The old trope of “triggered” is an old lifeless trope too.
Its one of two Babylon Bee jokes, the other being “gender switch lol”
Now, a more powerful key to influence is personal.
Witness the parasocial relationships formed by podcast listeners, people with favorite “thought leaders” and “Youtubers”, internet personalities – and this crosses every political social spectrum because there is a relative fullness of representation of subcultural views shown across various online media.
These parasocial relationships, whereby people refer to their favorites by first name, defend their honor in online debate, etc, are powerful because the listenered “feels” _as if_ they have a personal relationship with their favorites. They usually don’t even realize it themselves – it shows in how they respond.
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To abstract what you wrote a little, I’m less concerned with a notion of “success thinking” vs “failure thinking” than I am with independent thinking vs dependent thinking.
We’re all leadable and yes, that is a concern.
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