhoods.

Astroturfing on ActivityPub therefore tends to stall on its own because of the underlying graph topology. Without dense inter-instance connectivity or any form of global indexing, coordinated campaigns have a hard time moving beyond the immediate regions where they originate. Systems built on globally indexable social graphs, including those enabled by the AT Protocol, expose a much larger surface for viral spread. Network structure and connectivity account for the divergence where that is independent of moderation, cultural norms, ideology, or intent.

It’s just really funny to me how these stochastic techbro groups waste so many resources. I personally don’t want to go viral, which is why I avoid platforms where I can. The fact that it’s harder to achieve high virality on ActivityPub is exactly why I prefer the fediverse over the Atmosphere. One way to think about it is that you can change the ‘genetics’ of a system with a retrovirus, where memetic entities act as cultural retroviruses to reprogram the cultural loci of a space. That is their end goal. They are trying to hijack cultures memetically. You see this a lot with culture jamming.

Basically, the astroturfing on ActivityPub networks is designed to jam and subvert the culture. But, as I have already said, the topological structure makes memetic virality stall. They cannot achieve that kind of viral spread in the fediverse, which is why I cannot understand why they do this every year.

Who Gets to Speak On Discord, Who Gets Banned, and Why That’s Always Political in Spaces with No Politics Rules

So, a thing I find very interesting about the fragility of the esteem among chronic Discord users is that it’s common for admins and moderators to ban or make fun of people who leave. Essentially, they’re responding to being rejected or not chosen, so they think it’s reasonable to retaliate

A Discord server I am lurking in has a “no politics” rule and is a religious, esoteric, and philosophical server. What I find very funny about this is that politics is:

“Politics is who gets what, when, and how.”

— Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)

I find it very funny that the most minimal form of being “not political” in a virtual community is a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). I was part of an IRC chaos magick channel when I was a teenager, and I submitted to a zine under my old handle (which is not Rayn) when I was 20. No, I’m not going to reveal the name I wrote under, which was published in chaos magick zines back in the day, because I’ve had a bucket of crazies following me around since 2008, with the insane network of anarchists circa 2020 being the latest instance.

ChanServ was a bot used on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks to manage channel operations such as bans, who got voiced, and permissions. Think of it as an early, early moderation bot. In an IRC TAZ, everyone who entered got all the permissions from Chanserv, so anyone could ban, voice, unban, deop, or op anyone else. No one had more power than anyone else, so there was minimal negotiation over channel resources. A TAZ is still an inherently political construct; however, it is a minimal political construct because there is minimal negotiation of resources and an equal, random, and chaotic authority structure. That’s not Discord, though.

Discord inherently has a hierarchical system defined by roles, a TOS, and members are expected to abide by the rules of that server. So, when you say there is a no-politics rule on Discord, you are inherently contradicting yourself because Discord is structurally political in how you, as a moderator, interact with others. How people negotiate conversations and interact with each other to access the resources of your Discord server is inherently political.

Discord’s structure makes any “no-politics” rule itself a political act. Moderators exercise power by granting, restricting, or revoking permissions, and that distribution of power is the very politics the rule tries to avoid. So while the intention is to keep discussions “apolitical,” it creates local Discord politics by determining who gets to speak and who gets silenced (e.g., banned, timed out, kicked, or limited to certain channels). A “no politics” rule shifts political dynamics into moderation decisions rather than eliminating them.

What prompted this was me observing a typical pragmatic versus moral realism argument that you’d see in any philosophy course or forum. I’m an academic and a computational scientist, but I don’t try to shut down any arguments with that, because that’s an explicit fallacy and a dishonest, bad-faith tactic.

Technically, I am a biologist. Yes, I have a biology degree and a biotech degree. I also have philosophy, mathematics, and computer science and engineering degrees under my belt. I have to work with people like this on a daily basis, and I find them insufferable, so the last thing I want to do in my free time after looking at stacks of dumbass papers is argue with people on Reddit or Discord when I could be fucking, getting fucked, or spending time with my husband. But, alas, they have no life. Keep in mind, as a computational biologist that reviews a lot of shit, I get paid to argue. These idiots are arguing on the Internet for free! The reason why Redditors, Reddit moderators, and Discord moderators get shat on so much is that all of their labor is unpaid! People with lives don’t take it that seriously!

