Mental Hoarding

Just like the early days of the conspiracy gematria boom there are still people who need to clean the mental fridge or maybe even buy a brand new one.

One of the fundamental aspects of changing from nomadic hunter-gatherer to tribes was the recognition that food with a longer, well, shelf life, could be saved for later.  Pile up rocks over those extra berries you picked you couldn’t eat.  Save them for later, as long as you knew the hiding spot and marked it carefully and - nobody else stole it before your return.  Then when advanced to the point extra crops were produced on purpose, your hiding place was no longer a secret.  The Mongols knew where your city was.  It was just a matter of being better at taking stuff than the hoarders were at defending it.

There’s a gradient on what it is saving something for later and what is useless hoarding.  A person getting paid once a year would pretty much need to save some for later instead of buying a year’s supply up front.  Parents who expect to send their kid to college could create a per paycheck deposit into a college fund, tucking away a bit each paycheck.  Someone who listens to a storm warning and flocks to the store to stock up, that might be ok but people are idiots and tend to go overboard, buying perishables they won’t get to before they spoil.  And the extreme other end is the multi billionaire who hoards wealth just because they think it’s fun and in reality it doesn’t do any good to society as a whole.

You can find the mental hoarder through the truther tactic of the shill game.  That’s where a clique leader will put out content about how they, Truther A, are the real deal while Truther B is a shill and not to be trusted.  Truther A’s flock travels to Truther B’s domain armed with instructions to antagonize and maybe convert some of the Truther B flock over to the right side.  And their mental fridge is stocked with the same cognitive biases that both Truthers use to extract money from them.

I see it all the time.  Someone who swears they are intelligent and unbiased will talk about how they aren’t racist.  Then they will get triggered to shut off critical thinking as soon as the political buzzwords are present.  Damn it I hate those (commie liberals/fascist conservatives).  Someone who swears that betting on sports with gematria will pop into comments on a video that is discussing apophenia in religious interpretation and swear they understand the apophenia message but obviously show they are sold on the legitimacy of sports gematria.  The alumni association is perfectly fine with you slandering the wrong team by adding in hostile disinformation in addition to your donation to the annual fund.  Both sides know where the other city’s fridges are.

One of the best ways to avoid identity theft is to have an identity not worth stealing.  If you clean out your fridge regularly your cousin won’t steal that fried chicken you were saving for tomorrow.  If you don’t overdo purchases you won’t throw out thousands of dollars a year of unused and spoiled lunch meat, milk and unfinished Chinese takeout.

Politically the idea of us versus them boils down to how much change you are willing to accept and want.  Do you want to conserve the old traditions, embrace moving forward or fall somewhere between the two poles?  Do you want to embrace the old traditions which have some useful social value (thou shalt not steal the fried chicken from your cousin’s fridge) or do you want to admit that maybe you need to understand that there’s some benefit to vaccines and give up on the idea that the Earth is only thousands of years old?  In the meantime, there are bad actors who are pressuring you to embrace that only one side is 100% right about everything.  And if your fridge isn’t stocked up with their stuff you are less than human.

Social media algorithms have a good idea of what your fridge looks like on the inside and wants you to hoard more.  A good exercise would be to take the time to end some channel subscriptions of someone who hasn’t put out a new video in years.  Stop watching videos from someone who begs for money on a weekly basis.  Start hoarding videos that have actual entertainment value and support the content you truly enjoy and not because you are stuck hoarding more of what you learned about, and at the time loved, five years ago.  One thing that never goes out of fashion in hoarding is finding people who are terrible at hoarding and doing it better than they do.  They know your fridge is stocked with outdated products, cognitive biases and lack of long term planning.  And being as disrespectful as possible for your own need for attention.