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Yet another entry in the emerging genre of making an entirely uncontroversial point (criticizing people for glorifying and faking mental illness for attention), followed by the second half which is the author complaining about how everyone silences him for saying brave truths.

Much better than false victimhood due do fake mental illness to get clicks on tiktok is of course false victimhood due to fake controversial journalism on substack.




> Yet another entry in the emerging genre of making an entirely uncontroversial point (criticizing people for glorifying and faking mental illness for attention), followed by the second half which is the author complaining about how everyone silences him for saying brave truths.

To be fair, Freddie De Boer basically pioneered this genre outside right wing culture warriors.

I suspect he knowingly does it because he’s aware it gets him more clicks and engagement than if he just produced his content straight. That culture war hook is catnip for “the algorithm.”

It’s a shame because I do find him to be an incisive writer on the core points he’s trying to make, but the side dish of outrage bait he serves up with every entree gets tiresome fast.


I don't know if I totally agree but I definitely felt, somewhere around the halfway point, something along the lines of "whoa it felt like we were making some good points here but not it feels like we've gone into angry rant mode".


No, the false victimhood and invented identities on TikTok are 100x bigger than the very random bored people on substack claiming victimhood.

The former is an artifact of current pop culture, the later is irrelevant.




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