On to the convo:

A new person in the community defined morals as: morals = {a, b, c} exhaustively. An established member of that community responded that, for them, morals are either {x, y, z…}, non-exhaustive and polymorphic, or not inherently defined by the tradition itself but supplied externally by the individual. The new person replied, effectively, “According to my definition of a, b, c, that still constitutes a moral framework.” An established member who is also a scientist pushed back as if no definition of morals had been proposed at all, when in actuality they were disagreeing with the scope and applicability of the given definition, not the act of defining itself.

By the way, the symbolic way I’m defining this is ambiguous. You have no clue what anything is; however, it is ontologically defined, and the logic makes sense. That is the problem. An ontological definition was given, so arguing that no definition was proposed—simply because they disagreed with it—is in bad faith. Personally, I am a constructivist, poststructuralist, pragmatist, instrumentalist, and anti-realist, so I don’t care too much about the realism of the ontological propositions and expressions. I am pointing out logical mistakes.

This is especially egregious when individuals rely on their authority in a domain where their degree is not pertinent. A well-known issue with scientists is that their curiosity can outstrip their morality. Essentially, an ethics board composed mostly of scientists without degrees in ethics, law, or philosophy will make poor decisions and saturate the political sphere they occupy with advocates and lobbyists to bend laws to their interests. Therefore, a board with no philosophers is pretty sinister.

Morals and ethics are philosophical problems. To my knowledge, many people who sit on ethics boards that seriously address ethical issues have philosophy, and not just astronomy, degrees. Relevant degrees include psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, etc. For example, I have a philosophy degree, so I am technically qualified and credentialed by a university to have these discussions. An astronomy degree alone does not make someone qualified to discuss ethics—maybe if they also had a theology degree?

The thing I find really funny about this group is that they avoid dilemmas. Morals and ethics are developed through ethical dilemmas. Their response to any type of dilemma is to exert their local authority and exclude, deny, or shut down conversations.

The difference between science and philosophy is that science is a little less messy and more defined. We can all see something and agree on what we see, right? The difference with philosophical questions and moral dilemmas is that they are relatively open-ended and ambiguous. It’s really amusing to me how those who try to argue philosophy are uncomfortable with indefinite answers that are open to interpretation.

It’s just funny how they tacitly assume that they are the only academics in their field in existence and that their opinion on things is the consensus, especially on metaphysical issues where there is no consensus. No human knows what the right thing to do is all the time. It’s great to know that they have somehow achieved a level of inhuman perfection.

BlueSky Is A Platform For Attention Whores With No Standards

I’m convinced that Bluesky is the platform for attention-whores who perform and humiliate themselves for validation and affirmation. It’s really sad. I don’t feel bad when bad things happen to them as a consequence because they were already warned, yet they prioritize fitting into a culture and refuse to deal with their feelings of inadequacy. The reason they stay is that the bar is low for meaningful engagement, allowing them to indulge in their obsessions and compulsions while being rewarded for self-destructive behavior. It truly is quite pathetic.

I initially joined Bluesky for the sexual content because people on Mastodon have little interest in sex and much more elaborate norms around sexuality. Contrary to what people think of me, I don’t actually use social media in the conventional way most people do. I view it on an abstract, non-algorithmically served layer via my network analysis tools, and I interact with YouTube in a very constrained way. So, I wasn’t aware of how bad things were until I started using Bluesky conventionally. The men on Bluesky are just plain repulsive to me. Desperation, neediness, lack of independence, and obsessively posting about a single topic (like sex, religion, or politics), instead of developing a genuine hobby that demonstrates skill, progress, and mastery, are major turn-offs. I find a lack of standards absolutely disgusting.

For example, if someone abhorrent gives you a compliment, you don’t accept it. If an abhorrent person follows you, you block them. Yet what I see are men posting sexual content and seeking attention and validation from anyone, regardless of who it’s coming from. If I look through someone’s activity and see nothing but low-effort posts interacting with nothing but sexual content or obsessive engagement with that type of content, I lose interest immediately.

