OSD 377: Hypebeasts as maladapted bees
When a bee colony leaves its honey unguarded, it’s common for bees from a neighboring colony to fly over and rob it. But sometimes the reason the honey is unguarded is that all the bees who made it are dying from a mite infestation. So what the robber bees think is a tasty treat becomes their undoing.
Last week we covered how trend-chasers do the valuable public service of sorting good new products and techniques from bad ones:
@Hoffnung in our Discord made the good point that the same mechanism can also spread maladaptive trends. The same way that friend groups of teens can get into self-harm spirals, gunfluencers can fall into silly or dangerous behavior that plays well with their in-group.
Dramatic examples of that are unsafe ninja moves from disreputable instructors — having novice shooters shoot past their feet from a reclined position, doing moving-and-shooting drills with people shooting past each other, and the like.
Less dramatic but more pervasive examples are the kinds of range theatrics that Pat McNamara describes here:
The good news is that on the internet, these kinds of things tend to be self-correcting. Not perfectly and not instantly, but decades ago, people could have spent their entire careers promoting theatrics that aren’t actually effective. Now, they’re one Pat McNamara video away from being steered in a better direction. Doom loops happen, but they can’t thrive for as long as they used to.
This week’s links
Thoughtful take on the evolution of guntube and what type of content comes next
“How the ACLU started defending the Second Amendment”
Jacob Sullum’s account of the surprisingly long history of this topic.
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