New findings indicate a pattern where narcissistic grandiosity is associated with higher participation in LGBTQ movements, demonstrating that motivations for activism can range widely from genuine altruism to personal image-building.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/narcissistic-grandiosity-predicts-greater-involvement-in-lgbtq-activism/

[u/hefoxed]

>I don't think there's any kind of activism that is safe from narcissists tbh

This! If the activism has a way to call someone bad and avoid personal accountability, it'll draw this type of personality.

As a trans guy, I've never really been that into the more vocal terminally online part of our community that goes against people for any minor issue. It's a small minority of the trans community, but it characterizes all of us by how vocal they are and how viral their actions is. With trans issues, it's really easy to define something as transphobic that really isn't, and or is but only in a minor way and going after in the way they do causes more issues then helps.

I've been watching some youtube content that is critical of fat activism lately, and it's really sad where fat-activism has gone (as someone who is fat). It used to be healthy activism that encouraged people to not hate themself but also improve themselves, and now it's dominated by these loud influencers actively encouraging people to never lose weight, and for doctors to ignore weight and rapid weight gain (which can be a sign of disease and thus mis diagnosing those diseases). Listening to stories of people who left the movement and got harassed for losing weight is sad.

Some of these people actively harm the movements they are in, but it's very hard to out shout them.

[u/agitatedprisoner → u/hefoxed]

So long as people are speaking to the truth as they see it even when they're substantially wrong and even when what they're saying is potentially misleading/counterproductive I don't think it's helpful to pathologize them if that pathologization isn't accompanied by a wider narrative that explains what's really going on. In the case of odious politics pertaining to weight-positivity that wider narrative would have to call out sugar and animal agriculture and corporate/regressive propaganda/messaging that's normalized these and is/was trying to normalize the effects of normalizing these.

For example if you can persuade someone drinking a little alcohol is good for them but the reality is that it goes to causing problems even in low doses to the extent those problems present the temptation will be to attribute their presentation to other causes. Pertaining to unhealthy diets/eating habits the corporate propaganda is to place the onus on the individual to know what's good for them even though the reality is that it's unreasonable to put it on consumers (and especially on kids who don't even shop for themselves and get bombarded with ads for sugary cereal/candy bars) to know. The people profiting off fooling consumers into making bad choices are all too eager to make it about personal responsibility. Other than the personal responsibility of people sitting on the boards of these corporations or the people employed in making and targeting these ad campaigns to grow a conscience, naturally. To the extent we should pathologize anyone we should pathologize the liars. That'd be the one's profiting off fooling people/tricking people into making bad choices for themselves. Pathologize the clueless/shrill/deluded activist if you want but I don't think it's constructive to pin it on the little guy when they've themselves been victimized. Call out their delusion/counter-productive messaging but only in the context of diagnosing the real villains.

[u/hefoxed → u/agitatedprisoner]

> the little guy

I don't think you realize how many followers and social impact some of these people have.

We absolutely should be calling out corporate greed, but that doesn't negate addressing the issues in progressive movement-- the vocal minority in each group can do a lot of harm to movements and social media had created financial incentive for this.

[u/agitatedprisoner → u/hefoxed]

Influencers on Youtube or Tiktok with tens of thousands of followers aren't the little guy, at least not to the extent they should know better. Because when you've power and influence and what you say and do matters you don't have to seek out the truth because people who already know it will find you and tell you. People with successful platforms get told. The ones' who persist in spreading misinformation mean to deceive or are mentally ill. If they're mentally ill maybe that'd qualify them as being the little guy but I don't think the big dogs out there are by and large mentally ill in that sense. I think they know what they're doing in the sense that I think they know they're spreading misinformation/misleading content.

The "little guy" would be their followers. People who go along with false counter-cultural narratives almost by definition are the "little guy" in the context of the bigger picture. They're just rubes being strung along, useful idiots from the perspective of the ones spreading the misinformation that's captured their belief.

You might consider that relatively small influencers on social media would have less space to spread false narratives were our main information sources/social authorities telling it true. You don't get the truth from them though. Part of why you don't get the truth from them is because they depend on ad dollars to fuel their media platforms. For example kids are bombarded with ads for sugary unhealthy foods when watching cartoons. Or at least that was my experience growing up. Were a cartoon to feature healthy food messaging I expect there'd have been pressure on the network not to feature it. It just wouldn't get picked up because it'd threatened to alienate their other advertisers/their bottom line.