A reason why my husband has held my attention for over a decade is that there is always something new with him. He is always randomly looking into developing a new skill. One day, he started randomly speaking Mandarin to me, which I did not know he knew how to speak. He had told me he had been learning Mandarin. Yes, my husband is neurodivergent and his interests are cars, but that doesn’t displace all other things. Another reason why my husband holds my attention is that he can keep a conversation going and match anyone’s changes. It’s not one ritualistic or compulsive thing every single fucking day.

A very real consequence of the lack of standards in gay sexual spaces, especially given that many misogynistic, homophobic far-right men suppress their homosexual attractions, is that many of the fetishes in gay sexual spaces are reminiscent of manosphere content. Because of what I do for a living, I have access to audience segmentation metrics and social embeddings of how content is served. Manosphere content clusters with homoerotic content that men consume. At some point, obsession became so normalized that people stopped realizing it was problematic.

Unless gay men set boundaries and tell manosphere bros, “we’re not having that,” you’ll see what I see on Bluesky. I’m actually very sexual myself, and I frequently go to bathhouses—those that have very explicit rules—sex parties, and orgies.

The funny thing is that I have had plenty of really deep philosophical conversations sitting in the hot tub of a bathhouse with naked gay men. Because of health codes and all that, you can’t do sexual things in the pool or the hot tub, so those areas were places for genuine play and conversation, while spots like the saunas were the fuck spots. I recall a particularly interesting conversation I had with an older gay man who had been going to that bathhouse since the ’80s. He explained to me the social context of the HIV epidemic and how, basically, no one knew it was sexually transmitted, so everyone was still barebacking at that exact same bathhouse we were in.

The issue here is people who fuck and sexually perform for awful people who want to murder them because they have absolutely no fucking standards and are so emotionally needy that they forgo all forms of self-preservation. I’m a computer scientist, so I have access to a lot of data tools. I can tell you for a fact that there is a strong correlation between men who want to murder gay men and trans people and the ones liking, engaging in parasocial dynamics with, and commenting in their replies. You’re willing to take sexual attention from people who want to kill you, and that blows my mind.

In their minds, Bluesky is better if it is not a Nazi strip bar but a Nazi BDSM-furry-kink club? What the ever-loving fuck?! Honestly, I watch a lot of feminist content that rips manosphere content apart, so much so that I can instantly recognize coded things. The “fuck no!” moment for me is when I saw manosphere-coded things being fetishized in the ego networks of large gay adult content creators and OnlyFans creators in social network embeddings. It’s not like it is insidious. If I see it, everyone else sees it; they are just ignoring it because they are prioritizing sexual validation and their obsessions.

Bluesky is An Ontological Space for Sadomasochism, Trolling, & Schadenfreude

So, during the initial exodus from Twitter after it became X following Elon Musk’s purchase, many people left but kept their accounts, purposefully to bully, surveil, antagonize, and troll others. People—including me—moved to Bluesky, Mastodon, or both, and used their Twitter accounts purely for harassment and similar behavior. Essentially, X became the place you went to act like a dumpster fire. Because most people within occult niches are highly toxic, I tend to not only block them but also block anyone they follow for reasons I’m about to explain.

I really only use that account to criticize occulture, post nudes, or share YouTube videos. Since I’m aware of fed posting, I avoid commenting on political topics or anarchist discourse on the Clearnet. Keep that in mind. If you scroll through my profile, you’ll see me poking fun at chaotes, posting nudes, gushing about or complaining about my husband, sharing dating horror story YouTube videos, or pet grooming videos. If you look at my likes, you’ll only see gay porn, mathematics papers, engineering papers, etc. There’s no mention of anything political, especially genocides.

There was a person I’d never interacted with who was part of a starter pack for occultists. I blocked them. Then I woke up this morning to find I was added to this list:

Chomsky Honks
Genocide apologist posting cringe from a Starbucks as it burns down around them

So, with all that in mind, these occultists I’ve never interacted with added me to a list. I am neither invested in Bluesky nor strongly connected to their network, primarily because I block almost everyone on it and don’t ever look at any feeds whatsoever, including the Home, followers, or Discover feeds. Therefore, the posts I do interact with are from pockets of people way outside my network. It’s kind of like driving to the bathhouse in Atlanta from a small town in Bubbafuck, Georgia, because everyone in your small town is garbage. Same idea, ontologically.

