Pornography of Suffering: Performative Victimhood

Suffering both individual and collective has become a theater of pornography. There are pornographic displays of suffering. There's performative victimhood. People put on display their anguish their agony their trauma their pain their hurt. And they do so in a way which help them helps them to monetize it. Not only financially but also socially. They convert it into social capital. This is not a new phenomenon. You remember Jerry Springer? It's not a new phenomenon but social media and other technologies have given it heft and reach like never before. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self Love, Narcissism Revisited. I'm a professor of psychology and not a pornographic sufferer. >> [laughter] >> Okay, Shoshana Nin. Let's delve right in. We are in an age of victimhood. The sociologist Campbell said that we have transitioned from the age of dignity to the age of victimhood. We are perfectly willing to sacrifice self-respect integrity dignity, values, beliefs social contacts family, everything. We're willing to sacrifice everything just to be seen as a victim. Everyone and his dog and her mother-in-law are victims. And the problem begins to be where do we find enough abusers? >> [laughter] >> A sufficient number of abusers. If everyone is a victim, who on earth is abusing all these people? And so the outcome, the offshoot of this is the victimhood movement. It's a variant on the social justice movements of the 1920s, 1960s. And it it's this There is a considerable difference and distinction between modern-day victimhood movements, which I think started around the 1980s, and these earlier variants. You see, in phase one, there were legitimate grievances. There was a real attempt to redress them and to address them. The emphasis was on civil liberties, on human rights, on societal obligations. It was a kind of Wiedergutmachung, as the German say, making it right again. Reparations. The reparations again don't have necessarily to be pecuniary, financial. Reparations could mean, for example, legislation. Reparations could come in the form of recognition of suffering. Re- reparations could come in by way of addressing grievances um via infrastructure and via policy changes. There are many ways to repair the situation. And the first phase of those social justice movement movements turned victimhood movements, the first phase was wholly dedicated to making things better. And then we have transitioned to phase two. The transition to phase two was facilitated by the emergence of technologies which allowed for self-publishing, self-aggrandizement, self-enhancement, self-promotion. Everyone suddenly gained access to technologies which were reserved. Technologies were with which were usually kept curated by gatekeepers and intermediaries. There was a process of disintermediation. Right now, anyone can publish a book, make a podcast, shoot a documentary film on their iPhone, and consequently, there is a wild, chaotic, anarchic of so-called content, most of which is slop, nonsense, defamation, and worse. This liberalization and democratization of the means of production, the means of intellectual production, led directly to phase two. When everyone has an audience, everyone becomes an actor. And this led to the rise of competitive victimhood, or as Gabay and her collaborators called, TIV, tendency for interpersonal victimhood. There's a channeled it's channeled externalized aggression, coupled with rising intolerance, which almost borders on religious fervor. There's dogmatism, doctrinarianism. There is um a wish to eliminate, annihilate, destroy, eradicate the other. So, there's a lot of othering involved. Phase two is a virulent, malignant transformation of phase one. Where the emphasis is no longer on making things right, on making things better. The emphasis is on making it worse for the other side. Making it Making it right only for yourself. It's This This is an exclusionary and exclusive approach. Only members of the in-group deserve humane and civilized treatment. All others are justifiably mistreated. They have no rights. The other has no rights. Phase two, the phase of ostentatious competitive victimhood, uh lasted a while and segued seamlessly into phase three. The phase we're in right now. Phase three involved an ostentatious pornographic display of suffering. Performative victimhood. Victimhood with an audience. Victimhood geared to the expectations and needs and wishes and dreams and fantasies and nightmares of an audience, a specific audience. The whole scene fragments fragmented and fractured. Victimhood became ala carte. Victimhood became tailored and customized. And this led to a takeover. Takeover by dark triad personalities. People who are narcissistic, people who are psychopathic. And by narcissists and psychopaths. Victimhood movements have been infiltrated by them. They took over. And then they leveraged victimhood movements against their enemies. One manifestation of this is the victimhood smear campaign or the victimhood pile on. The victimhood pile on or the victimhood smear campaign legitimize externalized aggression bordering on violence. The background notes are our enemies should die one way or another. We should deny them their rights, but that's not enough. We should eliminate them somehow. The victimhood smear campaigns and victimhood pile ons are driven by narratives. And these narratives are usually um all good We are all good and they are all bad. These are known as splitting narratives. We are all angelic. We are impeccable. We are flawless. We are blameless. And they are evil and dark. Who are they? They are everyone who is not us. There is otherness, there's they-ness. And so this the victimhood smear campaign and the victimhood pile on and the and generally more generally the third phase of victimhood is about confrontation and conflict. It's about fighting back. It's about eliminating, eradicating, obliterating, pulverizing the enemy, the perceived enemy. And when there's no enemy, they invent one. It's an enemy-driven narrative, in-group out-group. And so victimhood smear campaigns, victimhood pile ons, ostentatious pornography of suffering, performative victimhood, competitive victimhood, all of them converge converge on conspiracy theories, on hate hate movements, on hate-based identities, no wonder anti-Semitism is is raising its ugly head. And you could stop here and ask, who buys into all this nonsense? Who are the ones who drive this forward? Where's Where's the fuel? Where's the engine of this? Why would anyone believe in a conspiracy theory? Why would anyone buy into some nonsensical