clown fest

theoildrum | We evolved to favor the ‘in group’ over the ‘out group’, for resource, defensive, and ultimately reproductive advantages. The internet has spawned millions of ‘in-groups’ – peak oilers, tea-party evangelizers, deflationistas, gold-bugs, Austrian economics followers, anti-abortion activists, and myriad less controversial groups such as ‘Claremount High School Boosters", "Kerr Jar Enthusiasts", “Earthworm Snack Creators” and the like. People gravitate towards groups they identify with. And they usually stay there. (After all, a room full of clowns feels a lot less clown-like).

Achieving status is a primary driver in the biological kingdom and remains a key driver in our human social groups. But today, for the first time in our species history, the same ‘feelings’ we get from moving up in a real life social hierarchy can be attained cheaply and easily online. Being the most vocal, most persuasive or most interesting in a small group of dedicated/interested followers engenders the same neural reward as being the head of a small business, or a Mayor, or a high school basketball star. Our brains don’t really know that being the head of the “Morel Foraging Society” or “Nudists for Nader 2012” with several hundred members online is different than being County Treasurer in real life – we receive respect, positive feedback, deference etc. from the people in our ‘in-group’ (the fact they might be just anonymous mushroom pickers or passionate nude people is not relevant to our brains).

Human ethologists liken this phenomenon to 'dispersal phenotype' prevalent in nature:

Dispersal is important in biology. Often a species will produce two forms:
1) a maintenance phenotype (the outcome of genes and the structures they produce interacting with a specific environment) that is adapted to the environment in which it is born, and (2) a dispersal phenotype that is programmed to move to a new area and that often has the capacity to adapt to a new environment.

According to the present theory, humans have developed two dispersal phenotypes in the forms of the prophet and the follower. The coordinated action of these two phenotypes would serve to disperse us over the available habitat. This dispersal must have been aided by the major climatic changes over the past few million years in which vast areas of potential human habitat have repeatedly become available because of melting of ice sheets.

The dispersal phenotypes might have evolved through selection at the individual level, since the reproductive advantage of colonizing a new habitat would have been enormous. They would also promote selection between groups. Factors that promote selection at the group level are rapid splitting of groups, small size of daughter groups, heterogeneity (differences) of culture between groups, and reduction in gene flow between groups. These factors are all promoted by the breaking away of prophet-led groups with new belief systems.

Cult followers have been studied and found to be high on schizotypal traits, such as abnormal experiences and beliefs. They have not yet been tested for the sort of selfish attitudes and behavior that characterize free-riders. If a large cohort of people were tested for some measure of selfishness, it is predicted that those who subsequently joined cults would be low on such a measure. Predictions could also be made about future cult leaders. They would be likely to be ambitious males who were not at the top of the social hierarchy of their original group. If part of why human groups split in general is to give more reproductive opportunities to males in the new group, it can also be predicted that leaders of new religious movements would be males of reproductive age. Female cult leaders are not likely to be more fertile as a result of having many sexual partners, but their sons might be in an advantageous position for increased reproduction.

From THE BIOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR, Edited by Jay R. Feierman (bold added my me)
[pp. 184-186] DISPERSAL

Most people are both reasonable, and passive. Some people are either unreasonable or assertive (or both). In a free form forum one unreasonable or assertive person will drown out 10 or more who are either reasonable or passive. Especially for those whose assertion or unreasonableness in real life leads to fewer social opportunities, the internet has been a godsend. Either anonymous or in their own name, they can easily accumulate a following by articulating what people already believe or like to hear. Given the self-selected audience, there doesn’t exist the normal social checks and balances. As such, due to the myriad different categories, those assertive and/or social acceptance seeking souls who find their niches online dig in hard and ‘feel’ as if they are true celebrities. Combine that with the iterations and scale that come from long time periods, little or no barriers to entry and an apathy/lack of interest from those not spending time on the internet and these folks have become ensconced at all sorts of cyber guideposts on topics that cover the map. Dispersal phenotypes.

Basically, since people believe in authority figures, and nominate their own authority figures based on their own belief systems, it is no wonder that time and numbers has by circa 2010 amassed an internet army of 'clowns'. We see increasingly hysterical caricatures emerge on the internet/media that undergo some perceived status/ego boost that they wouldn't/couldn't have gotten in normal situations. The feedback from the true believers (of whatever tribe they communicate to), then locks these personalities into an utterly confident belief in their own position as an expert, and their actions become considerably (and understandably) clownlike over time to people not in their sub-group, especially magnified in those cases of borderline mental illness (which I suspect are not few). I notice this dynamic in numerous areas of discourse but its particularly prevalent in the the peak oil, finance and climate change circles where I have spent alot of time.