Honestly, I don’t care, because I’ve mostly moved back to Mastodon and blog more.

What they’ve done is implicitly a form of defamation, because they feel slighted and justified in defaming someone they don’t know, simply because a stranger they’ve never spoken to blocked them. I tend to do a basic block on anyone who blocks me, because if you’ve decided you don’t want to see me, there’s probably no good-faith reason for us to engage in the future. It’s likely there’s some malicious intent later on. As you can see with this, I was correct.

So, in order for them to know I blocked them, they had to continuously check who had blocked them, and they believe people who block them should be punished through bullying. Since the description of the list doesn’t fit me, they retaliated out of malice. The idea behind these cliques is pretty simple: they feel threatened by anyone who rejects their normative statements because it means they are being rejected, and they view any form of dissent as an existential threat. As a result, they believe people who reject them, set boundaries, or dissent from the consensus of their culture need to be punished, and the AT protocol provides convenient tools for brigading. Ironically, these people are anti-fascist yet have a very Christian-like evangelical way of viewing the world. The lack of insight is pretty funny.

I’m the child of cult leaders and members with Cluster B personalities, so I’m not clutching my pearls, especially since I’m already set up elsewhere outside of Bluesky. They do not have the means to impose significant consequences on me, so I find it amusing. I genuinely find it funny how they eat each other. I’m not calling anyone to action—I’m just enjoying the fire.

This person wasn’t aware of who I was. We never interacted, and being added to a list that defames me happened directly after I blocked them without any prior interaction. I saw their account from the firehose and wasn’t algorithmically presented with it, meaning we’re not even in the same clique. Now, if they had said something like “spams hashtags, trolls, makes alts,” that would make sense.

When you look at it for what it is, they wanted to defame, disparage, and brigade—punitive actions because they interpreted a boundary as hostile. This is projection, as they are weaponizing a mechanism to enforce boundaries. Do I care? No. I’m just pointing out how it turned its predecessor, X, into what it is now. It became a place for people to harass others, not a space for genuine, good-faith discussions, connections, or even debates. That is not my interpretation.

Well, to anyone who knows, you might ask: Did they block you because you have a particular reputation? No. I am a Web 1.0 mage, so the networks I’m known in have roots and associations in the old forums. The occulture people who have fixated on me for years go all the way back to Wizard Forums, the psionics forums, the unsolved mystery forums, etc., from the early 2000s. If you’re a circa 2016 social media influencer mage, you probably wouldn’t know me—primarily because the moment I see you, I’ll block you. There’s also a moderation block list just for me and my alts.

This behavior is typical of the culture on Bluesky, so much so that it’s a common complaint people now have—many no longer view block lists as legitimate moderation tools. People are being advised to be skeptical of lists with a large number of people.

Oh, I’m not playing the victim here. I don’t care, because I could easily get back at them. I’m infamously vindictive and petty. More importantly, it supports my point and vindicates me. I’m not signaling victimhood; rather, I’m pointing out a culture, albeit one I participate in. Tying this back to my initial point: part of what signaled the death of Twitter as a serious forum and its transformation into X was the bullying. A while ago, I did a phylogenetic memetic analysis that basically showed how the culture on Bluesky is highly derivative of image boards. But don’t you bully and troll people? Yes, yes, I do – on Bluesky, and the lack of moderation and culture enable it. That’s my point.

Bluesky is an accelerationist and reactionary platform that gives you the tools to surveil and harass people. The developers of Bluesky and the AT Protocol have explicitly said they are technological accelerationists and libertarians. I’m not virtue signaling here; rather, I am saying Bluesky is a reactionary platform, so its culture should be understood as performative, hostile, and adversarial—not cooperative or collaborative. Just like Twitter. You can’t do what I do on Bluesky on the fediverse, because the culture won’t allow it.