construct or narrative that falls apart under minimal inspection and critical thinking? And one possible answer is people are seriously stupid and gullible. They would buy into anything. I don't Although I'm inclined to I'm inclined to believe this because I'm contemptuous towards the vast majority of mankind, I don't buy it in this case. I don't think it's about gullibility. I don't think people are stupid at all. In this particular case, I think what's happening is people are very angry. They're angry. They're full of pent-up rage, aggression that has no outlet. And these movements, these victimhood movements, victimhood smear campaigns, victimhood pylons, victimhood social movements, these these intolerant, aggressive, and very often violent um agglomerations of of people, this in-group affiliation and belonging, they satisfy this rage. They cater to this anger. Like they provide a legitimate outlet. And so people people put their blinders on. They don't want to study the evidence. They don't want to delve deep. They don't want to exercise critical thinking. They don't care about any any of this. They're angry. And here's a hub, here's a place, here's a locus, here's a a local where they can express this anger. Where they can legitimately destroy someone, kill someone, defame someone. It You know, it's it's like finally finally someone gets it. Like-minded people flocking together with a single common identifiable enemy. Mostly invented enemy, mostly imaginary enemy, mostly concocted enemy, unreal, but it doesn't matter. It's an enemy that can be attacked. It's an enemy that can be criticized. It's an enemy that it can be demeaned and humiliated and shamed and And so this gives this allows the participants to vent their negative affects. A lot of the aggression is driven driven by envy. A lot of it is driven by anger. A lot of it is is driven by fear. All these negative affects coalesce and they are redirected like a laser beam onto the target. This is perfectly described in nine in the novel novel 1984 by George Orwell. The conspiratorial smear campaign focuses and redirects diffuse rage, frustration, and envy. It tells you this is the enemy. This person needs to be taken down. This collective needs to be attacked and smeared. This group needs to be eliminated or assassinated, which could easily lead to genocide. The There is a demonization of the other. Irredeemably, there are no redeeming features. The other is all bad and only bad. The other is the reification of evil, which makes you the reification of good, makes you an angel. Who can resist this? It is self-idealization via the group. It's an echo chamber. It's a It's a collective delusion. It's known today as mass psychogenic illness. And so, conspiracy uh smear campaigns, which are focused based on a conspiracy and an identifiable enemy, they serve as a channel. They focus things. They allow people to somehow uh legitimize that which otherwise is totally illegitimate, inappropriate, and should I say evil. Conspiratorial smear campaigns are actually the embodiment of evil masquerading as good. These are extensions of the prosocial narcissists that are driving them. They are infested with psychopaths, covert narcissists, and narcissists. The leaders of these conspiratorial smear campaigns are invariably mentally ill people, cluster B personality disorders, and worse. They're invariably sadistic, vicious, unrelenting, callous, disempathic. They're great actors. They pretend. They feign empathy and compassion. They cry ostentatiously on camera and make you witness it. They But deep inside they're creatures of the dark. They're horrendous people. Dangerous. The organization of these movements is is like a cult. It's a cult-like in-group. The need to belong and the need to be told what to do is the are the common denominators of the members of the group. There's There's a transferred agency. Agency is transmitted onto the group. The individual becomes an extension or an instrument or a prop or a tool. Willingly. This is not a some kind of pernicious, stealthy, surreptitious process. This is perfectly open and visible. The leaders of these groups tell you "We are doing the hard work. We are fighting for you. We are your heroes." Consequently you should listen to us and obey us. You should do everything we tell you to do. You should never ever exercise independent critical thinking. You should never doubt us. You should never question us. They're very totalitarian uh in this sense. Self-righteousness and self-enhancement is some kind of morality play in a moral crusade. And all this is cast as a kind of payback for perceived past victimhood. It's like your time has come. You have been victimized. You have been assaulted. You've been attacked. You've been humiliated. You've been shamed. You've been ignored. You've been held in contempt and disdain. And this your moment has come. Now you can strike back at the people who have done all this to you. Now your life has a meaning. Now suddenly your meaningless life has a meaning. Now, you are a participant in a global historical movement which is both inexorable and righteous. Unscrupulous individuals leverage these dynamics to exact revenge on their enemies and adversaries, to to attain celebrity, to garner a following, and of course, to get rich. They do all this in plain sight. They're not hiding. And yet, the anger and envy and rage of their followers is such that they're willing to overlook anything. They're willing to reframe everything. They're willing to ignore the clear signs that they're being manipulated cold-heartedly and ruthlessly by the so-called leaders. And this capacity itself denial, this hidden this hidden monologue, "I'm so angry that I don't care anymore about my independence, my critical thinking, my personal autonomy, my agency. I don't care anymore about my life, my family. I don't care. I need to express this anger before it consumes me. I need to act upon the objects of my frustration and my past abusers. I need to do all this." And of course, gradually, these phase three victimhood movements become vigilante mobs. And there's mob rule, mobocracy, and they rigidify and coalesce into hierarchical structures which resemble as I said cults very much. Grad- increasingly and incrementally followers, members, fans, participants begin to automatically and robotically obey instructions unthinkingly. And before they know it before they know it they're bound to go through a process of narcissistic abuse. Idealization is the first phase. But later on devaluation and discard when they are no longer useful. So if you're a member such a group prepare yourself. Judgment day is coming.