You saw this type of behavior on Tumblr, where the population carrying the memetics of that culture migrated to Twitter and now Bluesky. Essentially, Bluesky became a place where malice, bullying, and hostile behavior became so normalized that I’m not even upset about lists being weaponized like this. For example, I’m not posting this on Bluesky, and I, myself, have bullied people on Bluesky. But I behave myself on Mastodon. I am using myself as an example. The trolling is happening on Bluesky. The thoughtful posts are happening on Mastodon. The blog this will be posted on is federated, so this is being posted to the fediverse.

That’s what happened to Twitter. It started normalizing hostile, toxic behavior, so that people left the platform and only returned to Twitter for schadenfreude. I have my own WordPress fediverse instance. I am just on Bluesky for the schadenfreude.

@randahl
When someone is a threat to the people around him and society, that person is taken into custody.

If there are issues pointing to mental illness or the person is denying the abnormality of its actions, the person is subjected to forced mental treatment.

Why don't the rules of a normal civilised society apply to politicians and head of states?

#mentalIllness #DarkTriangle #psychology #insane #trump #Psychopath #narcissism #machiavellianism #CrashCourse

In defense of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦, a Renaissance-era treatise by Italian diplomat Niccolò #Machiavelli, think of it less as a manual for tyrants and more as simply an explanation for the nature of politics, in which only the greatest seek to maximize their power, regardless of the morality of how they do it. It is not an ethic I endorse, yet it is the only valid theory, I believe, that explains most politicians' behavior. Welcome to the world of cynicism.

#Machiavellianism #politicalRealism #ThePrince

When I read descriptions of #DarkTriad personality tbeory I always think of Trump. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_tr... "three notably offensive but non-pathological personality types: #Machiavellianism, sub-clinical #narcissism, and sub-clinical #psychopathy."

Dark triad - Wikipedia

#Narcissism is characterized .by #grandiosity, pride, #egotism, and a lack of #empathy. #Machiavellianism is characterized by #manipulativeness, #indifference to morality, lack of #empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest

Exactly, #DarkTriad I fear. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_tr... " #Machiavellianism, sub-clinical #narcissism, and sub-clinical #psychopathy "

Dark triad - Wikipedia

Self-termination is most likely

Analysis of 5,000 years of #civilisation argues that global collapse is coming unless #inequality is vanquished

Dr. Kemp’s new book covers rise & collapse of over 400 #societies over 5k years

Today’s civilisation is deeply interconnected, unequal & could lead to worst collapse yet

Threat from leaders who are versions of a dark triad - #narcissism, #psychopathy, #Machiavellianism – world menaced by #ClimateCrisis, #nuclear weapons, #AI

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse

Enjoy your weekend, folks: “The threat is from #leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – #narcissism, #psychopathy and #Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the #climatecrisis, #nuclearweapons, #artificialintelligence and killer robots.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘Self-termination is most like...

Enjoy your weekend, folks: “The threat is from #leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – #narcissism, #psychopathy and #Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the #climatecrisis, #nuclearweapons, #artificialintelligence and killer robots.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘Self-termination is most like...

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-narcissism-dark-personality-traits-linked.html

(for heaven's sake, let's hope it never occurs to our 'dark triad' commander in chief to use AI to do his work. Oh, right, it already did)

"students who scored highly for dark personality traits like #narcissism, #machiavellianism and #psychopathy (collectively known as "the #DarkTriad") were more likely to rely on AI tools like #ChatGPT and #Midjourney to do their work."

Why does it matter that Musk claimed to be a world-class gamer? In the field of juvenile one-up-manship, being a top gamer matters a great deal. I do not fault primate behavior, but I do notice it. The compass is spinning. https://www.tiktok.com/@zigurdmednieks/video/7461995260911275310

#Machiavellianism #juvenile #Musk #Trump

Seeing some recent posts about Dark Triad personality traits. In addition to Dark Triad (#narcissism, #machiavellianism, #psychopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad), Dark Tetrad adds #sadism; Dark Pentad includes #spitefulness
#DarkTriad #DarkTetrad #DarkPentad #trump #ElonMusk #MAGA

Women exhibit less manipulative personality traits in more gender-equal countries https://www.psypost.org/women-exhibit-less-manipulative-personality-traits-in-more-gender-equal-countries/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #GenderEquality #WomenEmpowerment #Machiavellianism #SocialPsychology #PersonalityTraits

Dark personality traits linked to “virtuous victim signaling” and exploitation of accusations https://www.psypost.org/dark-personality-traits-linked-to-virtuous-victim-signaling-and-exploitation-of-accusations/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #DarkPersonalityTraits #VictimSignaling #Narcissism #Machiavellianism #Sadism

A Shameless Society

https://waynebisset.wordpress.com/2024/11/23/a-shameless-society/

New study links dark triad traits to burnout in academia https://www.psypost.org/new-study-links-dark-triad-traits-to-burnout-in-academia/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #DarkTriad #AcademicBurnout #Machiavellianism #Psychopathy #Perfectionism

Of all the dark personality traits, this one shows the strongest link to crime https://www.psypost.org/of-all-the-dark-personality-traits-this-one-shows-the-strongest-link-to-crime/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #DarkPersonality #CrimeLink #PersonalityTraits #CriminalBehavior #Machiavellianism

The piece below by Morgaan Sinclair, PhD, originally published in Dec 2023, is critically worth revisiting now, as Trump’s malevolence is even more evident & so much hangs in the balance:
”#Projection is dangerous because it allows us to take absolutely everything about ourselves that we despise, offload it onto somebody else, & then punish them for what *we* are doing.”
#Trump #narcissism #psychopathy #tyrant #sadism #Machiavellianism #fascism #PathologicalLiar #racism
https://www.politisage.com/p/heart-of-darkness-trump-isnt-just

Researchers test machine learning’s potential to reveal personality traits through eye tracking https://www.psypost.org/researchers-test-machine-learnings-potential-to-reveal-personality-traits-through-eye-tracking/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #MachineLearning #PersonalityTraits #EyeTracking #Machiavellianism #Extraversion

New study reveals varied links between dark personality traits and mental health https://www.psypost.org/new-study-reveals-varied-links-between-dark-personality-traits-and-mental-health/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #darkpersonality #mentalhealth #narcissism #machiavellianism #psychopathy

Is #bullshit more than just Machiavellian? Is there skill involved?

Among over 500 people, Christian Blotter found that bullshitting was predicted by #Machiavellianism only at average and above average levels of verbal reasoning:

So bullshit may require some skill — perhaps the kind of skill we assess in many #admissions and #hiring decisions!

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2024.112635

#epistemology #edu #higherEd #socialMedia #decisionScience #JDM

@gfarrell
In his dreams.

#DarkTriad #Psychopathy #Narcissism #Machiavellianism #TrumpIsNotWell

I don’t do conspiracy theories, period, at all—the end. From the left or the right.

If you log onto Mastodon, you see non-stop political discourse that is increasingly becoming radical from the left. If you log onto Twitter or Reddit, you see anti-Semitism, fascism, and Jesus Gets Us ads.

There is no moral equivalence, nor am I arguing that. However, the existence of fascism doesn’t justify spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories to counter their conspiracy theories. In fact, it should be even more of a motivator to be meticulous and rigorous when laying out a persuasive case.

While I am a magician and an occultist, I am fact-based and data-driven. If there is not a significant amount of data or if what you are asserting does not have enough empirical support, I will categorize it as speculation, conjecture, a counterfactual, and thus fiction.

I don’t know if it is because it is an election year, but social media has become a dumpster fire of misinformation, conspiracy theories, antagonism, and non-stop political discourse. On a personal level, I resent it when people try to manipulate my opinions or beliefs.

Again, there is no moral equivalence to fascism, but people should stop and evaluate the tactics they, themselves, use. Fascists spread conspiracy theories as a Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) tactic. I am seeing FUD spread all over Mastodon from people on the far left. It is an appeal to fear by creating paranoia. If you do this, you’re participating in Machiavellianism and expressing the same cynical view that is the slippery slope down into fascism. It could always be you. Most monsters don’t start off that way.

A lot of people who do horrible things do so because they believe it is for a good cause. Most people end up in cults because they believe they can recognize when something is a cult, and since they would never join a cult, it isn’t a cult. In addition to that, very intelligent people are more likely to believe misinformation if it comes from peers and their peer network that they have strong relationships with. That’s why misinformation spreads like wildfire through highly connected social networks.

Using Machiavellian approaches, for whatever reason, is implicitly the same type of cynical justification that fascists use. I’m not so naive to think that these random posts most people won’t see will change anything. I am just simply stating I’m logging off from social media because the conspiracy theories from all sides are too damn much.

I’m backing up this site as I type this, moving a live site to my local host, and I will continue to express my thoughts privately. Thank God, all of my RSS feeds for reputable news and peer-reviewed research are set up on my smartphone and via Thunderbird. I have YouTube carefully tuned for only STEM stuff, and I have disallowed it to make recommendations for me. People have lost their damn marbles. As someone who deals with the esoteric and arcane and the spooky, I’ve always largely ignored conspiracy theories, but this is getting out of hand. I will not drink from a poisoned well. Time for me to log off.

#anarchism #anarchist #anarchists #anarchy #Animism #animistic #antisemitism #Biden #BlueSky #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #cults #disinformation #DKMU #DonaldTrump #fascism #fascist #fediverse #JoeBiden #liberal #libs #machiavellian #Machiavellianism #magick #Mastodon #misinformation #Nazi #Nazis #occult #occultism #occulture #pagan #paganism #paranormal #progressives #propaganda #Reddit #RSS #RSSFeed #RSSFeeds #socialMedia #Threads #Thunderbird #Trump #Twitter #uspol #witch #witchcraft #WordPress #YouTube #YoutubeAlgorithm

I am beginning to start to despise social influencers. The entire thing sounds intrinsically dystopian and Machiavellian, where it commodifies people’s personalities for the sole purpose of beguilement. Time to shower now, and… I have not decided if I will read a book or do some coding tonight. I probably should finish that coding project that I am working on.

#books #coding #dystopia #dystopian #fediverse #influencers #machiavellian #Machiavellianism #Mastodon #politics #programming #Python #reading #Reddit #socialInfluencers #socialMedia #Threads #Twitter #YouTube

I am so tired of this shit… Look, the world is on fire, and things are just going to get worse from here. I am tired of occultists dealing with this by creating the same type of grandiose narrative where they are part of some mystical order tasked with using magical powers to stop a dark conspiracy. Apparently, every occultist on social media is Batman, The Scarlet Witch, and John Constantine.

Yes, fascism and authoritarianism are very real threats, and there are fascist esoteric orders out there. However, they are not setting up a telepathic network or using dark, eldritch reality-warping powers. They are using regular old, mundane, typical political corruption – the arcane magic of Machiavellianism. You fight that with the illumination of science and reason. Not more superstition and propaganda.

I’m not saying that we are helpless in the face of fascism, but forming parasocial relationships with random people online and LARPing into the astral world on some weird campaign or doing magical rituals alone in your bedroom won’t help anything. It is a coping mechanism. If you want to help people because it is the right thing to do and you just don’t want to feel helpless, find ways of being of service in your community. Honestly, I think we are past discourse. I think some real physical violence towards fascists is in order and not arguments online. LARPing as a witch casting curses won’t cut it. It is merely a way to avoid feeling helpless and managing existential dread, and it helps no one. I mean showing up with metal bats. There is a difference between altruism and coping.

Every magician on social media apparently has gods on speed dial; though, they are just as subject to the bullshit of everyday life as the mundane person is. Every magician on the Internet apparently has reality-warping powers on the Internet, though we all live in one of the worst-shared realities possible. I am over it.

#activism #anarchism #anarchists #anarchy #animistic #Astral #atheism #BlueSky #ceremonialMagic #ceremonialMagick #chaosMagick #conspiracyTheories #cults #divination #DKMU #fascism #fascist #fediverse #gods #LARP #LARPing #machiavellian #Machiavellianism #magick #Mastodon #occult #occultism #occultists #pagan #paranormal #parasocial #politics #propaganda #sigilMagick #sigils #socialMedia #tarotCards #Theism #Threads #TTRPG #Twitter #uspol #witch #witchcraft

Why evil rises: The ultimate corruption explainer by Brian Klaas https://youtu.be/3eBN_9rMoVI

#psychology #brain #darktriad #leadership #people #hr #teams #narcissism #machiavellianism #psychopathy